With over 600 products developed to take care of every family member, young to old, throughout the day, throughout the years, Standard Foods Corporation aspires to help consumers achieve optimal health. Founded in 1986, the Taiwanese food manufacturer started out producing oat-based products and infant formulas. Over the years, they’ve expanded to adult milk powders, cooking oils, dairy, other oats and grains products and health and nutritional supplements to drive its goal of supporting a lifetime of well-being.  

Moving to More Personalized Service

Standard Foods uses SAP to manage operations across Taiwan and China. However, inefficiencies plagued their experience. “When there was an issue with our system and we needed support from SAP, we would raise a case, but the issue wasn’t resolved quickly. They just kept writing emails back and forth without really trying to understand the issue. Resolving an issue typically took around two weeks,” Jerry Lee, Director of IT at Standard Foods, recounted. 

This prompted the search for a more responsive support provider. With recommendations from industry peers and partners, like SoftwareOne, Lee and his team researched the services offered by Rimini Street and signed up. Lee described, “What impressed me the most was the onboarding process. Rimini Street visited us and explained the whole process. Their team accessed our system, did a comprehensive assessment and started the preparations for Rimini Street support. They handled the process meticulously and that’s when I realized that they are very different from other support partners. They took the time to get to know our systems in detail and understand our vision.” This level of preparation was unprecedented for Lee, who noted that other suppliers typically only grasped about 30-40% of his systems’ complexities. 

Using Data to Drive Supply Chain and ESG Improvements

Switching to Rimini Street delivered immediate, tangible benefits by cutting support fees for SAP in half and significantly enhancing operational efficiency. Lee gave an example, “With Rimini Street, we only need three people to support the five SAP modules we use, and we maintain full functionality.” Previously, he would have needed one person to manage each of the five modules. This newfound efficiency enabled the team to pursue projects in robotic process automation (RPA), business process management (BPM) and technology upskilling. 

Standard Foods transitioned from using SAP’s BI reports to leveraging Power BI and cloud-based machine learning for data analysis. By feeding its Controlling – Profitability Analysis (COPA) data, sales and stock information into AI tools, they could tune their predictive models going forward to further enhance decision-making capabilities. “Recommending how much to order can be difficult for our customers. It requires different models to run all these parameters,” Lee said. By integrating AI with real-time data, they aim to refine order recommendations and improve procurement processes, benefiting their entire supply chain. 

Future plans include focusing on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices. “The use of these systems, be it carbon emission management systems or other systems, will automate some of the manual work that we are doing now,” Lee said. He expects the adoption of these systems to allow him to reallocate annual support fees savings to fund innovation.    

Savoring the Benefits of a Strategic Partnership

As Standard Foods plans its SAP roadmap, they’re taking a cautious approach to S/4HANA. Lee and his team believe that while it may offer some advantages, their current needs and future automation goals may not align with the platform. “We believe that SAP can only provide limited advantages in supporting smart manufacturing. At this moment, moving to S/4HANA is not a priority nor do we see it as a strategic move for our business. The ROI is just not there. Perhaps in the future, we may want to consider it, but for now, our focus will be on innovation, growth and profitability,” said Lee. When SAP announced that it would stop supporting the ECC platform by 2027, he was concerned, stating, “We were quite worried, but I discussed it with my peers and realized that it is not as scary as it may sound as long as we Rimini Street to support us.”  

Standard Food’s relationship with Rimini Street not only provides expertise and responsive support for SAP, but also creates bandwidth for new innovations and strategic projects. With Rimini Street, Standard Foods was able to move from SAP support challenges to achieving significant operational improvements and cost savings to fuel their healthy living mission. As importantly, Lee’s team is happy with the move. “My team applauds the speed of Rimini Street support. It’s tremendously different than what we experienced with SAP support,” he reported.