How SAP Customers Innovate and Grow by Moving to Rimini … · funds shift toward new ... at...

How SAP Customers Innovate and Grow by Moving to Rimini Street

http://www.informatica.com/

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 3

Goss International ........................................................................................................................ 4

Kumagai Gumi ............................................................................................................................... 6

Southco ............................................................................................................................................ 8

Color Spot Nurseries ................................................................................................................. 10

RSA Insurance ................................................................................................................................. 12

PBF Energy ....................................................................................................................................... 14

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Contents

1

1 2 3 4 5 6

Chapter

You’ve invested a lot in your SAP software over the years. It’s paid off with a more efficient and competitive business. But now high maintenance fees are eroding that value, and satisfaction with vendor support is at an all-time low.

Suppose you could cut your SAP support costs in half — plus increase ROI, strengthen control over your software roadmap and drive innovative IT programs that give your business a competitive edge?

This collection of success stories spotlights the challenges, solutions and benefits experienced by SAP customers that chose to move to Rimini Street, the leading independent software support provider for SAP® and Oracle®.

The Unsustainability of SAP SupportERP remains a high priority for CIOs, ranking as their No. 4 priority in the Gartner 2016 CIO survey. On-premise ERP will remain in place at many organizations, but IT support spending on those applications will need to shrink as funds shift toward new investments.

Vinnie Mirchandani, author of SAP Nation, observes, “For reference, my models showed the (SAP) economy running at between $200 billion all the way up to $700 billion a year if you include end user costs and amortization/write-off expenses. That makes SAP Nation one of the largest economies in the world – and a boat anchor for its customers.”

Why is it a "boat anchor?" High annual maintenance fees and poor support experiences lead to consequences that can include:

― Decreased productivity as IT teams struggle to troubleshoot interoperability anomalies

― Increased spending to self-support and maintain customizations

― Higher risk of downtime due to poor support and long resolution times

― Diversion of resources that could be invested in innovation and customer-centric initiatives

― Creation of risky “shadow IT” by business teams when IT can’t meet demands

There Is a Better WayThe truth is that most ERP customers are very happy with their enterprise software the way it is. It works — and works well. SAP delivers reliable, mature solutions that need only two things: Customization and great support.

Read on to explore how leading enterprises have tackled their SAP support challenges with Rimini Street, liberating valuable resources and achieving the agility and control needed to innovate.

Introduction

7

Goss International combines visionary concepts, innovative technology and intensive collaboration with printers and publishers to enhance the value, impact and competitive position of print.

The Goss International Challenge

With one standardized SAP ECC 6.0 instance across five countries, Goss has been running SAP since 2000 and is satisfied with the stability and functionality of the applications. In charge of SAP at Goss is Director of Global Applications and Solutions, Mike Masters, who describes himself as “more involved than most SAP customers”; he’s been a regular speaker and attendee at SAPPHIRE and worked as a member of SAP’s Industrial Machinery & Components steering committee.

Printing Systems Manufacturer Shifts IT Focus and Adds Key Apps to ECC 6.0 2

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6

Over time, high and rising annual SAP maintenance costs became a burden for Masters, and during negotiations, SAP tried to link any right-sizing of Goss’s existing maintenance contract to the purchase of new HANA cloud software, which would mean moving Goss’s ECC 6.0 instance into SAP’s hosted environment. SAP’s proposed plan had Goss paying $200K more for two years, starting to save in year three, and not showing a positive ROI until year five. However, Goss had no business reason to move its ERP to the HANA cloud, and every reason to be concerned about long-term vendor lock-in; as Masters pointedly puts it, “Once you’ve moved into the cloud, it’s tough to get back out.”

The sluggish business climate had led to reductions in IT staffing. With Masters’ remaining team of four devoted largely to keeping back-end systems running smoothly, it was difficult to find time to evaluate and implement innovative solutions to improve the technology ecosystem and drive the business forward.

