$1 Billion Publisher Upgrades JD Edwards, Funds IT Projects, Increases Headcount

Challenges

IT budgets face particular scrutiny during economic downturns, because expensive vendor maintenance and support costs essentially add little value to the core business. A global publisher of children’s books and educational materials realized that its existing systems were stable and performed all the functions required to run the business. Reducing vendor support costs and delaying upgrades would conserve significant cash. Yet, with many customizations and systems – all running on an AS/400 platform – the publisher still needed expert support.

Rimini Street Solution

Because the publisher ran an array of customized ERP applications, it was important for an independent support provider to field engineers with a broad, deep knowledge of many different interacting systems – JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Hyperion Enterprise, Oracle E-Business Suite, and Kronos, as well as homegrown applications. Rimini Street’s highly responsive Primary Support Engineers (PSEs) collaborate to solve the knottiest interoperability problems for the publisher, including customized code and CNC architecture issues.

Client Results

• Met and exceeded its ambitious ERP cost reduction goals.
• Reinvested the savings in additional headcount, as well as in new projects such as enhanced job costing, e-commerce, and Web 2.0 applications.
• Upgraded JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 8.96 to 8.98, with Rimini Street assistance in repairing  custom code that had stopped working after the upgrade.