Global market leader and third-party support company Spinnaker Support signed a strategic partnership with South African distribution company Mantrasys in March. Spinnaker Support will provide a range of advanced technology and enterprise solutions for customers of business management software services company SAP in the sub-Saharan Africa region.

“Formally expanding our services footprint into South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa was an easy decision, owing to the interest we recently noticed in this region. We are enthus- iastic about having Mantrasys as our partner, particularly with its reputation for providing leading solutions for its customers. The relationship exponentially boosts our efforts to become the go-to maintenance alternative for SAP customers in the region,” says Spinnaker Support managing principal Matt Stava.

Mantrasys director Steve Berry explains that, previously, SAP customers had no alternative to paying the high SAP mainte- nance support fees, but with Spinnaker Support entering the sub-Saharan Africa market through Mantrasys as a new sales partner, there is a proven alternative.

“With economic conditions becoming more difficult, South African companies are considering ways to improve bottom-line profitability and, hence, there is pressure to reduce information technology budgets. Reducing yearly support fees is one way of achieving this; however, a company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) deployment should not be put at risk,” he notes.

Spinnaker Support’s commitment to the South African market began earlier this year with some strategic appointments – Barbara Harper joined the company from software and hardware engineering company Oracle as Spinnaker Support Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region sales VP and Nigel Pullan was appointed EMEA region VP.

“We have created a unique maintenance offering, which is recognised by evaluative research by market research company Gartner & Forrester. The offering is guaranteed to give our customers a saving of at least 50% on what they currently pay SAP or Oracle a year. This will, in turn, increase the quality and value of the service the customer receives,” says Harper.

Spinnaker Support provides cosourcing to Spinnaker Manage- ment and consulting services for SAP and world solutions company JD Edwards, which help these companies increase their ERP software investments. Whether companies want to cost effectively maintain their current software environment through a maintenance or cosourcing Spinnaker Management delivery model or extend the life of their software through strategic consulting services, Spinnaker Support provides solutions to meet their requirements.

Harper points out that these systems are expensive to implement and maintain. “To squeeze the full return on investment from these systems, companies are considering ways to continue running their systems and simultaneously reduce the running costs. These savings can then be used to fund innovation or facilitate budget reductions,” she concludes.