Client Profile: Goss International supplies presses and finishing systems — including the most automated and productive web offset presses in the world — for magazine, newspaper, packaging, catalog, direct mail and other printing applications.

Industry: Manufacturing

Geography: Headquarters in Durham, NH with major manufacturing centers in North America, Asia and Europe as well as a global sales and support network.

Supported SAP Applications: SAP ECC 6.0 — Sales & Distribution (SD), Financial Accounting (FI), Controlling (CO), Materials Management (MM), Production Planning (PP), Plant Maintenance (PM), Project Systems (PS), Quality Management (QM)

Technology Platform: Cisco 64-bit, Linux, Oracle Database 11.2.0.3.0

7

Goss International

The Rimini Street Solution

Masters wanted to reduce his SAP maintenance cost burden and simultaneously free up his team to work on initiatives that improve Goss’s business, not merely maintain existing technology infrastructure. A little research, followed by consultation with his extensive network of SAP peers, led him to see an opportunity with Rimini Street, an independent support provider offering a comprehensive, high-touch support program as well as immediate savings of 50 percent over SAP’s annual support fees. That seemed like a better deal to Masters than undertaking a disruptive reimplementation to the cloud with vague promises of seeing a positive ROI five years down the road.

Goss switched to Rimini Street Support for its SAP applications in October, 2015. Masters says, “We are getting more out of Rimini Street than we ever got out of SAP support, and we’re paying less money.”

Client Results

With Rimini Street maintaining and supporting Goss’s SAP back-end systems, Goss’s IT staff of four is now available to spend more time evaluating and implementing the innovative solutions that the business is demanding. And the savings from switching to Rimini Street Support is helping to fund those same initiatives.

“Ever since we moved to Rimini Street, my team has been able to spend more time on business improvement instead of technology support, and that’s really the end goal,” Masters says. “We’re now able to take on things like implementing Concur for travel and expense management, reviewing and implementing SAP’s Warehouse Management at one of our sites, and customer-centric solutions like implementing Salesforce and integrating that to SAP. Certainly we wouldn’t have been able to take on Salesforce without the savings — and we wouldn’t have been able to do it with the resources we had under the old support methodology.” Rimini Street is directly supporting Goss in the process of rolling out these new products, such as verifying the technical integrations between Concur and SAP to ensure that expenses are being posted correctly to SAP Financials.

Masters explains how Rimini Street has freed up his staff for more value-added work: “When we used to have issues with SAP, my team used to do all the research themselves and go to SAP only if they gave up and couldn’t find a solution. Now, they give the issue to Rimini Street first and let them do the research and come back with a recommendation. In addition, the scope of support coverage with Rimini Street is much broader than it was with SAP; for example, we file Rimini Street tickets for how-to questions and custom programs, and get the same rapid response. Rimini Street has freed up my staff so we can focus more on the requirements of our customers, internal as well as external.”

Benefits ― Shifted IT Focus from “Technology Support” to “Business Improvement”: Goss’s IT staff of four is now available to evaluate and implement innovative solutions that help modernize business processes, while letting Rimini Street keep back-end systems humming.

― Reinvested Savings into New Solutions: With the savings and freed-up IT resources garnered from switching to independent support, Goss plans to implement Concur and Salesforce, and is currently implementing SAP Warehouse Management; Rimini Street is directly supporting Goss in rolling out these new products.

― Discovered a Higher Level of Service: Goss now enjoys ultra-responsive, 24/7/365 premium support services for SAP including a regionally-based Primary Support Engineer, support for custom programs, and “how-to” advisory services.

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6

“Ever since we switched to Rimini Street, my team has been able to spend more time on business improvement instead of technology support, and that’s really the end goal.”

Mike MastersDirector of Global Applications and SolutionsGoss International

7

The Kanden tunnel from the movie The Sands of Kurobe, the Shinjuku Nomura Building and the skyscraper Taipei 101 in Taiwan are globally recognized projects.

