Sunway partners with Rimini Street for digital transformation

Sunway Group, a Malaysian conglomerate known for its extensive operations in real estate, entertainment, medical, and education sectors, has announced a strategic partnership with Rimini Street to enhance its digital transformation initiatives. By selecting Rimini ONE, a combination of Rimini Support and Rimini Manage services, Sunway aims to improve software support capabilities, optimise IT expenditures, and reallocate resources towards innovative projects, including artificial intelligence (AI) and customer experience (CX) enhancements.

Kevin Khoo, Chief Information Officer of Sunway, expressed satisfaction with the move, noting that the collaboration with Rimini Street has expedited the group's digital adoption journey. He stated, "Rimini Street has enabled our acceleration in digital adoption journey by providing cost savings which we reinvested back into technology initiatives, has given us peace of mind with our system support needs, and confidence in our ability to explore new opportunities because we know Rimini Street will always be able to support us."

Sunway has a long history with its core ERP system, JD Edwards, which has been in use since the early 2000s across its 13 business divisions, including construction, property, healthcare, leisure, hospitality, and REITs. Despite its robustness and customisation capabilities, upgrading the software proved costly and resource-intensive, often leading to project delays and operational downtime. Khoo remarked, "JD Edwards made it so easy for us to customise to meet our business needs. We put in our best practices into the system, and created a centre of excellence that can do a lot of JD Edwards implementation customisation by ourselves."

Khoo highlighted the challenges faced with vendor support, particularly when dealing with critical issues. He noted that the reliance on Oracle for support often led to frustrating delays and a lack of assistance for system customisations. This prompted Sunway to explore alternative support solutions, eventually guiding them towards Rimini Street. After receiving positive feedback from existing Rimini Street clients, Sunway initially engaged Rimini Support before expanding to Rimini Manage due to the demonstrated value and success of the former service.

Since transitioning to Rimini Street, Sunway has realised several benefits, including direct access to a named, dedicated Primary Support Engineer (PSE) backed by a global team of engineers, support for customisations at no extra charge, an additional 15 years of stable and compliant ERP investment, and significant cost savings–50% on annual support fees and up to 90% on total support costs. "The cost savings from Rimini Street have given us the opportunity to invest in innovation, especially AI. Every dollar we've saved has been reinvested to strategic technology adoption that aligns with our key business goals," said Khoo. "Without Rimini, a ton of our projects would still be stuck at the proposal stage. Instead, they've allowed us to start executing AI projects and other major tech initiatives that will be fundamental to competing and providing an excellent customer experience going forward."

The partnership with Rimini Street exemplifies Sunway Group's commitment to leveraging advanced technology to drive business growth and enhance service delivery. By reallocating saved resources towards innovative projects, Sunway is poised to sustain its competitive edge and achieve significant improvements in customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.