Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Taichung, Chen Full International began as a footwear machinery manufacturer and steadily expanded into precision metal processing and facility engineering. Today, the company supports some of the most advanced industries in the world, including aerospace, military supply chains, optoelectronics, semiconductors and large-scale facility engineering projects. As a key supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), precision, reliability and operational excellence are fundamental to the business.
Since joining the company in 2021, Alex Chiu’s role as IT Manager at Chen Full has evolved from infrastructure management to overseeing the entire IT landscape, including ERP and software development. SAP R3 has been at the core of Chen Full’s operations since 2008, with a move to SAP S/4HANA in 2021.
Finding the right partner to support mission-critical SAP operations
Chen Full initially relied on a combination of vendor support and external consultants. While vendor support was considered adequate, it was largely transactional and delivered via email. When more complex issues arose, particularly where implementation and operational responsibilities overlapped, the team often had to bring in consultants to bridge the gaps, leading to higher operating costs but not fully solving the back and forth between the vendor and consultants on the origin and root cause of system issues.
Managing multiple contracts was workable for a time, but leadership began to ask a more fundamental question: What value are we truly receiving from vendor support? That question became more urgent when its consulting partner exited the market, leaving them totally dependent on expensive vendor support that delivered little value. At the same time, their IT budget had been cut by 50%. These two factors prompted them to search for alternative solutions to maintain enterprise-grade SAP support while operating with fewer resources and a tighter budget.
Through IT forums and peer discussions, Chiu discovered Rimini Street and connected with the team. What stood out immediately was not just the savings potential, but also Rimini Street’s reputation for support quality and SAP expertise. After evaluating Rimini Support™ for SAP alongside vendor support and consulting firms, Chiu was confident that Rimini Street was the right partner to move forward with a five-year partnership.
Support that feels like an extension of the team
One of the most tangible differences Chen Full experienced was responsiveness. While traditional SAP support often responded a day after a ticket was logged, Rimini Street operates with a much higher sense of urgency, including a dedicated Primary Support Engineer (PSE) from a team averaging 20+ years of experience, backed by a global team of SAP experts. With a guaranteed 10-minute response time for priority cases, delivered on average in less than 2 minutes, 24/7/365, Chen Full felt the difference immediately.
“Rimini Street’s response time is a clear differentiator. When we logged a ticket during the Chinese New Year holidays, the team responded quickly and ensured everything was handled, giving us confidence even during critical periods,” Chiu emphasized.
Expertise has also played a critical role, particularly with SAP Basis. “We encountered many SAP Basis issues, but without a dedicated specialist, we relied heavily on consultants. Training internal resources was challenging, and we risked losing that expertise when they left. With Rimini Support™ for SAP, we no longer need to worry about SAP knowledge gaps,” Chiu explained. “We can rely on support from experienced SAP experts without overextending our internal team, and can redirect their time and budget toward higher-value initiatives like digital transformation.”
Exploring the potential of AI to optimize manufacturing processes
Chen Full’s roughly 1,000 employees are supported by a lean IT team where members often wear multiple hats, balancing infrastructure, ERP and application development responsibilities. Meanwhile, the need to innovate is ever-present, especially with AI as an accelerator.
Rather than viewing AI as a standalone trend, Chen Full is exploring how intelligent systems can enhance real-world operations. From integrating AI with surveillance systems to improve threat detection, to optimizing manufacturing workflows through smarter scheduling and process analysis, innovation is tightly tied to efficiency and output.
In manufacturing, minor improvements in sequencing, timing and resource utilization can have an immense impact. Understanding how long each process step takes, what can run in parallel and how workflows can be orchestrated more intelligently is essential to improving scheduling and maximizing productivity to stay competitive. By reducing the burden of ERP maintenance and support, Rimini Street has helped Chen Full reallocate both budget and time toward improving workflows to optimize efficiency.
Feeling the value of true partnership
Chiu sees Rimini Street as a partner that understands the realities of running complex systems with limited resources and consistently delivers value where it matters most.
When asked to describe Rimini Street’s service in simple terms, Chiu uses a phrase that resonates deeply in Taiwan: “Rimini Street is a company that delivers the best cost-performance ratio. We would happily refer all IT and finance leaders to partner with Rimini Street for SAP support, savings and scale.”
For Chiu, Rimini Street captures the balance of expert support, fast response, value and trust needed to run fast and flexibly in today’s competitive landscape. “With Rimini Street, we have confidence that our SAP systems are in expert hands. That trust allows our team to focus on enabling the business rather than worrying about ERP support,” he said.
Our solutions for Chen Full
Receive comprehensive enterprise software support from a proven provider. Whether you need issue resolution, performance tuning or regulatory compliance, you can trust Rimini Support™ to deliver.
With Rimini Support, you gain:
- Support for customizations not covered by the vendor
- The strength and knowledge of hundreds of seasoned engineers on your team, but not on your payroll
- Potential savings of up to 90% of total support costs
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