The Kumagai Gumi Challenge

In accordance with its mid-term business innovation plan published in 1997, Kumagai Gumi implemented SAP R/3 in 1999. In 2005, the company upgraded to R/3 Enterprise Release 4.7. In subsequent years, continually rising SAP maintenance costs became an increasingly significant financial burden for the Japanese construction giant.

With SAP R/3 4.7 facing end of support in March 2013, the company decided it didn’t make sense to continue with technical upgrades that offered few or no benefits to the end user. As a result, in October 2012, Kumagai Gumi started looking into the possibility of a long-term replacement for SAP.

Leading Japanese Construction Firm Proactively Plans for 2021 and Beyond

According to Isao Shigihara of the Corporate Planning Division, IT Planning Group, “The technical platform of SAP’s core system is extremely robust, and I’m incredibly satisfied with the stability of the application and supporting infrastructure. However, since upgrades to subsequent versions provide few or no advantages for the user, we can’t help but think twice about performing upgrades that involve such high costs. What we really want to do is to continue using our current SAP R/3 4.7 version, which is more than adequately equipped with functionality and works without any issues, while we explore alternatives for the future.”


While researching the possibility of replacing SAP with a new ERP system, Shigihara came across an article in an IT journal about Rimini Street, an independent provider of maintenance and support services. What drew Shigihara’s interest was the fact that using Rimini Street would allow him to immediately reduce maintenance costs by 50 percent.

Client Profile: Established in 1938, Kumagai Gumi Co., Ltd. is Japan’s leading general construction company and has also been actively involved in the unmanned construction system promoted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Industry: Construction

Geography: Shinjuku, Tokyo (Headquarters), Fukui, Sapporo, Sendai, Nagoya, Kanazawa, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Tsukuba, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka

Revenue: $2.3 billion USD

Employees: 2,167

Applications: SAP R/3 4.7

Technology Platform: Windows, NEC

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6

3

7

Kumagai Gumi

He got in touch with Rimini Street and, over the course of several exchanges, gained a more detailed understanding of its services. Shigihara learned that the Rimini Street support program includes an established framework for promptly dealing with tax, legal and regulatory updates in order to ensure full legal compliance. Rimini Street also supports, at no extra charge, the extensive customizations that Kumagai Gumi has made to its SAP accounting and reporting software to adapt it for use in the construction industry.

These features of the support program gave Shigihara confidence that Kumagai Gumi would be able to continue to use its customized SAP R/3 software without upgrading.

Client Results

After a preparatory period of three months during which Rimini Street worked in tandem with the vendor’s maintenance support program, Kumagai Gumi moved to Rimini Street exclusively in January 2015.

From the beginning, the team took note of the significantly higher level of service. According to Shigihara, “The most noticeable difference was the swift response time. With vendor support, not only were there times when we would wait several months for a response, but there were also quite a few cases that were never resolved. In contrast, with Rimini Street’s support, it is possible to immediately contact a dedicated Primary Support Engineer to quickly work toward a resolution of the problem. They continue to follow up until all problems are resolved, and are also easily accessible for other routine consultations. We are extremely satisfied with their services.”

Dramatic cost savings are also a significant benefit of the switch. “The ERP maintenance costs we incur over a one-year period have been cut in half,” says Shigihara. “Using Rimini Street’s support services means that we can continue to use our current version of SAP as it is for the next 15 years — making it possible to defer unnecessary version upgrades with the archived software we now have — and save tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of expenses in the process. It is hard to imagine a better alternative to independent support from Rimini Street.”

Kumagai Gumi’s IT infrastructure roadmap for the future is to implement a new ERP system in 2021. At that time, the company expects to switch from its current SAP system. Shigihara comments, “Thanks to Rimini Street, we have cut our high and rising SAP maintenance costs significantly. Our current proactive planning for our ERP future has been made possible thanks to the flexibility and savings that Rimini Street’s independent support has provided for Kumagai Gumi’s IT strategic investments.”

Benefits ― Investing in Innovation: The reduction of ERP maintenance and upgrade costs has enabled investment in strategic IT initiatives.

