primion's new Web solution at the Gruner + Jahr Publishing company
by Primion Technology AG

While searching for an innovative partner to install and employee ID and Time management system, G+J found the complete system solution from primion.

With over 11,000 employees producing over 120 magazines and newspapers in 14 different countries, Gruner+Jahr, with its Head Office near Hamburg, is Europe's biggest publishing house and the number 1 in Germany. Currently, around 75% of G+J shares are owned by the media organisation Bertelsmann. G+J, delivers high quality with all its products, irrespective of whether it is magazines, newspapers, Internet offers orTV productions

One of the system requirements was the integration of a cashless payment system for the staff restaurant into the whole system and for this reason the company chose a proximity Legic system. This provides not only a technically future-safe solution; it also meets the highest security requirements. The system from offers the greatest level of security against unauthorized copying , d a t a manipulation, incorrect data transfer, data loss and inter-application conflicts. The ability not only to print their own employee ID cards but also to code the integrated Legic chips them themselves, gave them complete autonomy and flexibility over the complex business of card management.

The company chose the twin products of Visual WebTime and Visual WebAccess based on Oracle. The size of the company's location and the decentralised installation site made TCP/IP communication the obvious choice, a choice which offers as part of its standard solution . The use of DT 400 time recording terminals, connected directly to the database with Ethernet on-board, offers not only convenient arrival and departure booking points but also provides the employees with a source of information about their various time accounts at the point of use.

The IDT 6 and IDT 1A access controllers are also connected directly back to the database. A batch process was created for G+J to transfer all the data relevant to time management to SAP for the seamless calculation of wages and salaries. Due to the sensitive nature of the stored data and the tasks connected with this data, data security and data protection was an important issue for G+J. The solution offered by the twin products of VisualWebTime and VisualWebAccess, more than satisfied these concerns.   

The primion solution handles the employee identification, access control and time recording requirements of the 1,500 employees at the Head office site. We are happy that our web-based solution, encompassing such highlights as the reduction of the load on HR, a highly secure TCPIP communication, a certified SAP interface, enormous flexibility and the use of a professional database meets the high standards expected by Gruner + Jahr.