LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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 Grupo Ferroeste, Brazil’s leading manufacturer of steel, fuel and energy, switched to Rimini Street support and is estimating a R$2 million of savings in total support costs through 2025. Grupo Ferroeste moved to Rimini Street support for its SAP ECC 6.0 system in 2018. By switching to Rimini Street, the company realized savings of 50 percent in its annual maintenance fees and now receives a premium-level, ultra-responsive support for its current, robust SAP system for a minimum of 15 years from the time it transitioned to Rimini Street. In addition, Grupo Ferroeste has been liberated from the vendor’s dictated roadmap of continuous upgrades and updates, and is able to move forward with their own business-driven IT roadmap. As part of their roadmap and by leveraging their substantial maintenance savings, the company has restructured its technology department and has planned for several cloud and digital transformation initiatives.
Improved Support Model Optimizes Efficiency
Grupo Ferroeste was created in the state of Minas Gerais 40 years ago and includes companies such as AVB, CBF Indústria and CVB. The company operates mills in the steel, fuel and energy segments, producing steel, pig iron, alcohol, air gases and cement in a 24x7 model and cannot afford to be impacted by IT issues. Reducing costs, increasing productivity and innovating for continued growth are essential pillars in Grupo Ferroeste’s business strategy. The organization determined it needed a change to fully meet these goals and began a series of initiatives to restructure the IT department and improve internal efficiency.
During this restructure, Grupo Ferroeste realized their enterprise software vendor maintenance fees were extremely high – about 22% of the total cost of their license agreements. Furthermore, the service from the vendor seemed very slow – the vendor would take days or sometimes weeks to respond to issues raised – and the company was in need of an agile and efficient partner to support its ERP system. After reviewing third-party support providers, Grupo Ferroeste was able to show their board the financial impact and strategic capabilities of working with Rimini Street. Additionally, the organization spoke with several Rimini Street clients in Brazil about the benefits of switching from SAP to Rimini Street for ERP support, and how the move would accelerate Grupo Ferroeste’s business-driven IT roadmap versus the company being locked into a vendor-dictated plan. Now, with this improved support model, Grupo Ferroeste can better focus its resources and direct its investments toward strategic initiatives and business transformation.
“We needed efficient support as well as a strategic partner to help accelerate our digital transformation journey, and I was seeing a market trend of switching to third-party support to alleviate the disadvantages of vendor control and wanted to take advantage of this opportunity,” said Enéas de Alcântara Silva, IT manager at Grupo Ferroeste. “The slow response from the vendor was causing too many delays internally, but now we have ultra-responsive support from Rimini Street, and have experienced response times in as little as 1 minute regardless of the type of problem, which has been a nice surprise. Everything is done directly with a dedicated, experienced technical specialist, which is a great differentiator in customer care. If an organization is looking to move away from vendor maintenance support, I would highly recommend considering Rimini Street.”
As with all Rimini Street clients, Grupo Ferroeste was assigned a senior level Rimini Street Primary Support Engineer (PSE) – each Rimini Street PSE has an average of 15 years’ experience. Grupo Ferroeste also receives Rimini Street’s industry-leading service level agreement (SLA) guaranteeing access to a team of local engineers 24/7/365 to address any support issues, and a 15-minute response time for Priority 1 critical cases.
Reducing Spend with Added Services
In addition to a vastly improved support model and the ability to optimize IT resources and leverage significant savings, another benefit of moving to Rimini Street is the Company’s support for Brazil tax, legal and regulatory updates. These complex updates are provided through Rimini Street’s innovative combination of patent-pending tax, legal and regulatory technology, a proven methodology, and ISO 9001-certified development processes to ensure clients receive accurate, high-quality deliverables.
“If we had continued with SAP support, we would have to pay additional consulting costs to adjust to the new tax, legal and regulatory obligations at the time, such as REINF and Nota Fiscal Eletrônica 4.0, the Electronic Invoice,” continued Enéas de Alcântara Silva. “And now, with Rimini Street, these fiscal projects are developed within the support contract itself, with no additional cost.”
“Grupo Ferroeste has been able to experience Rimini Street’s premium level support, which was vastly different from what they had experienced with the original software vendor, and were also able to free up ample savings to put towards digital transformation,” said Edenize Maron, general manager, Latin America. “As with so many of Rimini Street’s clients, Grupo Ferroeste was able to unshackle themselves from vendor lock-in and put into motion their business-driven roadmap, while at the same time increasing their productivity internally.”
About Rimini Street, Inc.
Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI) is 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. The Company has redefined enterprise software support services since 2005 with an innovative, award-winning program that enables licensees of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and other enterprise software vendors to save up to 90 percent on total maintenance costs. Clients can remain on their current software release without any required upgrades for a minimum of 15 years. Over 1,850 global Fortune 500, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries currently rely on Rimini Street as their trusted, third-party support provider. To learn more, please visit https://www.riministreet.com follow @riministreet on Twitter and find Rimini Street on Facebook and LinkedIn. (C-RMNI)
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements included in this communication are not historical facts but are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as “may,” “should,” “would,” “plan,” “intend,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “seem,” “seek,” “continue,” “future,” “will,” “expect,” “outlook” or other similar words, phrases or expressions. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our expectations of future events, future opportunities, global expansion and other growth initiatives and our investments in such initiatives. These statements are based on various assumptions and on the current expectations of management and are not predictions of actual performance, nor are these statements of historical facts. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties regarding Rimini Street’s business, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changes in the business environment in which Rimini Street operates, including inflation and interest rates, and general financial, economic, regulatory and political conditions affecting the industry in which Rimini Street operates; adverse developments in pending litigation or in the government inquiry or any new litigation; the final amount and timing of any refunds from Oracle related to our litigation; our need and ability to raise additional equity or debt financing on favorable terms and our ability to generate cash flows from operations to help fund increased investment in our growth initiatives; the sufficiency of our cash and cash equivalents to meet our liquidity requirements; the terms and impact of our outstanding 13.00% Series A Preferred Stock; changes in taxes, laws and regulations; competitive product and pricing activity; difficulties of managing growth profitably; the success of our recently introduced products and services, including Rimini Street Mobility, Rimini Street Analytics, Rimini Street Advanced Database Security, and services for Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud products, in addition to products and services we expect to introduce in the near future; the loss of one or more members of Rimini Street’s management team; uncertainty as to the long-term value of Rimini Street’s equity securities; and those discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” in Rimini Street’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on May 9, 2019, and as updated from time to time by Rimini Street’s future Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other filings by Rimini Street with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, forward-looking statements provide Rimini Street’s expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this communication. Rimini Street anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause Rimini Street’s assessments to change. However, while Rimini Street may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Rimini Street specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Rimini Street’s assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this communication.
© 2019 Rimini Street, Inc. All rights reserved. “Rimini Street” is a registered trademark of Rimini Street, Inc. in the United States and other countries, and Rimini Street, the Rimini Street logo, and combinations thereof, and other marks marked by TM are trademarks of Rimini Street, Inc. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, and unless otherwise specified, Rimini Street claims no affiliation, endorsement, or association with any such trademark holder or other companies referenced herein.