― Guaranteed 15 Years of Support for the Current Version: Kumagai Gumi has confidence that it can rely on its SAP applications for years to come.

― Premium-Level Service: Higher quality support services are delivered by senior engineers with an average of at least 15 years of experience with guaranteed response time of 30 minutes or less for critical issues.

“Using Rimini Street’s support services means that we can continue to use our current version of SAP as it is for the next 15 years, making it possible to defer unnecessary version upgrades.”

Isao ShigiharaCorporate Planning Division IT Planning GroupKumagai Gumi

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Southco’s offerings include over 25,000 standard catalog products and more than 50,000 custom products that have been created to meet its customers’ design needs.

The Southco Challenge

For 15 years, Southco, a leading international provider of engineered access hardware, managed its business on a non-integrated legacy ERP platform. When Southco determined it required a common system to support its quickly growing global business, the company chose SAP because it was a fully featured, established, integrated business system with multilingual capabilities and a global reach.

The company implemented its current SAP ECC 6.0 application in 2008 as part of its globalization efforts to help manage mission-critical operations, including manufacturing, supply chain management, purchasing and finance, with the intent

Leading Design Manufacturer Pursues Strategic SAP Globalization4

of creating a single, global SAP instance across every location in the world. Southco serves tens of thousands of customers around the world across a wide range of industries including aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics and medical.

Soon after the global recession began to affect the world economy, Southco CIO Brice Salle was compelled to postpone globalization efforts and assess the value of every dollar spent in his IT budget. He determined that Southco’s SAP maintenance costs consumed much of its IT budget as the second highest line item expense. Salle considered a self-support model, but realized the importance of having additional expertise available for his mission-critical applications as his internal team focused on additional SAP rollouts.


Finally, Salle explored independent support options and discovered Rimini Street. What ultimately tipped the balance in favor of Rimini Street, according to Salle, was the endorsement

Client Profile: Southco is a design manufacturer of fasteners, hinges and latching systems for industrial applications. Through innovation and strategic acquisitions, the company has built an unmatched portfolio of access hardware solutions. In order to meet the ever-changing needs of its customers, Southco has built and invested in a strong global footprint of technical sales, marketing, engineering and manufacturing operations throughout the world.


Geography: Global; Headquartered in Concordville, PA

Applications: SAP ECC 6.0

Technology Platform: HP/UNIX

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Southco

of the CIO of another SAP licensee that had become a Rimini Street client: “That really changed my mind. He had already taken the decision I was about to, and was very pleased with the service he’d seen to that point."

In 2009, Salle made the decision to drop SAP maintenance and move to Rimini Street for support of Southco’s stable, mature SAP ECC 6.0 applications.

Client Results

Immediately after switching to Rimini Street, Southco reduced its annual SAP maintenance costs by 50 percent and was able to fund and resume its high-priority globalization project in 2010. Southco finalized its rollout to the UK in 2011, followed by a successful rollout to four locations in Asia completed in mid-2012.

Additionally, Southco was able to minimize the expensive SAP maintenance budget line item further with 24/7/365 premium-level service, which includes an assigned Primary Support Engineer (PSE), support for customizations at no additional fee and support for a minimum of 15 years for existing releases without required upgrades.

“Global visibility and responsiveness to our customers is an important component of Southco’s business model and the reasons why this globalization project is the company’s number-one priority. Rimini Street was a valuable partner in helping us successfully accomplish the initial phase of this vital project with no impact to our business or our customers,” said Salle. “We were able to focus our internal resources on the rollouts in the UK and Asia and dramatically decrease implementation costs, while remaining confident that our PSE and Rimini Street team were providing a stable and supported SAP platform.”

In 2013 Southco is planning the next phase of global implementation at its single largest facility in the world, in China. Additionally, it is planning rollouts in other locations in Asia, including Korea.

