Leading Apparel Provider Shifts to Third Party Support, Improves Service and Profitability

Challenges

Superior Uniform Group has operated using a series of customized SAP ECC versions for 17 years. According to Superior Uniform Group CIO Mark Decker, it became apparent that SAP wasn’t going to continue investing in the ECC application and was putting its focus and resources towards S/4HANA. “So there we were, high support costs for little value and no new functionality coming down the line for ECC. With a difficult upgrade path to S/4HANA, it was clear that it was time for a change in how we received support for our SAP applications and how much we paid for it.”

Rimini Street Solution

“When we decided to maintain ECC 6.0 as our system of record, we looked at Rimini Street’s service model and pricing and completed reference calls,” Decker says. “It was a no-brainer to switch to Rimini Street.” Within six months everything was in place and all entitled software had been downloaded and archived. Technical capabilities that Superior would like from the newer support packs remain available, since the company retains the right to upgrade to Enhancement Pack 8. “We can still upgrade to those anytime we like, or not, while consistently getting the support service we were looking for,” he adds.

Client Results

• Avoided S/4HANA re-implementation: Superior avoided a risky and disruptive re-implementation to S/4HANA while continuing to grow and evolve using its stable and mature ECC 6.0 application.
• Gained better support for mature applications: Questions about issues on customizations and even interoperability and integrations related issues with third-party applications are quickly addressed now, as opposed to receiving ‘it’s not within our support scope’ or no response at all from the support vendor.
• Added savings back to the bottom line: Funds and staffing resources that have been liberated from ongoing SAP maintenance and support by moving to Rimini Street go directly back into the bottom line for Superior Uniform Group directly impacting their EPS (Earnings per Share).