Sage VIP’s latest generation product offering, called VIP People is now officially available to all South African companies, particularly for the enterprise market and offers a turnkey integrated payroll, HR and employee self-service solution. 
“It is powerful, simple, flexible, feature-rich and highly customisable. The solution caters for diverse and often quite complex payroll and HR challenges faced by South African organisations, especially those with a large number of employees,” says Anton van Heerden, MD of Sage VIP (previously known as Softline VIP).
“VIP People places the organisation on the forefront of yet another development. Innovation is one of the core values at Sage VIP and therefore we continuously develop software that is fresh, forward thinking and in line with world-class standards,” says Van Heerden.
“The new offering combines state of the art technology with VIP’s existing, well developed infrastructure. It also effectively incorporates the Group’s extensive experience in the HR and payroll industry, ensuring that companies are legislatively compliant, while keeping focus on business efficiency and value.
“VIP People is the result of years of interaction with our clients, learning how they operate and incorporating best practices and procedures.
“VIP People is one of the biggest research and development projects the company has invested in for the last five years. Development of the product was completed in August 2011. Systems were then sold into a controlled environment to a small number of companies, ensuring everything runs smoothly before the formal launch of the product.”
The first company that bought VIP People was King Price Insurance.
“King Price Insurance embraces innovation and is proud to be the first live customer on VIP People. We like the fact that the software is scalable, can grow and expand as our requirements change,” says Basil Song, financial director.
“Secondly, the software is extremely easy to use, I was put in a position where I had to submit Equity reports on short notice and, with VIP’s prompt assistance, was able to submit on time with ease. As expected, VIP lived up to its reputation as being a world class service company.”
Existing customers of VIP’s Payroll offerings will have the choice to continue with their existing software or to buy the latest offering, with full support from Sage VIP resources. The roll-out into Africa is scheduled for 2014.
Some interesting facts about VIP People:
* It was developed in .Net and runs on a MS SQL Server;
* The realtime design that VIP’s products are known for, is also an integral part of the People system;
* It employs a friendly and familiar user interface with the ability to customise the working space for each user as they prefer;
* The pay slip can keep track of, and manage details of external payments for example garnishees, bond payments, revenue services, and so on;
* It creates remuneration structures containing all the payroll definitions applicable to a specific individual or group of employees, which streamline processes;
* Company management is also streamlined. For example, VIP People can create unlimited companies per database and employees’ pay periods can be viewed for two years in advance;
* Customers can regularly receive all the latest statutory updates ensuring full legal compliance with minimal effort;
* The reports allow for complex calculations and further manipulation;
* Multiple Medical aid providers with their various options can be created;
* The employees’ leave transactions can be viewed on an actual calendar and leave set-up is done according to company specific guidelines; and
* It is built on an extremely secure design which employs best practice principles to ensure maximum security and control.