“Southco’s experience with Rimini Street support is characterized by improved responsiveness and flexibility of support,” according to Southco COE Manager Patrik Larsson. With Rimini Street, all issues go through a single named, senior Primary Support Engineer assigned to the client and available 24/7/365 with a guaranteed 30-minute response time. Says Larsson: “With Rimini Street, we get much faster turnaround to resolve tickets beyond our control — and the Rimini Street engineer always understands the process we’re talking about as well as our specific IT environment.”

For example, during its SAP rollout to Asia, Rimini Street engineers quickly responded to and resolved several thorny P1 issues involving foreign currency date formats, purchase order faxes and problems with creating deliveries in the SAP system. Larsson cites the ability of Southco’s Rimini Street Primary Support Engineer to quickly assemble the necessary expert resources to address issues requiring deep SAP knowledge going above and beyond to achieve client success.

Benefits ― Mission-critical savings: Southco has exceeded its cost reduction goals through significant reduction in support fees

― Personalized, concierge-level service: Meaningful consultative dialogue with an experienced Level 3 engineer reduces overall maintenance costs and resolution time

― Ultra-responsive service: Southco realizes global 24/7/365 coverage with 30-minute-or-less response times

― Comprehensive skill level: Southco’s Primary Support Engineer quickly cleared through a large backlog of open issues

“Rimini Street was a valuable partner in helping us successfully accomplish the initial phase of this vital SAP globalization project with no impact to our business or our customers.”

Brice SalleChief Information OfficerSouthco

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Color Spot specializes in the production and distribution of high-quality bedding plants, vegetables, herbs and shrubs throughout the United States.

The Color Spot Challenge

Since 2001, the company has relied on SAP for mission-critical operations, including finance, human resources and payroll processes. An internal audit in late 2009 showed that SAP vendor maintenance fees consumed over 20 percent of the total IT budget and did not deliver value commensurate with the support the company received. At the same time, SAP had announced that it would no longer provide support for release 4.7C, which would have forced Color Spot to undergo an expensive, unneeded and disruptive upgrade to ECC 6.0, or else face de-support.

Wholesale Nursery Expands SAP Footprint by Driving Down Support Costs


In 2010, Color Spot’s chief information officer, Eric Robinson, made the decision to switch from SAP to Rimini Street. Robinson explains the key drivers behind Color Spot’s move to independent support: “The number-one driver by far was the current steep cost of vendor maintenance compared to the value we were receiving. I have a flat IT budget, and we went from 20 percent of the budget for SAP support to nine percent with Rimini Street. That’s real money I can use for other forward-looking strategic IT initiatives.”

With Rimini Street, Robinson immediately cut his maintenance budget by 50 percent, gained support for customizations at no additional cost and received guaranteed support for Color Spot’s existing SAP R/3 release for at least another decade.

Client Profile: Color Spot Nurseries is a wholesale nursery that grows, markets and distributes a range of plants and flowers to more than 2,000 retail and commercial customers in the western and southwestern United States.


Headquarters: Fallbrook, GA

Geography: Operates 12 production facilities across United States; customers include Home Depot, Lowes, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Rite-Aid, Kroger, Orchard Supply

Employees: 3,500

Applications: SAP R/3 4.7

Hardware: Windows Server 2003/SQL Server 2005

5

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Color Spot Nurseries

The switch to Rimini Street has enabled Color Spot to avoid costly, disruptive upgrades that would have been performed for the sake of continuing support. Color Spot also utilizes the Rimini Street Tax Engine for SAP Payroll and receives regular tax, legal and regulatory updates. That keeps the organization in compliance with changes taking place at the local, state and federal levels.

Client Results

Color Spot has aggressively managed its business to optimize market opportunities and streamline internal operations for the past three years, including making acquisitions to enter or consolidate markets. To enable this growth and expansion, Color Spot has expanded its use of SAP, including the purchase and deployment of new SAP licenses.

