https://ift.tt/zH7JA1c
New Zealand energy giant Mercury NZ has selected Rimini Street to reap cost efficiencies and ensure the stability of its core IT systems after the acquisition of Trustpower’s retail business.
Mercury is investing in the continued modernisation of its platforms, including rolling out Workday to replace SAP in its finance functions with the aid of Accenture NZ.
“Mercury is constantly looking to innovate, to make sure we are offering products and services that our customers value in modernising the way we operate,” said Tim Aynsley, Mercury NZ’s former head of technology, now CIO at retirement village operator Metlifecare.
“During this transition, Rimini Street has given us the stability to be future-ready and focus on innovation.”
Mercury NZ has been an SAP shop for nearly 20 years, leveraging its customised system for reporting, CRM, utility billing and more. Today, the company runs SAP ECC6 on HANA database, and SAP Industry Solutions Utilities (IS-U).
Mercury was contemplating a migration to S/4HANA, the ERP giant’s latest platform. However, it did not progress with this due to the Trustpower acquisition.
“With Rimini Street, we were provided with a viable alternative to support our SAP systems, which has helped us to make savings in the way we operate,” Aynsley said.
“Many SAP Utilities customers have concluded that the investment needed to move to S/4HANA is better used to fund innovation around strategic initiatives,” said Coy Wright, vice president of energy, utilities and mining at Rimini Street.
The utilities industry was moving toward composable ERP architectures using best-of-breed applications surrounding the SAP core, he said.
Mercury replaced SAP’s solution manager with Rimini Watch as part of the shift.
“This allows us to monitor business processes, diagnose performance, and mitigate issues proactively,” said Anita Grenside, practice lead at Mercury NZ.
“Our customers expect our services to be available when they need them, and so that’s just logical from a competitive point of view that we can provide stable, resilient services.”