VR-Group: Financial accounting and management solution - Invitation to participate

VR-Group Plc (hereinafter also "VR" or "contracting entity") is procuring a modern cloud-based financial and management accounting solution (hereinafter “solution”). The procurement also includes implementation and support services for the solution. VR is looking for a robust, scalable and flexible solution or solutions as well as supplier who will implement the solution and provide solution for continuous support. The scope of the procurement will cover all these aspects. The new financial and management accounting solution is expected to provide flexibility. The company strategy of growth and efficiency will require changes in the organizational environment including organizational changes as well as mergers and acquisitions. Also, the corporate environment is evolving and requirements for regulatory and compliance reporting are ever changing. VR is ready to review and, for justified reasons, modify its processes and operating models according to the possible standard processes offered by the solution.  The procured finance solution contains capabilities for at least, but not limited to, following areas: - general ledger accounting - accounts payable - accounts receivable - service fee/manual invoicing - fixed asset accounting incl. right-of-use assets - month/year-end closing - financial reporting and reporting to authorities - calculation capabilities for tax reporting covering Finland and Sweden - cost and profit accounting - integration capabilities from/to 3rd party systems - capability to provide data to data platform and/or 3rd party analytics tools Furthermore, the solution needs to be able to create invoices with or without sales order based on data from external sales systems and send invoicing data forward in electronical format. Finance solution to be procured must be integrated with other finance and business applications as well as supplier invoice management system and to future procurement solution. We expect the solution to include comprehensive policies and procedures to support operational efficiency and security. It must provide the ability to enforce segregation of duties through standard user access rights, with the flexibility to modify these rights as needed. To further support compliance and control, the solution is expected to maintain strong internal controls by providing the capability to automate key control functions and enable automated restrictions. We also expect the solution to have AI supported functions to support and assist the end user in daily tasks. Finance and operational planning, consolidation and group reporting is done in separate system. Treasury operations, e.g. hedging, liquidity forecasting and loan management is done in a separate system. Procurement and supplier invoice management is done in a separate system. The Solution will replace two separate SAP ECC systems currently in use in Finland and Sweden. The solution needs to cover operations in Finland, Sweden and Latvia, and it must be easily extendable to other countries and potential future business areas, if necessary. In case new VR Group entities would be established, the procured solution must be possible to also take into use in such entities. VR Group Plc has three main business units, which are Logistics, Long-distance traffic and City traffic. In addition, there is also a unit providing maintenance services (VR FleetCare). VR Group consists of around 15 legal entities in Finland, Sweden and Latvia and has over 9100 employees. This procurement is made for all legal entities under VR Group, i.e. VR-Group Plc and all its group companies. At the commencement of the procurement procedure there are: • In Finland 12 relevant legal entities. In addition, there is also a maintenance company VR FleetCare Ltd. • In Sweden VR Sverige AB and VR Snabbtåg Sverige AB, and • In Latvia VR Services Latvia SIA The new finance solution is to be implemented simultaneously with the new future procurement solution in a joint implementation project. Both solutions are procured in separate procurement procedures, and they can be of different technologies and provided by different suppliers. Thus, the selected supplier needs to be able to work in a multi-vendor environment. The selected supplier is responsible for the scope of this procurement in the project. The transformation that a new finance solution and procurement solution implementation requires is significant and includes process development, change management and integration of processes and solutions. The aim is that the procurement process would end in Q1/2026, when the implementation would start. We are planning a phased go live and the goal is to have the first legal entities with fully implemented solution in place in H1/2027 with rollouts following. The new finance solution is to be implemented hand-in-hand with the future procurement solution; with legal entities implementing both solutions simultaneously according to the same schedule. The schedule of the procurement may however change during the procurement procedure. VR is looking for a partner which has capacity to implement the solution in the given target schedule and has expertise in similar implementation programs. The schedule of the procurement may however change during the procurement procedure. Documentation requirements will be specified during the negotiation phase and the final requirements regarding the whole procurement will be described in the final invitation to tender. More detailed information regarding the content and schedules of the negotiations will be provided to the selected tenderers. Functional and non-functional requirements as well as system and integration architecture requirements will be provided later during the procurement procedure.

The fixed agreement period is four (4) years from the date of signing the agreement. After the fixed period the agreement shall remain valid until further notice. The Finnish Act on Procurements and Concession Contracts of Entities Operating in the Water and Energy Supply, Transport and Postal Services Sector 1398/2016 (later "Act on Procurement Contracts in the Utilities Sector") applies to the procurement. The procurement will be carried out by means of negotiated procedure. All requirements for the procurement, as well as the contract terms, will be defined during the procurement procedure. All final requirements will be presented in the final invitation to tender. This procurement is a joint procurement of VR-Group Plc and VR Snabbtåg Sverige AB as referred to in Article 57 point 4 of the Utilities Directive (25/2014/EU), section 32 subsection 3 of the Finnish Act on Procurement Contracts in the Utilities Sector (1398/2016) and chapter 7, sections 9, 12, 13 and 14 of the Swedish Act on Procurement in the Utilities Sectors (2016:1146). VR-Group Plc will conduct the procurement procedure on behalf of both VR-Group Plc and VR Snabbtåg Sverige AB. VR-Group Plc will be responsible for the entire procurement procedure including all stages of the procurement procedure and possible appeal and rectification procedures. All of these processes will be entirely conducted according to Finnish law according to applicable legislation. The Finnish Act on Procurement Contracts in the Utilities Sector (1398/2016) is applied to the procurement. For the avoidance of doubt, the procurement is made for all legal entities under VR Group, i.e. VR-Group Plc and all its group companies. VR-Group Plc and VR Snabbtåg Sverige AB have been mentioned specifically here due to procurement law reasons, but the procurement as such coverers all legal entities under VR Group as described also elsewhere in the procurement notice documents. A candidate must fulfil all suitability requirements set in the contract notice and its appendices in order to be qualified as a tenderer to the procurement procedure. Due to the need to manage the procurement process, the number of selected tenderers has been limited to five (5). Suitability requirements are presented in the ESPD form (European Single Procurement Document) attached to the contract notice. If more than five (5) requests to participate are received from candidates fulfilling the suitability requirements, the number of candidates will have to be reduced. In this case, VR will compare the references provided by the candidates to the extent that they exceed the minimum requirements set for the references and as described in section "Grounds for decision" in the invitation to participate and Appendix "Reference form. If there are five (5) or fewer candidates fulfilling the suitability requirements, references will not be scored and compared. If there are more than five (5) suitable candidates and if the scoring of the additional references leads to a tie situation, all candidates with the same points as with candidate ranked number 5 will be selected to the procurement procedure (i.e. in this case the number of selected tenderers may be more than four (5).