In 2014, Color Spot CIO Eric Robinson received a richly deserved distinction by being named a winner of the 2014 CIO Impact Awards by Frost & Sullivan. Robinson was recognized in the Enterprise Architecture category for enabling Color Spot to optimize its market opportunity, streamline internal operations and grow its SAP footprint through the innovative use of Rimini Street independent support for its SAP environment.

Robinson reflects on the value Rimini Street has brought to his business: “I would say I am able to leverage best practices, because I consider best practices to be what is most efficient for the business — not what a software vendor says is best practices. We now make the software do what we want rather than the other way around, and Rimini Street is a big part of that process. The only thing Rimini Street does is support — it is not simultaneously a software factory — so it makes sense that Rimini Street is acting as a formulator and executor of best practices in maintenance and support."

CIO Robinson describes Color Spot’s vision for SAP five years from today: “In five years we will still be running SAP R/3 4.7 but we will have built significantly around the edges of our core ERP system. For example, we have developed, and will continue improving, a web portal that enables orders to be entered and inventories to be taken for our team out in the Home Depot stores. We plan to significantly expand its functionality. We will have other add-ons to SAP that we have either bought off the shelf or built ourselves — for example, DRP, APO and CRM. It is likely we will have heavily modified SAP to work exactly the way our user community needs it to maximize their efficiency (again, for example, Order Entry needs streamlining).”

“Three years ago, we made the critical decision to switch from SAP vendor support to Rimini Street and we couldn’t be happier with the decision and the results. Their support model works as advertised and we have been able to achieve great success, including reducing our software maintenance costs from 20 percent to only nine percent of my overall IT budget, and significantly improving the level of support we receive,” said Robinson. “Today, Rimini Street is much more than a vendor – I consider them a valued partner and extension of my IT team, especially during this important period of growth and expansion.”

Benefits ― Expanded SAP Footprint with No Disruption in Support: Color Spot Nurseries is aggressively extending the reach and functionality of its SAP landscape.

― Gained Mission-Critical Savings: Color Spot has exceeded its cost reduction goals through significant reduction in support fees.

― Enjoying Expert Service: Significantly improved the level of support received compared to vendor support; Rimini Street considered a valued partner and extension of IT team.

“The number-one driver for moving to independent support was the current steep cost of vendor maintenance compared to the value we were receiving.”

Eric RobinsonCIOColor Spot Nurseries

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

RSA, one of the world’s leading multinational quoted insurance groups, has been protecting customers from risk and uncertainty for more than 300 years.

The RSA Challenge

As part of a broad review of IT software platforms across RSA’s UK operation, the company decided to investigate new options around the support program for its SAP applications. As procurement specialists, RSA Commercial Manager Sandra Phillips and her team partnered with IT to find a solution to this budget challenge.

RSA UK had ruled out an upgrade of its R/3 and ECC 6 instances in the short-to-medium term and had not committed to future upgrades. The existing technology was very robust and Phillips wanted to protect RSA’s investment. The goal for the organization was to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) while

Multinational Insurer Breaks with Pastto Partner with Rimini Street

6ensuring uptime and business continuity of the entire SAP landscape in order to mitigate any risk for this business-critical application.

The team began looking for providers capable of delivering support services that met these criteria and settled on Rimini Street, a market leader that had successfully built an impressive blue-chip client base. When Phillips presented her recommendation to RSA’s internal stakeholders, she had to sell the benefits of moving to an alternative support provider for a mission-critical application such as SAP. Says Phillips, “We had always used support from the vendor, so using Rimini Street would be doing something very differently.”


In further discussions with RSA’s stakeholders, Phillips articulated the benefits of switching to third-party support that far outweighed the perceived risks. “Procurement plays a larger role these days, really acting as a partner and influencer with

Client Profile: RSA Insurance Group plc is the holding company of the RSA group of companies, whose principal activity is the transaction of personal and commercial general insurance business.

Industry: Financial Services

Geography: Headquartered in London, with three global divisions: UK and International, Scandinavia and Canada.

