Leading global LED manufacturer avoids forced migration to SAP S/4HANA product, achieves significant cost savings and receives more robust, responsive support
LAS VEGAS, July 23, 2019 – Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today announced that Seoul Semiconductor, a global LED development and manufacturing company headquartered in South Korea, has switched from SAP to Rimini Street for support of its SAP ECC 6.0 system. As a result, Seoul Semiconductor has been able to reduce its annual maintenance fee by 50%, enjoy better support and can continue operating its stable, robust ERP ECC 6.0 system for a minimum of 15 additional years from the date the company switched to Rimini Street to retain full support without any forced upgrades or product migrations.
Reducing Cost and Single Vendor Reliance
Seoul Semiconductor operates across 50 offices globally, including four global manufacturing sites. The company has been using the SAP ECC 6.0 platform interlocked with a warehouse management system and has been happy with the functionality and stability of its ERP system. However, the business mandate was to optimize cost across the business and reduce reliance on a single vendor.
When SAP announced its planned 2025 end of mainstream maintenance support date for the ECC 6.0 product, Seoul Semiconductor began searching for alternatives that would allow it to leverage its SAP system well past the 2025 date and tackle the high cost of annual support. In addition, the company wanted a solution that would enable it to continue using its existing SAP ECC 6.0 system instead of migrating to the immature S/4HANA, which would have required additional budget and resources. Third-party maintenance services were considered an option to reduce their reliance on SAP and lower annual maintenance costs. After reviewing their options in full, Seoul Semiconductor ultimately selected Rimini Street as a partner who could help them achieve all of their objectives.
“CIOs and IT leaders are tasked with supporting their organization’s growth strategy as well as improving efficiency and investing in digital transformation while at the same time reducing their IT expenditure,” said Myung-Gi Hong, vice president, Management Innovation, Seoul Semiconductor. “As a percentage of our overall IT budget, the maintenance and other associated costs to run our SAP system were too high. Additionally, the services we received from SAP were limited compared to the costs and we were not even getting support for our customizations/add ons, resulting in a very low ROI. So after detailed analysis and consideration of options, we decided to switch to Rimini Street for support of our SAP ECC 6.0 system.”
Ultra-Responsive, Personalized Support
As with all Rimini Street clients, Seoul Semiconductor was assigned a senior-level primary support engineer (PSE) – on average Rimini Street’s PSEs have 15 years’ experience – who is backed by a team of technical experts who respond 24/7/365. All clients also receive the Company’s industry-leading service level agreements (SLAs) with a guaranteed response time of 15 minutes for critical (P1) issues, and a 30-minute response time for P2 cases.
“Rimini Street is a company that has the know-how and experience in providing comprehensive enterprise software support services. Under Rimini Street support, Seoul Semiconductor is able to maintain its current ERP system regardless of when SAP’s maintenance services ends for the ECC 6.0 product. We also receive a very personalized approach to our support needs from our primary support engineer – this was quite an innovative change,” continued Hong. “In this competitive environment, our IT policy is to break away from vendor dependencies, lead and invest in digital transformation, and strengthen our technical skills. Rimini Street is a strong and reliable partner who helps us achieve our goals, and who we plan to maintain a long-term relationship with.”
“CIOs are faced with the challenge of reducing total IT expenditure while simultaneously investing in business transformation projects to help their organizations achieve competitive advantages and grow,” said Hyungwook “Kevin” Kim, country manager, South Korea, Rimini Street. “By switching to Rimini Street, Seoul Semiconductor can now focus additional budget, resources and time on new innovation and transformation initiatives.”