SAP licensing models are not the most straightforward things in the world. Since SAP doesn’t offer much in the way of maintenance, they are always pushing modernized licenses on their customers and will audit their customers year after year as their main source of recurring revenue. MetrixData 360 has conducted countless SAP Self-Assessments that have assisted clients in gaining control and understanding of their SAP license position and driven savings of hundreds of millions of dollars for companies around the globe.
MetrixData 360’s SAP Licensing Self-Assessment services are designed to optimize your organization’s total cost of ownership, minimize compliance exposure, and identify cost efficiencies that can save companies a lot of money. An SAP license Self-Assessment will look at your actual deployment and usage in all SAP environments in a way that perfectly mimics what SAP’s auditors will do in an event of a software audit. This includes both named user measurement as well as package measurement.
By evaluating your organization’s usage throughout the entire SAP footprint and analyzing your contracts to establish entitlement and usage rights, MetrixData 360 will identify and advise on both, while also looking for any potential compliance issues that put you at future or current risk. We will then show you how to manage these potential shortfalls, so you won’t have to worry about them in the future.
Support and Training
Compliance for Today and the Future
Software Package Assessment and Measuring
Contractual Review
Full Risk Management
SAP License Optimization
Named User Licensing Analysis
Custom Processes and Tools
You can make changes to the user license assignments in the SAP system resulting from recommendations made by MetrixData 360’s comprehensive review. These changes can be executed by a system administrator with on-hand support and guidance provided by MetrixData 360’s SAP experts. If you don’t have the resources in your software environment, we can also make the changes based on your orders and work on packages to ensure approved recommendations can be actioned, and your organization can start taking advantage of savings.
Due to our advanced expertise and extensive experience in SAP licensing, we offer recommendations on how to not only become compliant but, using visibility provided through our assistance, you will be able to act strategically and start developing a roadmap for future planning. Imagine being able to thoughtfully move your company forward in your software licensing goals! We will give you the ability to do just that by providing you with sustainable processes that result in accurate license provisioning at the lowest cost possible.
If you think your compliance issues with SAP are limited to only Named-Users and Packages, you may find that you’ve only scratched the surface of a greater issue. MetrixData 360’s SAP Self-Assessment will scour the darkest unknown recesses of your software environment and bring to your attention often unconsidered risks with SAP. We have seen what happens if these additional risks are left unchecked, and the associated costs can be staggering.
MetrixData 360’s experience in understanding complex SAP environments allows our experts to highlight areas of concern, bring awareness to your company and allow you to take decisive action to avoid costly non-compliance penalties.
We will review all Software and Service Order Forms, Invoices, and the Master Agreements between SAP and your organization. Our experts will use that information to review, analyze, and identify specific software use terms and conditions. The outcome of this review is a comprehensive SAP software entitlement list in the form of a Bill of Material. The Bill of Material will allow us to calculate the Total Cost of Ownership for your SAP software assets.
The SAP Named-User Licensing (NUL) measurement phase of MetrixData’s self-assessment provides an accurate view of the named-user licensing that you require to support your actual SAP software usage. This will allow for an easy comparison between the licensing assets currently held and what you are entitled to use. This process will identify both licensing surpluses and shortfalls against each named-user license type within your contract. We will also ensure you are made aware of any additional and potentially less costly license types not already procured.
During the Named-User Measurement process, we will establish the total number of unique named-users who require a license, including identifying and eradicating dormant and duplicated users.
Any contractual definitions you have will be converted to usable technical definitions, according to your company’s contract. Once that’s done, we will perform a measurement per individual named user license type. This analysis is typically performed to determine what users can do in the SAP system considering their access controls and compares it with what users have done.
Using MetrixData 360’s proven process for SAP License Evaluation will provide a much more accurate and realistic view of licensing compared with the SAP standard measurement tools, such as USMM and SLAW. Standard SAP licensing tools typically base themselves only on what SAP licenses have been allocated by the systems administrator and are known to be error-prone due to the contract not being fully reviewed and/or correctly interpreted. For this reason, MetrixData 360 likes to come to the table with our own tools, which can either be paired with your existing suite of SAM tools to fill in any missing information or work on their own. For a more detailed look into our tool collection, you can check out our tool page!
SAP software packages are purchased using specific business metrics available at the time of purchase. These metrics will vary depending on the year of purchase. Did you know that even if you are depending on SAP’s standard license measurement tools, those tools don’t have the ability to track and measure deployment and usage? These instances will require a self-declaration by your organization. In addition, there is the possibility that support notes will need to be implemented in order to improve measurement accuracy.
MetrixData 360 will deep dive into your SAP estate to reveal your actual licensing position versus a potential optimal licensing position. This part of the engagement will reveal the real cost savings cost savings and will give your organization confidence moving forward for future procurement, and license management processes.
A USA-based manufacturer specializing in home appliances, had used SAP software for over 25 years and were using it in their local and international locations, which stretched over four continents.
The manufacturer was under pressure to reduce their annual software spend due to economic reasons, and since SAP was one of the most expensive agreements in their portfolio (approximately $25 million/year) it made sense to try and cut back spending with this software vendor.
The manufacturer had more than 350 SAP systems, some of these were ABAP-based, but many more were outdated Java systems.
The manufacturer was concerned about the potential Indirect Usage risk if they attempted to cut back their SAP usage.
The manufacturer was planning to migrate to SAP HANA over a 3-year period and wanted to ensure the migration roadmap wouldn’t blow their budget.
Through the help MetrixData provided, we were able to identify a potential to reduce the client’s SAP user-based licence cost by up to 40%!
We also successfully re-negotiated the manufacturer’s renewal with approximately 18% savings.
Under MetrixData 360’s guidance, the manufacturer was also able to successfully negotiate a consumption-based license model to completely remove the Indirect Access risk at no extra cost. This was achieved as part of the Product Support for Large Enterprise (PLSE) negotiation.
We were also able to reduce the PLSE minimum commitment value by 20% from SAP’s initial proposal.
Book a meeting with our Client Success Representative today and find out how much risk exposure your company has and how much your could save by performing an SAP audit.
Software audits may be a fact of life, but massive fees from your software vendors don’t have to be. Contact MetrixData 360 today.