Erika Sperrle: From “Fräulein” to head of financial accounting
The 17-year-old begins her industrial apprenticeship in 1975 well prepared: As a teenager, she had already helped her father write invoices in the office. At the end of her apprenticeship she is trained in the accounts receivable - and takes over those tasks from her colleague who was leaving. She later qualifies as an accountant and business economist and attends English courses and numerous further training programmes.
Over time, the “Fräulein from Accounting” as she is long known, becomes Head of Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. In this role, she is involved in a mega-project at the end of the 1990s that changes the entire accounting department dramatically: the introduction of SAP's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. The system allows business processes to be mapped and tracked, from the customer order to delivery and payment of the invoice. “Of course, that was a great thing,” she recalls and admits: “I'm a total SAP fan.”
However, the changeover requires a lot of work. Many things go wrong at the beginning and it is not unusual for Erika Sperrle to work late into the night. She is happy to do this because she finds the possibilities of SAP fascinating - and as a woman, her expertise in that field enables her to develop new career prospects at MAPAL, which is quite male-dominated.
NO FEAR OF INNOVATIVE CHANGES
She succeeds, and it soon becomes her main task to convert the foreign subsidiaries to SAP and integrate them into MAPAL's accounting system. A challenge that sometimes takes her on business trips to France, Italy and the Czech Republic. In mastering her tasks, she is helped by a strong team spirit and the early and intensive communicative involvement of all those involved. So it is no wonder that in 2005 she is the first and only woman to be invited to a management seminar. As Head of Financial Accounting, she now is the boss of a dozen employees. When Erika Sperrle retires in 2022 after 47 years at MAPAL, she believes her long-standing employer is well equipped for the future: “MAPAL adapts quickly to challenges and crises. That has always been the case.”