Company to provide support services to agencies linked to the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary branches of Brazilian government as part of government’s initiative to deliver transparency, efficiency, economy and optimization of public resources
LAS VEGAS and SÃO PAULO, December 1, 2020 – 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 it has been awarded three separate contracts to provide enterprise software support to agencies linked to the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary branches of the Brazilian government, specifically the Chamber of Deputies, the Superior Labor Court and APEX Brasil, an independent social service agency. The Brazilian government public procurement processes were put in place to ensure that public sector organizations work with providers in a manner that is transparent, efficient, ensures economy of scales and the best optimization of public resources.
Rimini Street Addresses Public Sector Demands for Cost Optimization
In 2019 the Ministry of Economy, which is responsible for planning the whole of Brazil’s budget, issued a mandate – Normative Instructions 01 and 02 – requiring all public sector organizations to carefully evaluate their IT costs in general, including technical support services and IT systems providers, to ensure the most attractive cost-benefit ratio. Those regulations were preceded by a decision from 2018 (Ruling 2,569/2018) issued by the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), which is responsible for overseeing and ensuring that public entities are spending their funds judiciously and on activities and items that have been earmarked specifically for these funds. That ruling had demonstrated that some commercial practices adopted by the major IT providers could cause losses to the public administration, guiding institutions to seek more advantageous alternatives that could favor competition.
The mandate also provides that the Brazilian federal public administration prioritize the improvement of services to its citizens, ensuring that investments made in the R$ 8 billion Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector for these services benefit the wider public need. Technology has a fundamental role in the government/citizen relationship and therefore the resources directed to it need to be extremely well managed with transparency.
Prior to Rimini Street’s launch in the Brazilian public sector market, no public bids for support for Oracle or SAP systems occurred as the only support options available were offered by the original software vendors and their partners. Today Rimini Street is on the official list of support providers, offering an alternative solution that can better meet the needs of Brazil’s public sector entities via a more competitive value proposition which helps organizations maximize their software investments, and provides a premium level enterprise support experience not generally offered by the original vendor.
Although Brazil is among the countries that spend the most on technology, this spend does not typically result in innovation capacity – Brazil ranks 66th in the Global Innovation Index among 129 countries, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. And according to some industry analyst firms, many organizations spend approximately 90% on ongoing operations, or “keeping the lights on,” with only 10% left over to drive innovation initiatives. This funding model makes it increasingly challenging for CIOs to find additional budget for critical spending innovation that will help their business grow and gain competitive advantage.
“More than ever before, Brazil needs to take a major leap in competitiveness with regard to its capacity for innovation. Optimizing IT resources, decreasing unnecessary IT spend and directing this money to invest in priorities is fundamental for public and private organizations to make their way through the current crisis and emerge stronger on the other side of this global pandemic,” said Edenize Maron, general manager, Latin America, Rimini Street. “These contracts in the Brazilian public sphere will allow us to deliver the same savings and efficiency benefits to the government sector that Rimini Street has been offering to more than 3,700 companies globally including more than 100 organizations in Brazil.”