LAS VEGAS--Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today announced that DPaschoal Group, a leading automotive service retail network in Brazil, has signed a seven-year agreement with Rimini Street to provide support for its SAP ECC 6.0 applications. Moving to Rimini Street is part of DPaschoal’s digital transformation roadmap strategy, accelerated due to its newly liberated resources due to switching support providers for its SAP system. These resources - time, money and personnel - were redirected to enhance its digital portal that provides real-time information to improve DPaschoal’s customer experience.

DPaschoal Aligns IT Investment Decisions with Business Strategy

Headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil, DPaschoal is a widely recognized brand in the Brazilian retail market with more than 130 stores across Brazil that perform maintenance services for passenger cars, light-vehicle fleets, trucks and heavy-vehicle and bus fleets. The company also is a major retailer of Goodyear tires for passenger, off-road and agricultural vehicles.

To support its business strategy, DPaschoal sought partners that could align with its innovation and business transformation roadmap goals and vision. The company’s CIO mandated that all technology products and suppliers be analyzed to maintain DPaschoal’s financial health and support its growth plans. IT was tasked with evaluating its current SAP system and the ROI of migrating to the next major SAP platform. After analyzing both the costs and risks associated with a complete platform reimplementation, it was determined there was no significant ROI to update or replace its current SAP applications, nor could the IT team discern a benefit to its business transformation goals by doing so.

“We did not want to upgrade or replace our ERP system, but rather maximize the investments already made. Our SAP system is the company’s financial core and we need a robust solution that runs smoothly,” said Osvaldo Keller, chief information officer, DPaschoal Group. “We made the switch to Rimini Street because they are fully aligned with our way of running the business. We wouldn’t have made such a significant change if we weren’t sure that Rimini Street is the right partner to help us with our upcoming transformation and innovation projects. What was previously over-spent on system support and vendor-pressured updates we didn’t want or need, can now be invested in strategic business growth and transformation that offers DPaschoal customers a better digital experience. With that in mind, choosing Rimini Street was fully intended to be part of our broader corporate strategy.”

Dedicated Engineers Provide Ultra-Responsive, Expert Support

DPaschoal Group, along with all Rimini Street clients, benefits from the Company’s flexible, premium-level enterprise software support model, including its industry-leading Service Level Agreement of 10-minute response times for all critical Priority 1 cases. All clients are assigned a Primary Support Engineer with an average of 20 years’ experience in the client’s enterprise software and backed by a team of functional and technical engineers. The company also benefits from support for its SAP system customizations made over the years and Brazilian federal tax updates and deliveries.

“Rimini Street provides us with operational security and its engineers have a high level of knowledge, attending to our needs quickly and efficiently. The expertise their engineers add to our team gives us confidence that our back-office IT systems will be able to support the digital acceleration that DPaschoal will engage in over the coming years,” continued Keller. “Another differentiating factor is that we entered into a long-term, seven year contract with Rimini Street from the outset. Big changes need to be implemented gradually and intelligently, and Rimini Street is fully engaged in this partnership approach with us for years into the future.”

“Retail CIOs globally are looking to accelerate digital transformation projects that enhance their digital and physical in-store customer experience and help drive revenue growth and profit margin. A proven, effective strategy for organizations to deliver on their transformative innovation priorities is to find the right balance between optimizing existing technology investments and new digital transformation projects,” said Edenize Maron, group vice president and theatre general manager, Latin America, Rimini Street. “By partnering with Rimini Street, DPaschoal is able to refocus its resources on key customer service initiatives to help achieve its short, mid and long-term transformation projects that enhance competitive advantage and drive growth.”