Proton shifts to Rimini Street for SAP support

Malaysian automaker Proton has switched to Rimini Street for support of its SAP ECC 6.0 applications, enabling an immediate reduction of 50% in its annual support costs.

Also, Proton retained the flexibility to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA when it makes sense for their business, rather than being driven by SAP’s timeline. Once Proton made the switch to Rimini Street, the company was able to shift its resources and support savings into more strategic areas of the business, including the expansion of its manufacturing plant in Perak, Malaysia to enable increased production volumes.

Tough economic conditions in Malaysia forced Proton to reduce its overall operating expenses by 30%. As part of the IT department’s cost-cutting exercise, annual fees from technology providers came under scrutiny and led to the company’s decision to switch from SAP to Rimini Street for its enterprise software support.

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“One of the reasons we went with Rimini Street was to avoid the pressure to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA in 2027 if the organisation is not ready, and still have the necessary support required,” said Marhalisa Matari, senior manager of IT Application Management at Proton’s Group Information Technology.

“Initially we were looking at savings in professional fees by keeping projects internal,” said Matari. “However, resources were tight with multiple projects happening at the same time, so we made the decision to switch to Rimini Street with input from the IT team, management and the ERP system’s users.”

Andrew Seow, regional general manager, South East Asia and Greater China, Rimini Street, said that during times of economic uncertainty, companies must act quickly to focus on reducing risk, optimising budgets and improving efficiency, and one way to accomplish this is by right-sizing their costly, low value annual enterprise software support costs.

“More companies like Proton are leveraging Rimini Street to reduce costs and refocus their IT resources on improving competitive advantage and supporting the growth of the business,” said Seow.