T-Mobile’s Use of Rimini Street Support for Its SAP Applications Helps Enable Competitive Differentiation and Enhanced Customer Experiences

By AIT News Desk On Aug 26, 2021

Company’s mission-critical, global support infrastructure and advanced technology empowers the fastest and most reliable 5G network provider in the U.S. to deliver on its brand promise

Rimini Street 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, announced that T-Mobile, the fastest and most reliable 5G network provider in the U.S. with an annual revenue of more than $68 billion and over 104 million customers, continues leveraging Rimini Street Support to maximize the return on its SAP enterprise software investments since making the switch to mission-critical, 24/7/365 Rimini Street Support in 2018.

Nation’s fastest and most reliable 5G network provider @TMobile optimizes critical ERP resources to deliver on its brand promise. #trustedpartner #RMNI

T-Mobile relies on Rimini Street as its trusted partner, receiving the Company’s ultra-responsive, award-winning support for its entire SAP system, including support for the organization’s extensive software customizations which were not covered under the software vendor’s more expensive annual support.

T-Mobile’s SAP platform is comprised of more than 200 SAP modules, is used as the system of record for key financial and operational functions and is a critical component of T-Mobile’s supply chain portfolio – a vital part of the company’s customer experience. Since making the switch from vendor support to Rimini Street, T-Mobile has been able to redirect budget and resources to focus on delivering services and technology aimed at creating competitive differentiation by delighting its customers, rather than wastefully allocating resources to maintaining and managing its SAP infrastructure.

Supply Chain Critical to Customer Engagement and Success

In addition to providing wireless voice and data services, T-Mobile is a leading retailer that sells a variety of phones and devices through retail outlets and is one of the largest and fastest-growing mobile-first banking platforms in the U.S.

In a highly competitive, commoditized mobile phone market, it is critical to deliver the best possible buying experience to each customer, whether online or in-store. The consumer wireless market is dynamic and constantly changing, but the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed consumers’ expectations of brands and how they interact with companies moving forward. T-Mobile’s supply chain, which relies on its SAP platform for key operational and financial functions, is foundational to supporting critical aspects of its customers’ journey.

“Most companies ignore the inherent power of their supply chain,” said Erik LaValle, senior director of product and technology for supply chain at T-Mobile. “At T-Mobile, it is a vital part of the customer experience and enables us to deliver on our brand promise. It’s how the commitment to our customers – delivering what they want, when they want and where they want it – really comes to life.”

T-Mobile regularly reviews its vendor portfolio to assess the quality of service and value delivered by its technology vendors. As part of a review of each of its technology providers, the company determined the quality of service they were getting from SAP for support of their mission-critical SAP system, along with the advancement of the technology versus the costs they were paying on an annual basis, were deemed to deliver little ROI or value.

While happy with their SAP system, too much time, money and internal resources were required to support and update the system. In addition, the company had n********** in migrating to a completely new platform – SAP S/4HANA – just to stay fully supported by the vendor, and wanted to continue to leverage its highly-customized system that was meeting its current business needs and expected to meet its needs years into the future, as well as mitigate risk and business disruption in preparation for its merger with Sprint, another large telecom.

“T-Mobile is a very complex environment. When we looked at the service we were getting from SAP versus the value and new functionality offered, it came down to whether or not we were getting a fair exchange from the vendor for support of our mature, highly functional platform,” continued LaValle. “We estimated that SAP only covered about 20% – 30% of our support issues due to our customizations, which meant the cost of each support ticket raised was in the tens of thousands of dollars.”

After learning about and assessing Rimini Street and its high value, cost-effective support model which includes support for customizations and seasoned engineers and technical support the Company assigns to every client, T-Mobile decided to switch their SAP support to Rimini Street. This enabled T-Mobile to extend the life of their SAP investment and redeploy internal IT resources and annual savings to other more strategic customer experience initiatives.

“It became very clear that moving to Rimini Street Support offered a more compelling alternative for us. Throughout our engagement with the company, they have had the right team, in the right place, at the right time. The initial transition, procedures and proven support model ensured a smooth start-up. Everything they did focused on ensuring a transition to a working model that hit the ground running. Only Rimini Street provides the breadth and depth of experience, scalable support infrastructure and advanced technology and processes needed to enhance business continuity and mitigation of financial and operational exposure for an organization of our size and scale,” said LaValle.

24/7/365 Access to a Team of SAP Experts

As with all Rimini Street clients, T-Mobile has an assigned Primary Support Engineer, backed by a team of technical experts with an average of 20+ years’ experience in SAP software. Clients also benefit from the Company’s industry-leading service level agreement of 10-minute response times for critical Priority 1 cases and 15-minute response times for Priority 2 issues, in addition to higher-level discussions on strategy surrounding the client’s technology roadmap.

“Rimini Street does a great job of balancing between tactical delivery and being a strategic partner,” concluded LaValle. “We have great conversations on a regular basis about the future of the technology, the best way to approach our future IT roadmap and how we can balance between our internal delivery and the services Rimini Street provides to advance our team along with the technology. Rimini Street is one of our most trusted IT partners.”

“In today’s environment, every customer interaction is an opportunity to deliver value through exceptional service, and T-Mobile’s Un-carrier moves and supply chain optimization are examples of strategic programs that enhance the buying experience,” said Seth A. Ravin, Rimini Street CEO and chairman of the board. “As a trusted partner to T-Mobile and our enterprise clients around the world, our focus is on delivering the service model, technical expertise and mission-critical responsiveness that enables our clients to maximize their ROI on their enterprise software investments, realize efficiencies and free up resources to focus on more strategic initiatives within their business. We continue to innovate, expand our capabilities and scale our unique portfolio of integrated services to meet the evolving needs of our clients.”