Massachusetts-based maker of grape juice and jelly saves nearly $1 million in maintenance fees, invests in new applications and strategic initiatives
LAS VEGAS, December 5, 2018 – Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of enterprise software products and services, and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products, today announced Welch’s, the processing and marketing subsidiary of the National Grape Cooperative, utilizes Rimini Street for support of its Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) application and Oracle database software. By switching to Rimini Street, Welch’s avoided the time and expense of what they saw as an unnecessary upgrade just to continue their maintenance and support relationship with their vendor. The company is able to run its stable, robust Oracle system for a minimum of 15 years, from the time it transitioned to Rimini Street support, and kept the flexibility to upgrade if and when it makes business sense for the organization. In addition, Welch’s saved nearly one million dollars in annual maintenance and support costs, which enabled the company to invest in new strategic marketing initiatives and new product development. The organization has also been able to liberate its internal IT resources, freeing up time to create new application extensions for the business.
Reduce IT Spend, Increase Investment Initiatives for Growth
When Welch’s began reviewing its overall IT budget, their Oracle annual support and maintenance fees – which accounted for 12 – 15% of the organization’s total IT budget – stood out as the single largest item, excluding salaries. The company tried to re-negotiate with the vendor to seek fee reductions, particularly for unused modules on their current ERP, but an upgrade to the next software release was the only alternative.
Welch’s evaluated their upgrade options, including moving some applications to the cloud, but the company quickly determined that such upgrades would not reduce their costs or deliver significant business value. Since such upgrades were not a viable option at the time, due to the significant cost involved, and the organization needed a strategy that would support both increased business functionality and reduced costs, Welch’s sought alternative solutions for their enterprise software maintenance needs and selected Rimini Street support.
By moving to Rimini Street, Welch’s was able to redeploy the cost savings from their enterprise software support, to multiple growth areas across the business including IT, marketing and product development. For example, as a result of their significant savings, Welch’s IT department was able to hire a new security analyst and roll-out new security software. Their savings also allowed the company to invest in new marketing initiatives and develop new products to expand the company’s portfolio, such as Welch’s new sparkling Rosé.
Newly Improved Support and Strategic Partnership
Beyond cost savings, Welch’s found its enterprise software support vastly improved, far beyond what they had received with the vendor. Welch’s, as with all Rimini Street clients, was assigned a primary support engineer (PSE) with an average of 15 years’ experience. Rimini Street has PSE’s around the world, who provide support 24/7 365 days a year, and a guaranteed service level agreement of 15-minute response time for all critical cases.
“Rimini Street takes ownership of the entire support experience, when we make a call someone is available to speak right away and works on a problem immediately, which has been a refreshing change,” said Dave Jackson, CIO of Welch’s. “Recently, our team was able to get a severe issue worked on quickly and had a resolution in one hour. Also our team is doing much less ticket and issue resolution tracking than we used to, and today we have the confidence to take on projects, such as our browser upgrade which we purposefully delayed when we were on vendor support. Welch’s traditionally views its relationships with technology vendors as partnerships, we don’t just enter into transactional relationships. With Rimini Street we know they will be a long-term trusted partner.”
“Welch’s, like many of our Oracle clients, determined their mission-critical system was meeting all their business needs and didn’t see value in upgrading at this time, and was looking to reduce costs, increase business value and receive premium support in comparison to the vendor-dictated roadmap they were following,” said Anthony DeShazor, senior vice president and chief client officer, Rimini Street. “When companies come to Rimini Street, they are not only receiving unparalleled support, but are also able to unlock significant funds that can be invested in more strategic initiatives as part of a business-driven roadmap, and with Welch’s, they were able to invest these cost savings across the organization, not just IT.”
