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Interview

Application Management Christoph Höke

Christoph Höke, as Head of Application Management, presents the tasks of his department and his personal highlights.

In 1998, after Christoph Höke successfully completed his degree in Business Information Systems at the University of Paderborn, he moved into the automotive industry. He has worked at WAGO since 2011, first as General Manager IT and since 2015 as Head of Application Management.

“Application Management” ensures that the systems function properly, so that all WAGO employees, both in Germany and in various companies around the world, can work together easily and successfully.

What are your responsibilities as manager of the “Application Management” sector?

“Application Management” is a combination of ongoing development and management of application software over the software's entire life cycle. Essentially, the “Application Management” department supports various SAP applications and the ELO document management system for all departments and all companies throughout the entire WAGO world. The “Application Management” sector is supported by SAP teams in Poland and China - we are an international team.

The focus is on the following tasks and duties:

  • Daily support and ensuring system functionality,
  • Ongoing development and optimization of the processes within the scope of demands; new options for optimization are elaborated here with key users, process owners and other specialists, implementation concepts are generated, implemented and released for productive use.
  • Projects such as SAP rollouts to WAGO companies abroad, or conversion to S/4 Hana in the future.

My sector is divided further into the subteams Order & Finance, Marketing & Sales, Production and Logistic Solutions. The Applications Order & Finance team primarily supports the SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in the SD modules (order management, pricing), as well as Finance and Controlling; the Applications Marketing & Sales team is the point of contact for Sales, Solution & Support and Marketing. The Applications Production sector covers the areas of production, maintenance and material master data, which is responsible for administration and optimization of business processes in Production within the framework of the ERP system (module PP). The IT Logistics Solutions team on the other hand is responsible for warehouse management, intralogistics and shipping. The relevant business processes are represented in the Material Management (MM), Warehouse Management (WM) and Logistic Execution (LE) modules in the SAP ERP system.

What options do you and your colleagues at WAGO have for making your work day flexible?

As it is responsible for essential systems throughout the company, our sector must cover a daily service period from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. in order to be able to react promptly to any problems that arise. The individual teams determine who is present in order to be able to cover this period optimally within the framework of their flexible working hours. The working time model at WAGO allows colleagues to organize their working hours according to their needs – naturally, this working time is coordinated in the team.

However, WAGO also offers other options for flexible day-to-day planning. The WAGO Plus Program must be mentioned in this regard, as it helps in achieving a work-life balance. There's also WAGO's Pakadoo Point – a system for receiving personal deliveries, eliminating the inconvenience of going to the post office or a parcel service location – for me personally, that really makes things easier

What was your absolute highlight at WAGO so far?

There have been a few highlights over the 8 years I have worked at WAGO. For me personally, it was surely the go-live of the new SAP system on January 1, 2015, since a conversion of the central system on such a scale is much like heart surgery, i.e., everyone involved has to work hand in hand to successfully master the conversion - and this is where we, as a team, all worked great together.

In addition to these successful large projects, there are many other highlights at WAGO. For me, close contact is also part of this. 'For example, the company's founder, Wolfgang Hohorst, walks through the company every year around Christmas and thanks each and every employee for the work they have done. This is always a very motivating moment for me.

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