Revenue: £6.3 billion GBP

Employees: 13,500

Products Supported: SAP ECC 6 EhP 4; SAP R/3; Oracle Database 11.2, 8.0, 8.1; SAP Payroll

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

RSA Insurance Group

page 13

Benefits ― Improved profitability: Savings on annual support fees enabled RSA to reduce SAP TCO, freeing capital to invest in vital business initiatives.

― Gained strategic flexibility: Being in the driver’s seat enabled RSA to determine when an upgrade would benefit the business, rather than being forced to follow SAP’s plan.

― Received responsive service: Customized code is supported and timely, complete global tax, legal and regulatory updates provided.

“As part of our ongoing program to reduce TCO, we wanted to reduce our SAP costs, as we had no short-to-medium-term plans to upgrade to the latest version or indeed to S/4HANA. The savings we’ve achieved with independent support have contributed to improved profitability. Rimini Street has been a game-changer for us.”

Sandra PhillipsRSA Commercial Manager

IT, finance and HR to choose the best solutions and most cost-effective agreements for the organization,” explains Phillips. Along with references from industry peers, the stakeholders gained confidence that Rimini Street, in fact, could deliver equivalent, if not superior, support services at a significantly reduced price.

RSA’s customizations are supported and tailored tax, legal and regulatory updates are delivered by Rimini Street. Additionally, the organization could continue to receive SAP security patches, reducing risk further. By moving to Rimini Street, RSA is not precluded from returning to SAP at a date in the future when an enhanced version of SAP may bring business benefit. Phillips explains: “Rimini Street helped us identify services that we were paying for without actually needing or using them, such as upgrade rights. It gave us the mindset to partner with the support provider that delivers the most value to our company, rather than limiting ourselves to vendor support.”

Client Results

“Our experience with Rimini Street has been very positive,” says Phillips. “The support model is tailored and personal. Since day one of using Rimini Street, our support team continues to speak highly of the service we’ve received. Rimini Street engineers are responsive, incidents are handled effectively and their resolutions are fit for purpose. We would certainly consider moving additional applications to third-party support from Rimini Street down the road, should the opportunity arise and the risk be acceptable.”

RSA immediately met its goal of reducing its TCO for SAP and achieved an increase in the quality of support services. The move also plays into RSA’s larger IT goals. “RSA has been around since the early 1700s,” Phillips explains, “and we’ve retained many legacy applications. Whereas we were used to always going to the vendor for support, we now know we can also look at outsourced support for high-quality and efficient service.”

Indeed, the goals of the organization were to improve its profitability and investment potential. “We wanted to reduce our SAP TCO, especially given that we had no short-to-medium-term plans to upgrade to the latest version or indeed to an S/4HANA upgrade. The significant savings we’ve achieved with independent support has contributed to improved profitability, which in turn contributes to our ability to invest in new applications for the future and wider business initiatives. Rimini Street has been a game-changer for us.”

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 76

PBF Energy is a Fortune 500 independent refiner that supplies transportation fuel, heating oil, lubricants and other petroleum products to customers throughout the United States.

The PBF Energy Challenge

Founded in 2008, PBF Energy has grown into one of North America’s largest independent oil refiners. The company’s growth began in 2010 when they acquired refineries in Delaware and New Jersey, closely followed by a 2011 acquisition in Ohio, one in Louisiana in 2015 and most recently a refinery in California in 2016. This rapid expansion can be common in the oil and gas industry, with its constant merger and acquisition (M&A) activity.

Rapidly Growing Independent Refiner Frees Up Funds to Boost Technology Investment7

PBF Energy upgraded to SAP ECC 6.0 EhP7 enterprise-wide in 2014, then acquired a second SAP instance the following year with the addition of the Louisiana refinery. As a young and fast-growing organization, PBF relies on these applications to help the company run smoothly and make smart decisions quickly.

