A large European retailer wanted to free up its IT budget to turn its primarily brick-and-mortar department stores into a modern e-commerce business. Spinnaker Support was able to help them cut their Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) support costs in half and reallocate the cost savings, while improving the quality and responsiveness of support.
COVID Upended Retail and Created New Opportunities
The retail landscape looks a lot different today than it did in 2019. This company, like many retailers of the time, focused the majority of their efforts on driving traffic to their brick-and-mortar locations to optimize in-store revenue. When the COVID pandemic hit in early 2020, the retailer suddenly found themselves in much fiercer competition with digitally native and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, who had a significant head start on their e-commerce infrastructure.
It’s not uncommon for businesses to make deep cuts when these types of external circumstances arise. Fortunately, support for enterprise software systems is an area where many organizations can find substantial savings without any negative impact to the business. By switching from Oracle-provided support to third-party support, businesses can save over 50% on their support costs while actually improving the quality and responsiveness of support.
That’s exactly the path this retailer took. They leveraged Spinnaker Support to maintain their EBS application, and reallocated the cost savings toward their digital transformation.
Third-Party Support Isn’t Just Cheaper, It’s Better
Although the cost savings associated with Spinnaker were critical to enabling this retailer to reinvent themselves as a digital-first business, they also appreciated the high-quality support and personalized service that Spinnaker offered. For both day-to-day support as well as expert issue resolution, their IT staff considers the Spinnaker engineers an extension of their own team. Over the course of the relationship, Spinnaker has helped the retailer solve challenges big and small. Here are a couple examples:
Delivering New Functionality
The retailer’s legacy version of EBS did not support single sign-on (SSO). When their security team flagged it as a risk, they looked at what it would take to purchase the necessary licenses from Oracle and implement the functionality. Unsurprisingly, they were faced with an expensive and time-consuming project that would have been difficult to justify. Instead, Spinnaker developed a custom solution to intercept user credentials in EBS and authenticate them against Active Directory, in alignment with their SSO process. This solution saved the business considerable time and resources compared to the Oracle alternative. Read more about that solution here.
Many organizations incorrectly assume that when they cancel their Oracle support contract, that’s the end of any new functionality or innovation. On the contrary, Spinnaker engineers have many tools and strategies to develop new functionality on top of legacy Oracle systems.
Spinnaker delivered a simple, elegant solution to solve our interoperability problem between our legacy Oracle EBS system and our SSO protocol. I’m so glad we brought up this issue with Spinnaker before turning to Oracle for a solution. Spinnaker saved us from a long, expensive project that would have caused significant business disruption.
-Head of Digital Engine
Speedy Resolution for Urgent Problems
The retailer’s finance team ran into a problem when a critical invoice due that day couldn’t be selected for payment. They called Spinnaker immediately, and the team got right to work. It turned out the invoice had been corrupted, and the Spinnaker engineer applied a data fix to correct the invoice. Spinnaker resolved the issue that same day, and the retailer was able to send the payment on time.
When you have urgent problems, Spinnaker provides a much faster resolution than Oracle support. With Oracle, the retailer would have had to submit a ticket via the online portal and go through multiple rounds of escalation to finally speak with an engineer who could help them fix the issue. That is not the kind of service you need when something has to be resolved quickly!
The Company Emerged From the Pandemic Stronger Than Ever
The retailer’s IT team rose to the occasion and successfully pivoted their company from primarily brick-and-mortar to a thriving e-commerce business, thanks in no small part to the substantial cost savings and high-caliber support they got from Spinnaker.
Spinnaker continues to serve as a trusted partner for the retailer, helping them solve time-sensitive issues, delivering innovative solutions, and saving them money along the way.
Spinnaker Support is an extension of our team. They’ve been by our side through challenging economic times, helped us with day-to-day maintenance of our systems, and designed innovative solutions for us. I don’t think we’d have been able to execute our digital transformation so successfully without Spinnaker.
-Head of Digital Engine
