Leading Japanese automotive parts manufacturer gains premium support while saving significant IT costs to help fund innovation
LAS VEGAS, June 20, 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 that Keihin Corporation, a leading Japanese automotive parts manufacturer, has switched to Rimini Street support for its Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) system. By switching to Rimini Street, Keihin now receives a more comprehensive, responsive service for its Oracle EBS application and support for its custom, add-on code for a guaranteed minimum of 15 additional years from the date they switched, with no required upgrade to remain supported. In addition to receiving vastly improved service, Keihin also immediately realized savings of 50 percent in annual support fees. This cost savings of several tens of millions of yen annually can now be reinvested into more important initiatives in the IT organization, such as the development of a future cloud environment.
Sustain Robust ERP, Prepare for Future Innovation
Keihin develops and manufactures fuel supply systems for automobiles and motorcycles, electronic control products including hybrid systems and supplies automobile parts from 14 countries. Keihin relies heavily on their Oracle EBS system to handle core business operations, and after more than a decade on EBS – which is stable and working well for their business – Keihin started to encounter challenges with the maintenance provided by the original software vendor. The challenges included no support for their add-on code by the original application vendor, and a steady overall decline in support response and resolution timelines. Keihin was also spending more on maintenance fees each year, and the company was facing a potential upgrade just to remain fully supported, which would cost hundreds of millions of yen to complete. These challenges triggered the company to consider options, and as a result, Keihin engaged Rimini Street. This move enabled the company to optimize and continue running their robust system of record, avoid any unnecessary upgrades to remain on support, receive better quality service, including support for add-on code, and cut costs to help drive future innovation.
“What we need in our current stage, where cloud solutions may not offer the necessary functionality for us and there is no need for a major change in our operational model, is the ability to extend the life and value of our existing system and continue to use it for the foreseeable future,” said Noriyuki Takemata, manager, Information Technology Department at Keihin. “When we had originally implemented our ERP, we focused on local IT industry requirements, and as we grew, our ERP system began to have too many add-ons, making it hard to manage and difficult to implement overseas. Now, we are planning to build a next generation core system with a global focus which we plan to roll out to various regions more efficiently than before. This new initiative should contribute to global level supply chain planning as well as optimization. Leveraging the expert support from Rimini Street, we can rest assured knowing we have resources and technologies to understand the best next platform to meet our business needs in the future.”
Vastly Improved Support Model
Prior to engaging with Rimini Street, Keihin visited and interviewed several Rimini Street clients who unanimously provided praise for the Company’s engineers’ skills and responsiveness. Additionally, during the evaluation process, Rimini Street was tasked with handling certain support issues that had previously been unable to be resolved, and as a result of Rimini Street solving these outstanding support issues, the proposal process was expedited.
Keihin wanted the ability to work directly with expert engineers who quickly respond to issues – Rimini Street’s service was able to address what the company needed, which was an extremely different approach to what they had previously experienced with the original software vendor. As with all Rimini Street clients, Keihin has an assigned senior level Primary Support Engineer (PSE) with an average of 15 years’ experience. Keihin also receives Rimini Street’s industry-leading service level agreement (SLA) guaranteeing a 15-minute response time for Priority 1 critical cases as well as access to local engineers 24/7/365 to address any support issues.
“My team and I are truly impressed with having expert engineers responding to inquiries regardless of the time of day, and we are greatly satisfied with Rimini Street’s maintenance SLA. Instead of spending time working to address issues that arise, that were often times not covered by the vendor previously, with the premium support from Rimini Street we are now able to focus our efforts on more strategic projects,” continued Takemata. “Furthermore, my team relies on Rimini Street’s interoperability support, enabling our current system to smoothly continue operating even when layers of the technology stack change.”
“With Rimini Street support, Keihin is now able to extend the value of their Oracle EBS application with an add-on system for a guaranteed minimum of 15 additional years, allowing the organization to focus their internal resources on more strategic projects that drive competitive advantage,” said Yorio Wakisaka, general manager, Japan, Rimini Street. “Keihin is consistently engaged in new technological advances, and with the cost savings realized and support gained by switching to Rimini Street, they have been enabled to shift existing resources to help drive future innovations, like planning for a cloud infrastructure strategy.”
