Those who think that finance, procurement or IT is monotonous or even boring, well, they must read on. Spoiler alert: Not in the least. On the contrary!
With more than 30 years of experience in powertrain and vehicle manufacturing, Audi Hungaria is increasingly focusing on developing services that are based on the competences of its employees and are provided for the entire Volkswagen Group. Since its establishment in 2023, its wholly owned subsidiary AUDI HUNGARIA AHEAD Kft. has been operating procurement, finance and IT services not directly related to production in Győr under the auspices of future orientation, innovation and development with its Győr-based professionals in an international, multicultural environment that is impressive even in our 21st century global reality.
Ádám Szécsi deals with cost analysis in procurement. Value engineering covers the entire product manufacturing process, right through to the end of production, where engineer-procurement colleagues determine the best purchase price for a component or tool, be it a seat or a speaker, supporting the procurement and development processes. As the technical coordinator, Ádám manages the team responsible for the cost analysis of electronic components. They check the suppliers’ quotations against quality, content, location and reliability guidelines, which requires not only a thorough knowledge of engineering, but also comprehensive procurement and negotiation skills.
"The vast majority of our colleagues are engineers or have engineering experience, and we also need to be able to assert our numbers in international negotiations. Complex knowledge is required, and we are looking for experts specialised in material groups, who are familiar with production processes, the latest technologies, raw material costs and many other parameters. You also need to have solid advocacy skills and a confident command of a foreign language to be able to make your point."
As a service provider, they have contracts with almost all the brands of the group, so the Győr team's clients include Bentley in the UK, Lamborghini in Italy, as well as Mexican, Chinese and German sites, so by supporting their partners' purchasing and cost analysis activities they deal with suppliers from all over the world, almost exclusively in foreign languages.
"The cultural differences are striking, but it is in everyone's common interest to find common ground. There’s one way to negotiate with a German supplier who puts precision and stability and the facts first, another way to negotiate with a Chinese supplier who values the power of the spoken word, and yet another way to negotiate with an Italian who values a comfortable, harmonious negotiating environment. We also have to take into account the time differences, especially in the case of Mexico or China, so we must adapt to one another. As we are deciding on millions of euros in a negotiation process, besides intercultural negotiation techniques, the main factor for success is always numbers based on engineering knowledge.
The company offers a wide range of training possibilities to help colleagues acquire the right skills, including training in negotiation strategies, foreign language communication and presentation techniques, because it's not enough to be a good engineer, you also need to be able to transfer your engineering knowledge to any part of the world and get it across as well.
In this varied and exciting job, what is Ádám most proud of?
“Definitely my team. I started out on my own in the field and now I support a team of five professionally. All my colleagues are excellent, work independently, and the team dynamics are optimal. And how is this reflected in the numbers? Once we successfully negotiated the purchase price of a €400 million per year investment and reduced the purchase price thanks to good strategy and our engineering knowledge. I find it inspiring that we don't see the same case twice, there is always something to learn, I see technology evolve, I learn about new processes and I am very motivated by the fact that my work produces quantifiable results in a short time."
A few offices away, László Bihari is a process owner in the finance department, where he is responsible for the accounting, control of incoming invoices and fixed asset management, coordinating the work of 12 and 5 colleagues respectively. The always cheerful and good-humoured team is made up mainly of economics graduates, many of whom have an International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) qualification. Excellent communication skills in German are a prerequisite, as the vast majority of their clients are German group brands and in addition to AUDI AG, Audi Immobilien and Audi Tradition, they provide services to Audi Formula Racing as well. The handover of the activity from the Ingolstadt headquarters went smoothly, and the Hungarian colleagues were able to get to grips with the tasks very quickly thanks to their high level of competence. László is very proud of the fact that half of the team, coming from outside the company, have also picked up the pace and are running their international services as a team, meeting deadlines and learning a whole new set of rules. This means, among other things, nearly 200,000 transactions per year.
This is an excellent achievement, especially in light of the implementation of SAP S/4 HANA at AUDI AG, the largest customer, in January 2023 and the change of the general procurement system in October 2024, which presented the team with new challenges in invoice processing.
"You might think that sitting in front of a computer screen, keeping accounts would be a boring way to spend your days, but this is not the case at all. Most of our processes are automated, and with my expert colleagues we are responsible for managing exceptions, further optimising processes and developing improvement proposals. Because the work is not easy, it is interesting. I used to like to look for a new job every three years, but here, after three and a half years, I still feel I have work to do and challenges ahead of me."
The third service area of AUDI HUNGARIA AHEAD Kft. is IT, which, we can say, manages, operates and supervises the SAP, software development and DevOps services of nearly 200 group companies worldwide. Our colleague Szilárd Győri works here as a service manager, who is part of a team of five people who operate the Splunk software. His main tasks include server and infrastructure management, with the aim of ensuring that their users can use the application in the right quality. Their work is crucial to ensure that people can respond in a timely and properly developed manner, even on the other side of the world, as the data provided from Győr is essential for the use of the plant's equipment. They handle a wide range of data, including security-critical data, so they work under strict access protocols.
"Our customers are mainly located in Germany and Mexico and we support them with 24/7 system support in German and English. Enquiries are sent to us via the ticketing system (a tool to help us manage and follow up on problems and requests) or by email. Although many jobs require profound IT knowledge, anyone can join us with relevant work experience and a secondary education. Our work consists mainly of competence-based and non-repetitive administrative activities.
As a testament to the success of transformation within the company, there are also examples of colleagues who came from logistics and, after successful training, are now working as developers."
Audi Hungaria has also supported in-house retraining with the SAP Academy programme, as IT services is a dynamically developing field. During the intensive training course, which lasted several months, the participating employees successfully acquired up-to-date, usable IT knowledge, and have since then leveraged their knowledge in the team of AUDI HUNGARIA AHEAD Kft.
"In addition to professional skills, our job also requires a good knowledge of foreign languages, determination and resilience, as well as the ability to work independently and as part of a team. As technology is constantly evolving, we need to be up to date when we change services, relearning the servers and operating systems we use. It helps a lot if we have an overall view of our business and specialise in our own service.”
And to finally break down the preconceptions mentioned in the introduction to this article, we asked Szilárd the almost embarrassingly trite question of whether life as an IT service provider is boring.
“The beauty of operation is that when we get a high-priority request, we get together and try to find the best solution together, often by brainstorming for hours, so we have time to cultivate working relationships as well as professionalism. We have a good team, we often have team days, we have lunch together, we organise joint activities. I really like the fact that I can see the benefits and importance of my own work directly, which makes my tasks more and more responsible. I started here as a trainee in 2017–2019, and I got so much positive experience and feedback from my boss at the time that I definitely wanted to work here, and I also see my future here.”
