Rimini Street, the leading third-party maintenance and support provider for enterprise software, including SAP AG's (NYSE: SAP) Business Suite and BusinessObjects software and Oracle Corporation's (NASDAQ: ORCL) Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, E-Business Suite, Oracle Database and Hyperion software, congratulates Alexandre Baul'e, chief information officer at Embraer SA (NYSE: ERJ), for being named Brazilian IT Executive of the Year - Cost-Efficiency, by InformationWeek.
Baul'e received the prestigious award for his use of Rimini Street third-party support in realising his mission to significantly reduce the company's annual maintenance costs for its existing SAP system by 50% and improve the level of service it receives for its SAP software implementation.
Rimini Street's premium-level service includes support for customisations as well as tax and regulatory updates for the countries in which Embraer operates. Since switching annual support from SAP to Rimini Street in 2011, Embraer has also benefited from maximising the return on investment for its SAP release and continuing to advance the scope, scale and use of its enterprise software to achieve its business objectives, while running its mature, stable release for up to 10 years or more without required upgrades.
Rimini Street helps Embraer significantly reduce IT budget and gain better support services
With more than 18 000 employees operating throughout Brazil, the US, Portugal, France, China and Singapore, Embraer is the third-largest aeroplane manufacturer in the world, behind Boeing and EADS. The company has produced more than 5 000 aircraft that operate in 80 countries across five continents.
In pursuit of financial efficiency, Embraer determined that its IT operating costs and ERP software maintenance budget consumed 70% of the total IT budget and sought out third-party support as a solution to reduce this cost by at least 30%.
Embraer moved from SAP to Rimini Street in 2011 for support of its SAP system to achieve better value and improve the level of service received. As a result, Embraer immediately reduced its annual SAP maintenance fees by 50%. Furthermore, Embraer was able to significantly add to its overall savings by cutting expensive support and maintenance costs associated with traditional software vendor support through Rimini Street's more efficient, personalised support programme. Rimini Street's premium-level service features include 24x7x365 support, an assigned, Brazil-based Primary Support Engineer (PSE), support for customisations at no additional fee, and support for a minimum of 10 years for existing releases without any required upgrades. With its switch to Rimini Street's maintenance model, Embraer also avoided the cost of additional, unnecessary maintenance resources required by the software vendor's support model.
"The move to Rimini Street for third-party support provided immediate cost savings along with better service, which is a rare and excellent combination," said Baul'e. "Furthermore, the goal was a 30% reduction in our ERP maintenance costs. We achieved more than 50%. And we were able to execute the project of switching to Rimini Street Support for SAP in less time than expected, while ensuring a smooth transition for our users."
As a result of these achievements, Baul'e was recognised as InformationWeek's IT Executive of the Year - Financial Performance. More importantly, he made it possible for Embraer to redeploy its substantial savings into new innovative initiatives that create competitive advantage in the marketplace and enable international business growth for one of the world's largest aircraft manufacturers. Today, Embraer's processes continue to evolve to meet its business needs, including SAP rollouts in Portugal, the US and potentially additional countries.
Strong demand for Rimini Street support in Brazil
In addition to Embraer, Rimini Street already supports many major clients operating in Brazil, and recently expanded its global support operations in the region with the appointment of industry veteran Anderson Aquino as country manager. The company also employs a range of support, development and tax, legal and regulatory research personnel in Brazil, and plans to significantly invest in increasing its sales and service delivery operations in the region.
"We would like to congratulate Embraer, Alexandre Baul'e and its IT team on their impressive achievements and their well-deserved recognition as IT visionaries and innovators," said Seth Ravin, CEO of Rimini Street. "Rimini Street is pleased to help Embraer achieve their overall global IT objectives by significantly reducing maintenance costs on their current SAP system without requiring any upgrades, obtaining highly responsive and better service, and being able to use the savings to fund innovation."
Baul'e featured in live Webinar on 17 July
Baul'e will join Rimini Street and Dave Rowe, chief marketing officer, in a live interactive Webinar on Wednesday, 17 July, to share his perspective on how to drive strategic innovation for SAP applications while utilising third-party support. Complimentary registration is available online at: http://www.riministreet.com/embraerwebinar-pr.
