Do you know people who are so much more productive than the rest of us that you would swear they have found more hours in the day? Companies are the same: some do much more with what they have, regardless of limitations of time, technology and budget.
What are the limits on your capacity for business success? It’s true that some budgets are more limited than others, but all budgets are limited – and we know of no way to increase the hours in the day. But capacity is more than time and money. Are you doing the most you can with what you have?
What if you could rebalance how you spend time and money to create more capacity?
Today’s most successful companies take advantage of IT to change the way they do business, which means avoiding the pitfall of letting routine operations consume their whole technology budget.
Since it was founded in 2005, Rimini Street has saved its clients an estimated $5 billion USD in total IT spend.
How? We start with cost-effective, high quality, third-party support for ERPs and other enterprise software. Beyond saving money, we save our clients a lot of grief by resolving technical issues with critical corporate systems by giving them direct access to experienced engineers. No more working through layers of help desk personnel before you connect with someone who addresses the crux of your issue.
Vendors use enterprise software maintenance contracts to pressure customers into following their product roadmap, with its never-ending stream of upgrades and add-ons. Rimini Street helps independent-minded technology leaders define their own business-driven IT roadmap where investments are calibrated to achieve strategic goals – including freeing up the capacity for revenue growth and new product development.
Many of our clients say they were pleasantly surprised by the additional value they received from Rimini Street support, above and beyond the savings compared with an enterprise software maintenance contract from Oracle or SAP. We share some of their stories in an interactive e-book, What Would You Do With an Extra $4 Billion? Additional capacity gained to invest in innovations and systems that deliver competitive advantage are a big part of that story.
Some highlights:
- Overcoming digital disruption: If you’re in business today, you’re likely in the technology business. EBSCO is a diverse portfolio of businesses, but its research publishing business needed to address digital technologies as both an opportunity and a threat. By maintaining an ERP system with Rimini Street support that met its needs (and getting off the upgrade treadmill), it found capacity to invest in creating its own software-as-a-service (SaaS)products.
- Reducing operating costs: As a cooperative that helps farmers bring grape products to market, Welch’s operates on thin margins and needed to contain the 12 to 15 percent of its IT budget that was going to an ERP maintenance contract. Welch’s saved about $4 million USD (including the savings from avoiding an ERP upgrade) by switching to Rimini Street third-party support and has shifted IT investments to supply chain improvements and support for new products. (Related: read the Welch’s story in the CIO’s own words.)
- Innovation at the edge: Steel manufacturer Tempel Steel used the savings and freedom it achieved with Rimini Street to reinvest in a number of best-in-class systems to support its growth efforts, including new CRM, HR and payroll systems. Each of these systems is integrated into its Oracle EBS, helping the company become even more data-driven – and explore new markets, such as becoming part of the supply chain for electric vehicles.
Third-party support changes more than a single line item in your budget. Rimini Street support costs half of what a vendor charges for a maintenance contract, but the impact is bigger than that. The difference in the quality of support and the breadth of issues addressed also saves you money. On average, customers see up to a 90 percent reduction in the total cost of support.
For a software vendor, support is a sideline, part of the cost of doing business – often delivered slowly and almost reluctantly. For Rimini Street, prompt and excellent support is our core business. Enterprise software maintenance contracts can make support conditional on customers implementing upgrades and updates on a schedule dictated by the vendor, regardless of whether the latest release delivers any perceived business benefit. Third-party support frees you from that pressure.
Our clients know poorly considered technology implementations can result in more negative disruption than business benefit. By refusing to be pressured, they give themselves space to choose the software products, upgrades and cloud services that best match their strategic goals.
With streamlined support for the technologies its clients have in place, along with knowledgeable guidance on future directions, IT teams can then focus more time and effort on using technology to achieve business results.
Learn more about these and other stories in What Would You Do With an Extra $4 Billion?
Then think about where you would spend the extra capacity – not just the money saved from a lower support fee, but the extra time and attention you could devote to innovation and other business goals. You too can get more out of each day and more out of your budget when you know you can count on prompt, expert support for your core systems directly from Rimini Street engineers.
