Third-party maintenance and SAP service alternative

E-3: SAP software is complex. How do you generally know the right places for maintenance?

Mark Smith: We have been working with and supporting SAP software since our establishment in 1998. We offer third party maintenance since 2012. With the help of tools and our know-how, we always know if there is an existing solution for an SAP problem and if a software patch is available.

We also know whether a customer has been provided with this patch in an archive before he terminated his SAP service contract. If a standard patch is available, we help the customer to retrieve and apply it.

If the original patch is no longer available or a new issue arises, our team will develop its own version of the update.

E-3: For which SAP versions and applications do you offer maintenance?

Smith: We offer support and maintenance for all SAP versions and applications.

E-3: Existing SAP customers can terminate the service contract annually. What does the existing customer gain, what does he lose?

Smith: The big advantage of this model is that it allows customers to reassess SAP's support service annually and decide whether they are getting value for money. The big challenge with SAP is that customers are subject to the whims of the software giant.

If SAP prescribes something, customers must comply - for example, switch to a new generation of software by a certain date or perform an unwanted upgrade that can cost a lot of money while providing no benefit at all.

E-3: Which SAP support services can the existing customer continue to receive?

Smith: Generally, customers choose third-party maintenance like Support Revolution so they no longer need support services from SAP. Of course, customers can buy new products like S/4 Hana from SAP, use SAP Support S/4 Hana in the SAP cloud, and have Support Revolution support their SAP Business Suite at the same time.

E-3: What is the way back if the existing customer wants to get support from SAP again?

Smith: Of course, the customer can always go back to SAP. When they go back, they also often restore a lot of their negotiating power, as SAP wants to get them back on board and may be more inclined to negotiate terms as a result.

But none of the customers who contacted us switched back to SAP - and why should they give up the massive cost savings they achieved by switching to Support Revolution either?

E-3: And the difference with Rimini Street?

Smith: Support Revolution offers third-party support services, similar to Rimini Street. But what makes us different is that Support Revolution was an SAP and Oracle partner until February 2019. We decided to end these partnerships because we wanted to offer more services to our customers.

Our background as an SAP and Oracle partner means we have a deep understanding of both vendors. This has enabled us to design our services to fully comply with both vendors' contracts.

In concrete terms, this means, for example, that if a customer wants SAP Business Suite ECC 6.0 maintained but wants to move it to the Amazon Cloud, we can do that for them and continue to provide support for their SAP system.

E-3: An existing SAP customer with ECC 6.0 and maintenance from you: How does this user switch to Hana and S/4?

Smith: Here it is important to explain what we see on the market. SAP has set a deadline of 2025 for customers with ECC 6.0. By then, they have to switch to S/4 Hana. However, we see that customers are satisfied with their ECC 6.0 and do not want to switch to S/4 Hana.

When customers switch to us, SAP customers can safely ignore the 2025 deadline and let us support and maintain their systems indefinitely. If they want to switch to S/4 Hana now or in the future, they can do that too.

E-3: To what extent do you use the SolMan in your service offering?

Smith: We do not use SolMan, SAP's Solution Manager, in our service offering at all, as SolMan is licensed by SAP and is part of their own maintenance offering. Instead, we use various control and audit solutions.

E-3: From your subjective point of view, why are SAP customers in the DACH region hesitant about third-party maintenance?

Smith: That is definitely not the case. We see a lot of interest in the DACH region. It would be more accurate to say that the European market is lagging a bit behind the US when it comes to the introduction of third-party support.

By marketing and selling our services in this region for the past seven years, we have found that customers initially had many questions about how third-party support works.

E-3: Thank you for the interview.