Paying more for what you don't use?

E-3: Sympatex has been an existing SAP customer for many years. Which software version was used to launch SAP?

Hasso Ercelebi: The Sympatex Group has been using SAP for over 20 years. We started with SAP R/2 and today we use SAP ERP ECC 6.0 company-wide in conjunction with a typical SAP three-system landscape.

E-3: Can you please give a rough overview of the number of users and their license user types?

Ercelebi: Our approximately 150 users are divided into the user types "Professional" and "Limited Professional User".

E-3: When and how did you first hear about Rimini Street?

Ercelebi: At a time when Rimini Street did not even offer maintenance for SAP systems. I already liked the business model back then, although I rather speculated that the software houses would reduce their margins for the maintenance of their ERP software.

E-3: How did the contact take place?

Ercelebi: I entered my contact details via the Rimini Street homepage, although Rimini Street was not yet represented in Germany at the time. I then received a call back from England.

E-3: What convinced you at the beginning to consider third-party maintenance?

Ercelebi: This was triggered by a request to SAP to decommission a few licenses that we were not using permanently.

The strict refusal and insistence on continuing to pay for non-existent user maintenance coincided with the same point in time when SAP wanted to force its customers out of SAP Standard Support and into Enterprise Support.

In practice, this meant more costs for less service used. And for us, the question arose as to whether SAP was still the right partner for us.

E-3: What were the decisive arguments and how did the contract come about?

Ercelebi: Back in 2009, Rimini Street was the only real alternative to regular SAP maintenance. Unfortunately, there were practically no reference customers with long-term experience of third-party maintenance for an SAP system in Germany.

We asked ourselves whether Rimini Street could not only cover all legal changes promptly, but also provide quasi first aid at short notice if our production system was not running properly.

In the end, the risk was too great, especially for the HR module, for which most of the patches had to be installed. At the time, we decided to outsource HR from SAP and entrust all other modules to Rimini Street's third-party maintenance.

E-3: When and how did you inform SAP? And what was SAP's initial reaction?

Ercelebi: Even before we contacted Rimini Street, we repeatedly announced via our SAP service provider that we would be forced to look for alternatives if SAP refused to decommission individual licenses.

E-3: A few years ago, Siemens is also said to have considered handing over software maintenance to Rimini Street, whereupon board member Gerd Oswald is said to have boarded the SAP private jet to fly to Munich. Have you experienced anything similar?

Ercelebi: We are probably too small a customer for that. SAP's reaction was more like "eat or die".

We only heard real regrets from our intermediary SAP service provider. SAP did not seek direct contact and in some respects gave us the cold shoulder.

E-3: Looking back - what expectations have been fulfilled, what is better, what is worse?

Ercelebi: Our system is up and running and the status quo has been maintained without any major difficulties. We were and still are pleasantly surprised by the quality of the support:

All the Rimini Street employees we dealt with were willing to provide information and had many years of SAP experience. I had already experienced this differently at SAP.

The biggest disadvantage is certainly the lack of access to OSS notes. Not only for our own research. External SAP consultants also like to refer to SAP notes that we can no longer access.

E-3: Have you calculated what savings the contract with Rimini Street will bring Sympatex in terms of maintenance fees?

Ercelebi: Rimini Street still advertises today with the simple formula: "What are you paying today? With us, it only costs half." In fact, the savings are even greater because SAP maintenance costs are constantly rising.

E-3: How many contacts or requests are made to Rimini Street per month? What are typical tasks and support requests?

Ercelebi: Our system is quite stable and for many months there are no queries to Rimini Street at all. Only when we encounter errors that are not due to in-house developments do we call on support.

E-3: What updates and EHPs do you need today and how do you obtain them?

Ercelebi: As a third-party maintenance client, you have to free yourself from the SAP corset of prescribed updates. If an update is required - such as last year's new travel expense law - we receive a solution from Rimini Street that works on our system. Technically, this is like custom programming for our system.

E-3: What is the demand for user licenses at Sympatex?

Ercelebi: The number has remained constant for several years.

E-3: And what does your SAP roadmap look like? Are release upgrades planned?

Ercelebi: Our release covers all our currently known requirements. A change is therefore not planned.

E-3: Would you recommend Rimini Street to a CIO friend? Based on your experience, what circumstances should they pay particular attention to?

Ercelebi: Third-party maintenance is certainly not suitable for every company and in every situation. If, for example, an SAP module is to be used for the first time in the foreseeable future, I would first stabilize the system due to the links with other modules.

However, if, like us, you are using a mature ERP system and no major expansions are planned, Rimini Street may be more than worth considering.