Rimini Street announced that Rassini NHK Automotive (RNA), an automotive parts and accessories manufacturer in Brazil, has switched to Rimini Street Support for its SAP ECC 6.0 applications.
RNA plans to redirect the savings generated by migrating to Rimini Street Support for business expansion and future innovation initiatives. Rimini Street did not reveal the specific gains to RNA from the migration to Rimini Street Support.
RNA’s expansion plans include improvement in the production management with Internet of Things (IoT) technology, deployment of industry 4.0 predictive maintenance in its manufacturing equipment, automation of manual processes, and enhancement of the company’s project management capabilities.
The US-based Rimini Street is the global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner.
RNA, a Japanese-Mexican automotive group, supplies automotive parts and accessories across Brazil. Its products include passenger and light commercial vehicles equipped with coil springs, as well as pickups, trucks and buses equipped with spring bundles.
RNA is looking for cost optimization across the business, asking its department leaders to identify and cut fixed costs in the wake of a downturn in the automotive industry in Brazil.
RNA’s IT department, which has a lean structure, has carried out its cost optimization due diligence. The IT team identified the support and maintenance costs for their SAP system as one of the items that will be undergoing reviews.
RNA’s CIO noted that the support provided by SAP was expensive, with no new perceived innovation or enhancements in the product releases to justify the high costs, but the vendor’s support was unsatisfactory as well. SAP took two months to resolve a single support issue.
“The move to Rimini Street and the savings generated as a result has helped us through this moment of business uncertainty,” said Fernando Jose Andrade da Silva, CIO of Rassini NHK Automotive. “Rimini Street delivers on everything it promises. Its service level agreement (SLA) is excellent.”
Another key driver for RNA to make the switch to Rimini Street was the need to adapt to changing SPED legislation – Brazil’s specialized digital system which collects all financial, accountant, tax and labor information – and the country’s electronic invoicing regulations such as NF-e.
These tax and regulation issues were not covered by SAP for RNA and required additional resources and IT budget in order to keep the company tax compliant. As part of their annual support and maintenance agreement with Rimini Street, RNA is provided with critical Brazil tax and legislation updates and changes at no additional cost.
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.
RNA was assigned a Primary Support Engineer (PSE), backed by a team of technical and functional experts, who have an average of 15 years’ experience in the client’s enterprise software.
Rimini Street offers, as part of the SLA, guaranteed response time of 15 minutes for critical (P1) issues. In addition, RNA can now run their current stable SAP system for a minimum of 15 years from the time that they switched to Rimini Street Support, allowing them to step off the vendor’s upgrade cycle just to remain fully supported by the vendor.
In addition to supporting RNA’s SAP ECC 6.0 applications, Rimini Street provides support for RNA’s Oracle Database software which its SAP system runs on.
Edenize Maron, general manager, Latin America, Rimini Street, said: “RNA has discovered what our more than 3,500 clients around the world to date have experienced – an immediate pool of funds that can be diverted to business critical initiatives, plus an ultra-responsive support model that provides CIOs with peace of mind.”
