By switching to Rimini Street for integrated support and application management services for its SAP applications, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the leading commercial aviation trade association representing 82% of worldwide air traffic, is strengthening its operational scalability.
Rimini Street, Inc., 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, recently announced that IATA has switched to Rimini Street Support and Application Management Services (AMS) for its SAP ECC 6.0 and Business Objects applications. With the commercial aviation sector heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, IATA made strategic business decisions to navigate the crisis, including outsourcing key elements of its IT service delivery to reduce operating costs. As a result of switching to Rimini Street, the organization now benefits from a unified support solution that integrates application support and managed services, enabling IATA to meet business demand in a post-pandemic recovery.
Meeting IATA’s unique SAP application support demands to scale quickly
Headquartered in Montreal, with its executive offices based in Geneva, Switzerland, IATA manages financial and support systems for the commercial aviation industry through its IT department. Due to the economic crisis in the air transport industry, IATA’s SAP support department was heavily impacted. The association was well aware of the changing economic environment as the industry began to emerge from the pandemic and knew that air transport could resume at any time, requiring significant IT agility and scalability. IATA began researching third-party support options after learning about the market’s growth in a recent Gartner report. They chose to strengthen the support and management of their SAP system with Rimini Street’s unified support solution to benefit from continuous improvements and reduce potential risks while the business continued to accelerate as the commercial aviation market resumed. Rimini Street was also able to capture and meet IATA’s business requirements through a unique service catalog that improves IT service delivery. IATA also benefits from services designed for preventative maintenance and proactive problem-solving to improve system performance.
“From the beginning, we were certain we could only work with a trusted support provider to limit risks and Gartner’s report was clear: Rimini Street is the market leader in third-party support,” said Pascal Buchner, IT director and chief information officer, IATA. “Rimini Street distinguished itself from the competition by its reputation and offered both SAP software support and application management services, which we wanted to consolidate.”
A simplified operating model turning uncertainty into predictability
Rimini Street offers a unified support solution, delivering a unique combination of SAP support and application management services. Since switching to Rimini Street, IATA has already reduced its IT backlogs and benefits from more transparency in its operations and an agile delivery model for system enhancements.
“From the start of working with Rimini Street, we saw immediate improvements in our SAP application support and management. The onboarding process was quick and seamless, and we now have a much better view of our tickets and dashboards,” continued Buchner. “Our in-house SAP team is constantly providing positive feedback on the quality of the support from Rimini Street. We do not regret our outsourcing choice, quite the contrary, and feel we can deliver even more value to internal stakeholders than before.”
“Rimini Street is pleased to help IATA maximize the value of its SAP applications with unified support that improves operational productivity. IATA can now find more working capital and focus their budget and IT resources on strategic initiatives that can help its members navigate the current economic crisis,” said Emmanuelle Hose, group vice president and theater general manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Rimini Street. “To better prepare their organization for future expansion, IATA joins more than 4,000 organizations worldwide that have switched to Rimini Street to address near-term budget challenges, while enjoying greater agility and lower risk in service delivery.”