VWFS was first established in Sydney in June 2001 with just five employees, but today employs over 110 full time employees.

Its primary objective is to provide finance and insurance products to around 700 retailers representing automotive brands within the Volkswagen Group, including Volkswagen Passenger and Commercial Vehicles, Audi, ŠKODA, Bentley and Lamborghini.

In December last year, VWFS began a tender process to find a fleet software supplier with an IT solution capable of supporting a new portfolio of fleet-specific products and services as part of a move into the Australian fleet market.

Philip Farhart, fleet project manager at VWFS Australia (pictured left) explained that the primary objective of the fleet project was to deliver an IT system, infrastructure and processes for a new, branded fleet management organisation, and to help establish the new venture as a leading fleet provider.

He said: “VWFS followed a selected tender process and evaluated three fleet system solution providers. The main qualifying standards were that our new supplier had to fit with our existing infrastructure and be in complete alignment with our product and market development road map.

“They also had to provide a local office and resources capability, with existing fleet functionality and a fleet software solution that was currently deployed in Australia.

As a result Sofico was appointed as fleet system vendor partner to VWFS’ new fleet venture in March this year.

Speed to market was of vital importance for VFWS. Crucially, Sofico’s Miles solution, which manages more than 1million vehicles around the world, comes with a pre-configured Reference Implementation set-up.

This set-up is based on common processes and best practices within the leasing industry, which speeds up the implementation process considerably and can cut the time required for implementation down to a matter of months or, in this case, weeks.

“We can now provide a full suite of fleet management solutions in Australia to our target market,” said Philip Farhart. “Miles gives us end to end functionalities with a built-in accounting model for real-time updates, plus an embedded report writer for customised reports and documentation.

Koenraad Van Grimbergen, general manager of Sofico Services Australia, added: “We are very excited to have VWFS as part of our customer portfolio in Australia.

“There was a very short implementation time-frame, the shortest in which we have ever actually implemented Miles, representing a great team effort by both parties.”

Belgium-based Sofico first opened an Australian office in Sydney in 2002 in response to demand from a growing Australian fleet and leasing market. Today, the company’s systems manage over 300,000 cars in Australia and New Zealand for a variety of fleet management and leasing companies, both captive and non-captive.