Wawa Goes Live With PDS' Newest Version of Vista HRMS Continuing Its 25-Year Relationship

BLUE BELL, PA--(Marketwire - May 22, 2012) - PDS, a leading developer of human resource, benefits, recruiting, and payroll systems, today announced that Wawa, Inc., a convenience store chain with more than 18,000 associates in over 600 locations within six states, has gone live with Vista HRMS^® 4.1. Wawa has been leveraging PDS' HR, benefits and payroll software to streamline processes and better serve its associates since 1987.

"We were on a highly customized version of PDS' software for 15 years," explained Todd Lombardi, director of compensation and benefits at Wawa. "Before moving to the newest version, we evaluated other options and selected PDS again because they continued to be the best fit and partner for us. They have a level of familiarity with us, we have comfort with their product and their price point made good financial sense for us."

"PDS was crucial to the success of the migration. We had a wonderful team of PDS resources on-site during our implementation project," added Lombardi. "We needed the leadership and support of PDS for the success. It is rare to have a relationship with a technology vendor with such longevity these days. It shows the quality of the relationship and the attentiveness that PDS provides to us and all of their clients."

Vista HRMS handles the weekly payroll processing for Wawa's 18,000+ associates, processes more than 30,000 W-2s annually for the chain, and tracks vital information, such as benefits eligibility and retirement plan contributions. Vista also serves as a data repository for associate information (i.e. emergency contacts, benefits, compensation, and demographic information. The implementation team had to migrate all of the data, as well as set-up interfaces with more than 100 internal and external systems that regularly exchange information with Vista.

Michelle Volkwine, HR project manager at Wawa, echoed Lombardi's comments, "We had an extremely successful implementation because we took the time to properly plan and we had the right resources. We invested in PDS Professional Services and I cannot say enough about how valuable having them on-site at Wawa to support our implementation over the past few years has been. Their knowledge and experience helped the team with system set-up, best practice recommendations, issue identification and resolution, and testing efforts, as well as system training and knowledge transfer."

"Wawa has been an amazing customer for PDS. This project was a significant undertaking for Wawa; however, because of our strong 25-year history with Wawa, it was a major success," said Patricia Palmer, senior vice president and product manager at PDS. "As Wawa continues to grow and expand into other states, like it is doing this summer in Florida, we look forward to continuing to partner on their journey."

About Wawa, Inc.
Wawa, Inc., a privately held company, began in 1803 as an iron foundry in New Jersey. Toward the end of the 19th Century, owner George Wood took an interest in dairy farming and the family began a small processing plant in Wawa, Pa, in 1902. The milk business was a huge success, due to its quality, cleanliness and "certified" process. As home delivery of milk declined in the early 1960's, Grahame Wood, George's grandson, opened the first Wawa Food Market in 1964 as an outlet for dairy products. Today, Wawa operates more than 580 stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

About PDS
In the HRMS software development business for more than 35 years, PDS is a provider of a feature-rich, completely integrated human resource, benefits administration, recruiting and payroll software application that enables organizations to focus on more strategic issues and less on administrative HR, benefits and payroll activities. In addition to core HRMS functionality, Vista HRMS^® offers self-service, English-language query tool and workflow automation. PDS also provides a full range of professional services to a wide variety of industries in the U.S. and in Canada. Founded in 1974, PDS is a privately-held company headquartered in Blue Bell, Pa. For more information on PDS or PDS' Vista HRMS solution and services visit www.pdssoftware.com.

PDS and the PDS logo are registered trademarks and Vista is a trademark of Personnel Data Systems Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are properties of their respective owners.