The Volkswagen Group and CGI, one of the world’s largest business and IT consulting firms, announce the deepening of their global collaboration. This move strengthens the Volkswagen Group’s long-term capabilities to further expand a powerful IT infrastructure for the future. As part of their joint efforts, both partners have launched the new entity MARV1N (pronounced “Marvin”) which will act as an international development unit for Group-wide digitalisation projects and support the developers at Volkswagen. With these additional resources, the Volkswagen Group plans to develop new IT systems faster and more efficiently.
The Volkswagen Group is advancing the modernisation of its IT system landscape. By 2026, the company aims to replace hundreds of legacy systems with fewer but more powerful and scalable new developments across the Group. This is expected to enable faster processes and significantly reduce IT-related operating costs. To achieve this goal, Volkswagen Group is strengthening its software development capabilities. This is primarily being done through the consistent expansion of its international subsidiaries and through new cooperation models with selected partners.
“For the development and production of modern products, we need modern IT systems. At the Volkswagen Group, we are therefore working on our system landscape of the future: powerful, cross-brand, and scalable,” said Hauke Stars, Board Member at Volkswagen Group for IT. “Our deepened collaboration with CGI is a further step to secure the increasing demand for software development performance in the Volkswagen Group.”
Therefore, CGI and Volkswagen Group are initiating the entity MARV1N as a wholly-owned subsidiary of CGI Germany.
“Through this strategic partnership, we will further deepen our strong relationship with Volkswagen as we collaborate to accelerate Volkswagen Group’s business outcomes in line with their digitalisation vision and strategy,” said François Boulanger, CGI President and CEO. “As part of this new strategic partnership, our architects, developers and consultants will deliver services and solutions grounded in both technology expertise and knowledge of manufacturing business processes. We look forward to bringing CGI’s proven best practices, global capabilities and technology innovation to this new joint initiative.”
Volkswagen expects several benefits from this cooperation model: MARV1N employees will dedicate their software expertise exclusively to projects within the Volkswagen Group, accelerating development processes. Additionally, by working intensively and long-term on these projects, the teams will acquire a deep understanding of the core processes and software products within the Volkswagen Group. Through close integration of the teams, Volkswagen ensures the retention of this know-how within the company.
The MARV1N teams are initially focusing on projects related to Technical Development at Volkswagen, which is a key area in the ongoing digitalisation push in the Group. Their primary goal is to accelerate data-driven function development for new vehicle projects. For instance, a new cross-company IT system is being designed to consolidate data of all requirements related to electrical/electronic architecture and software functions, spanning from pre-series development to aftersales service. This central data management approach is expected to lead to faster development times for software updates and new digital products, such as Functions on Demand, for Volkswagen’s customers.