February 04, 2019

February 4, 2019

At a recent Gartner Sourcing, Procurement, Vendor & Asset Management Summit in London, one of Spinnaker Support’s valued customers presented a compelling case study on switching their Oracle E-Business Suite support to Spinnaker Support. Tytti Erkama, Head of Solution Development at Vaisala, delivered her presentation to a crowded room of interested procurement and IT professionals.

During the Question & Answer session, Ms. Erkama was asked to compare the software vendor-provided support model vs. the third-party support model, on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high). She rated Spinnaker Support a 9 out of 10, citing she doesn’t give perfect scores “because her Finnish culture doesn’t allow perfection.”

About Vaisala

Vaisala is a global leader in environmental and industrial measurement. Headquartered in Vantaa, Finland, they serve customers in more than 150 countries with over 1,600 employees. Vaisala, whose company mission is Observations for a Better World, operates two global business units that develop, manufacture, and market innovative products and services. Their Weather and Environment business area serves select markets where accurate, real-time, and uninterrupted weather data is essential to run efficient operations. Their Industrial Measurements business area serves customers in life science, power transmission, and targeted industrial sectors with a broad range of measurement instruments to ensure operational quality and productivity.

Vaisala is deploying a unique strategy for each of their two primary businesses. In the Weather and Environment business, they plan to grow revenues through industry-leading products and digital services. Product leadership is the essential strategy to drive their Industrial Measurements business. Key to growth in both areas is company-wide cost optimization projects, for savings to redirect towards research and development efforts. High annual software maintenance costs for Oracle E-Business Suite support was one of the high-profile cost optimization targets.

Vaisala’s core corporate values guide their strategic direction. They are customer-focused, of high integrity, and embrace pioneering innovation. Furthermore, they are committed to achieving 100% renewable energy by 2020.

E-Business Suite (EBS) Footprint

Vaisala runs Oracle EBS version 12.2.3 with modules that include financial management, human capital management, CRM and order management, service management, supply chain management, discrete manufacturing, Weblogic, Oracle Business Intelligence, and Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

The Journey to Third-Party Support

A year after upgrading to EBS 12.2.3, Vaisala was still working around ten long-term critical software bugs that had not been resolved by the previous support provider. In a quest to improve overall support quality and reduce maintenance costs, Vaisala started looking for alternative EBS support options. After conducting extensive market research, making numerous reference calls, and undergoing stringent contract negotiations, Vaisala switched to Spinnaker Support in 2015.

Case Study Highlights

In the case study Ms. Erkama delivered at the Gartner event, she unveiled the following:

  • Vaisala is highly pleased with Spinnaker Support’s high responsiveness, ability to match expert-level engineers across a range of different application and technology stack areas to resolve complex issues, openness to feedback, and strong desire to continuously improve support delivery processes.
  • Vaisala logged 30 tickets in the first month with Spinnaker Support, including 20 unresolved tickets that had carried over from the prior support provider. These lingering issues were all successfully resolved within the first few months. Since switchover in 2016, Vaisala has logged an average of 250 tickets per year and is happy with issue resolution rates.
  • Vaisala has been able to reduce annual maintenance spend by more than 60%. The dramatic savings have been, in part, redirected to boost research and development and to help achieve Vaisala’s commitment to reach 100% renewable energy by 2020.
  • Spinnaker Support is working collaboratively with Vaisala’s managed services provider, IBM, identifying more efficient and effective ways to service the customer.

Concluding her presentation at the Gartner event, Ms. Erkama summed up Spinnaker Support with three simple words: “It just works.”

*In recent conversations, we have learned that Vaisala intends to leverage their current Oracle EBS version for several more years. Spinnaker Support is helping sustain performance, stability, and ongoing interoperability to the point where Vaisala can utilize the system until an innovative replacement is identified and funded.