Founded five decades ago in Indonesia, Gunung Raja Paksi (GRP) has an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons of high-quality steel. The company is committed to environmentally friendly steel production and innovating in the green steel space with projects in place to reduce carbon emissions in every part of its production chain. Ivan Widjaksono, Head of Digital Transformation at GRP, is integrally involved in the company’s mission to provide customers and stakeholders value through innovation, efficiency and quality.  

IT leaders in the steel industry, one of the oldest industries in the world, are faced with modernizing aging infrastructure into smart factories able to leverage AI and automation to stay competitive. Widjaksono is no different. “We need to modernize our operations to improve cost efficiency and quality. Our goal is to develop smart factories and grow our business,” he said. To do this, he’s exploring digital pathways to gain efficiencies and reduce costs. SAP HANA is the heart of GRP’s data governance program. Data from the production floor is pushed to SAP and then used to fuel analytics, visualizations, and automations. As such, its SAP system is highly customized to fit these unique business processes. Widjaksono described GRP’s strategy, “We’re starting to implement Industry 4.0. It’s not just machines. We are connecting the machines to push all the data into SAP so that it’s all integrated and the connection is seamless. We want to avoid manual data entry to increase data quality.” 

Stabilizing SAP underpins data initiatives   

Because the vendor doesn’t offer in-country support in Indonesia, Widjaksono worked with a local SAP partner for its SAP HANA systems. Looking for more responsive service, he found the Rimini Street website and then attended a Rimini Street-sponsored event where he posed hard questions to the team. “We needed a trusted support partner that appreciates the criticality of our S/4HANA systems and its connectivity to the systems that fuel our operations, including the customizations we’ve made to the core. Compared to the vendor and other competitors, Rimini Street was a standout choice,” Widjaksono said. So pleased with the team’s knowledge of not just HANA, but also of the expertise around licensing, security, and customizations, he confidently selected Rimini SupportTM for SAP. According to Widjaksono, after presenting the client list, guaranteed SLAs, cost savings and access to expertise, it was an easy sell to the board.  

“In Indonesia, SAP only supports us through their partners. With Rimini Street, we have in-house support and development. That’s the main difference,” he explained. He experienced this difference soon after signing with Rimini Street when he submitted a ticket on a Saturday morning. “When I raised tickets to SAP, it took a long time to get a response. With Rimini Street, I got a response in less than five minutes and the issue was resolved within an hour,” he recounted. Being able to depend on fast, expert resolutions helps Widjaksono maintain stability and gives him peace of mind that the SAP systems that manage GRP’s valuable data will stay up and running. “By having the right information at your fingertips, and not siloed, we can be agile in our decision-making which helps us with growth and profitability,” said Widjaksono. 

Forging a pathway to Industry 4.0  

And Rimini Street delivers more than just fast, expert responses for GRP. “Rimini Street helps us reduce costs and convert our operational expenses into capital investments, like bringing new technology to GRP,” Widjaksono said. He continued, “It’s more than the cost savings they provide, which of course is hugely beneficial to funding our projects, but knowing that we have top-tier SAP support experts on our side at every minute of every day, allows us to direct our attention towards projects that keep us on the competitive forefront.”  

Between the immediate cost savings and time savings, Widjaksono is able to unlock capacity to focus on better leveraging data to drive AI and green steel initiatives. “Data is everything when it comes to AI. Making sure we have SAP data collection running full-speed is essential to our operations, as the results can help us make fast, on-the-spot and long-term strategic decisions that impact production, cost, profitability, resource planning and more,” said Widjaksono. Because their SAP systems are stable and supported 24/7/365, Widjaksono can rely on his SAP systems to deliver high quality data faster.  

This partnership shines a light on how having unfettered access to application-specific expertise to run mission critical systems can create bandwidth for the implementation of emerging technologies that have a tangible business impact. “With Rimini Street fully supporting our SAP systems, my team can focus 100% on realizing our Industry 4.0 vision,” Widjaksono said.