Founded in 1950, Pyung Hwa Holdings is a leading Korean automotive parts holding company with more than 70 years of manufacturing expertise. The company provides automotive parts to major domestic manufacturers and participates in global OEM supply chains, with a product portfolio that includes anti-vibration and sound components, hose products, oil seals, O-rings, hydrogen fuel cell gaskets and air suspension systems.
Building on its leadership in noise, vibration and harshness control, Pyung Hwa Holdings is expanding its focus on next-generation automotive components for eco-friendly vehicles, including hydrogen fuel cell and electric vehicle technologies. Its corporate slogan, “Toward a Better World,” reflects a business strategy centered on continuous improvement, innovation and long-term competitiveness in the global automotive market.
On a mission to advance smart manufacturing and AI initiatives, its IT organization sought solutions to reduce high IT costs while maintaining stable operations across core systems that underpin its manufacturing operations.
Strengthening critical SAP and Oracle operations
Pyung Hwa Holdings runs a highly customized SAP ECC 6 platform that supports critical business processes using core SAP modules such as Production Planning, Materials Management, Financial Accounting, Controlling and Human Resources, with specific functionality developed to support local compliance requirements. Oracle Database provides the underlying data infrastructure for SAP. Together, these systems support centralized financial and management information across Pyung Hwa Group’s 17 subsidiaries, including 12 domestic and five overseas affiliates.
This was not simply a back-office platform. The environment supported critical processes across a complex automotive manufacturing group, making stability, responsiveness and expertise aligned to Korean business requirements essential.
That need was particularly clear in SAP HR. Pyung Hwa Holdings had developed Korea-specific functionality for year-end tax settlement and payroll processing to reflect local tax and labor requirements. When specialized vendor assistance was insufficient, internal IT employees were repeatedly required to resolve issues themselves.
“Despite maintaining a vendor maintenance contract following the implementation of our SAP ERP system, we continued to experience a lack of substantive technical support and effective issue resolution,” Sangwook Lee, Director, Head of Information Strategy at Pyung Hwa Holdings, recalled. “When technical issues arose, it was difficult to receive fast and expert support, creating ongoing challenges in ensuring operational stability.”
The challenge was especially clear for Korea-specific requirements, including year-end HR-related tax settlement processing aligned with local regulations and tax rules. When specialized vendor support was insufficient, internal IT staff were repeatedly forced to resolve issues independently.
The company was also paying annual maintenance fees that it believed were disproportionate to the value received. Pyung Hwa Holdings began looking for a support approach that could improve service quality, reduce the operational burden on its IT team and use its technology budget more effectively.
Choosing support aligned to local needs and broader business goals
Pyung Hwa Holdings took a careful, reference-driven approach to selecting the right third-party support provider. Lee and team directly visited existing Rimini Street clients in Korea to understand their adoption experiences and review actual service quality and performance. Those reference visits gave the company the confidence to adopt Rimini Support™ for both its SAP and Oracle Database environments in 2020.
“We adopted Rimini Street’s third-party support services for SAP and Oracle as part of our independent IT cost optimization and digital transformation strategy,” Lee said. “In support of management objectives to improve profitability by transitioning toward smart manufacturing, we were pursuing a strategy to reduce existing IT maintenance costs and reinvest the resulting savings into digital transformation and AI-driven innovation initiatives.”
Support aligned to Pyung Hwa Holdings’ operations
During the transition, Rimini Street assigned a team of Primary Support Engineers with application-specific expertise tailored to Pyung Hwa Holdings’ environment, establishing a customized support framework aligned to the company’s systems and business requirements.
“We experienced much faster and more professional technical responses,” Lee said. “Rimini Street provided practical support for our Korea-specific requirements around tax settlement processing, which significantly improved satisfaction among IT operations staff.”
With Rimini Street, Pyung Hwa Holdings achieved:
- 50% lower annual maintenance costs for SAP and Oracle support
- Seamless, comprehensive support for both SAP and Oracle Database with one provider
- Practical assistance for Korea-specific SAP HR year-end tax settlement requirements
- Faster, more professional technical responses for its customized environment
- Stable operation of its existing SAP and Oracle Database without an upgrade required to remain supported
- Greater ability to redirect IT budget and talent toward strategic initiatives
The value went beyond a lower maintenance expense. Work that had fallen back on internal employees could be handled through a support model designed around the company’s environment, allowing those employees to spend less attention on recurring maintenance issues and more on priorities connected to competitiveness and growth.
Keeping the core stable while focusing on differentiation
The new support model also gave Pyung Hwa Holdings greater control over how it operated and evolved its enterprise systems. Rather than following a vendor-mandated roadmap, the company could continue running its existing SAP environment and consider changes according to its own business requirements and timing.
Since the transition in 2020, Pyung Hwa Holdings has continued to operate its existing SAP and Oracle Database system stably with Rimini Support™. The company has maintained access to technical support and maintenance services without being forced into an upgrade to remain fully supported.
This approach helped Pyung Hwa Holdings avoid the cost, disruption and resource demands of an unnecessary ERP upgrade. It could extend the lifecycle of its current systems and selectively pursue changes when they supported a defined business priority.
More importantly, the company created a clearer division of IT work. Rimini Street helps support the stable operation of the core SAP and Oracle environment, while Pyung Hwa Holdings directs more of its internal IT talent and budget toward smart manufacturing, supply chain digitalization, advanced analytics and AI-based decision support.
According to Lee, “Rimini Street has allowed us to establish a virtuous cycle by reallocating the IT budget freed up through support savings to future-oriented initiatives.”
Turning greater IT control into future capacity
The company’s longer-term direction includes the gradual introduction of AI-based predictive maintenance, digital twins and production optimization, alongside expanded R&D investment in hydrogen fuel cell and electric vehicle components. These projects are funded and fueled by the savings and stability achieved with the move to Rimini Support.
In 2024, Pyung Hwa Holdings renewed its contract for 5 additional years, reflecting its satisfaction with the service experience and confidence in Rimini Street as a long-term support partner.
From Lee’s perspective, “Rimini Street helped us break free from vendor pressure to upgrade and establish IT strategies aligned with our business requirements and operational environments.”
Our solution for Pyung Hwa
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- 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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