With PBF Energy’s SAP deployment now robust and stable, PBF Director of Applications Yael Urman wanted to explore ways of reducing annual maintenance and support costs, while ensuring continuing stability of PBF’s core SAP environment. Urman’s goal is to support existing systems and enable the implementation of new systems and technologies as the business grows organically and through additional acquisitions. “This was the perfect time to explore our options,” Urman explains. “We had just upgraded to Enhancement Pack 7, we were on the latest version of SAP, and the system was stable. We now feel we are ready to add new functionalities and systems around our core SAP system.”

Client Profile: One of the largest independent petroleum refiners in North America, PBF Energy owns and operates five domestic oil refineries that process approximately 885,000 barrels a day.

Industry: Oil and Gas

Geography: Headquartered in Parsippany, NJ with refineries in California, Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and Ohio

Revenue: $13.1 billion USD

Employees: 3,250

Supported Applications: SAP ERP (ECC 6.0) EhP7; SAP Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) 10.1; SAP BusinessObjects (BOBJ) 4.1; SAP BusinessObjects Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) 10.1

Technology Platform: Oracle Runtime Database 11.2.0.3.0, MSSQL 2012

1 2 3 4 5 6

Chapter

7

PBF Energy

page 15

Benefits ― Improved Support Response: PBF Energy now logs and closes tickets for its SAP deployment in significantly less time.

― Redirected Savings Toward Core Initiatives: PBF Energy has cut its SAP support costs in half, gaining the flexibility to streamline systems and increase investments in new applications and business analytics.

― Gained a Support Partner: With its core SAP systems safely supported, PBF Energy can move forward with its business strategy of continuing growth and acquisitions.

“Our move to Rimini Street resulted in improved support service, while our costs have been considerably reduced.”

Yael UrmanDirector of ApplicationsPBF Energy


As Urman was researching options for SAP support, she was approached by independent support provider Rimini Street with a proposal that would provide far superior levels of service while reducing PBF’s annual support costs. Rimini Street’s proven SAP practice and expertise supporting global SAP systems for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies gave PBF the confidence it needed to switch to independent support. In addition, Urman says, “We very much like that we can talk to Rimini Street about SAP-related issues and get unbiased opinions and straightforward answers with no attempts on Rimini Street’s part to make additional sales.”

Client Results

Transitioning to the Rimini Street support program was so simple that PBF Energy didn’t even need to allocate additional resources or a full-time staffer to the project. “We were able to complete the transition as part of our day-to-day schedule,” Urman says. “If an issue arose, Rimini Street offered us more than one option to solve it, we picked one and we continued. It was straightforward and easy.”

PBF Energy was able to start logging and closing out tickets immediately; this was important especially for SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC), a system with which the company has had repeated challenges. “Rimini Street engineers have years of experience delivering answers that work faster,” says Urman, adding, “We don’t have more tickets than before, but we now have a better response to the tickets we log.”

“Moving to Rimini Street was an easy decision for us — a big move with very little effort,” Urman says. By realizing Rimini Street’s guaranteed 50 percent reduction in annual support fees, PBF Energy now has more funds to streamline its ERP systems and increase its investments in business intelligence, analytics and reporting.

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

About Rimini StreetRimini Street is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, and the leading independent support provider for Oracle and SAP products. The company has redefined enterprise support services since 2005 with an innovative, award-winning program that enables licensees of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and other enterprise software vendors to save up to 90 percent on total support costs. Clients can remain on their current software release without any required upgrades for a minimum of 15 years. Over 1,300 global Fortune 500, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries rely on Rimini Street as their trusted, independent support provider.

Ready to learn more?

Let's talk at:Tel +1 888.870.9692 or [email protected]

www.riministreet.com

© 2017. Rimini Street, Inc. All rights reserved. Rimini Street and the Rimini Street logo are registered trademarks of Rimini Street, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. LT-US-080317

mailto:info%40riministreet.com?subject=

http://www.riministreet.com

http://www.informatica.com/

How SAP Customers Innovate and Grow by Moving to Rimini … · funds shift toward new ... at...

Documents

Transcript of How SAP Customers Innovate and Grow by Moving to Rimini … · funds shift toward new ... at...