SAP Licence Optimisation

Trusted independent partner on your SAP commercial journey

Libertas, SAP ERP
Libertas supports your complete SAP journey, guiding you through the often-complex world of SAP licensing to ensure you are managing your risks, maximising your commercial value, and freeing your business to thrive.

What We Do

Determining the right SAP commercial agreement to support your business now and into the future is much more complex than simply identifying a bill of materials and negotiating a price.

Determining whether the licencing model should be perpetual, or a subscription, is a start. More important, however, is understanding how to protect yourself from future uncertainty and unplanned spend. Something that is very difficult to recognise and prepare for.

Before a customer embarks on a significant software negotiation, the most basic objective is to secure an agreement that is fit for purpose across the life of the solution and not just for the life of the project. To assist with understanding and achieving this objective, you should ask yourself the following questions:

Confidence in the BOM

Am I confident I understand the bill of materials being proposed, the value and likely use of each item?

Understanding Entitlements (Products) & Metrics

Do I have a good understanding of the various entitlements (products) and associated metrics?

Verification

Do I know how to verify my needs against these entitlements and metrics?

Measurement

Do I know how to measure my usage of these entitlements and metrics in future?

Adjustment for Compliance

Do I know how to adjust my usage of the metrics and entitlements to ensure compliance?

Usage Risk Factors

Do I know which entitlements and metrics pose the most risk to uncertain usage?

Project Demands & Uncertainty

Have I built in commercial flexibility to align with the project demands and uncertainty?

Business Uncertainty

Have I built in commercial flexibility to address future business uncertainty?

Awareness of Commercial Terms

Am I aware of all the commercial terms available to address these risks and uncertainties?

Triggering Terms

Do I know how to trigger these commercial terms and what would drive the need to trigger them?

A GOOD DEAL?

What does a good deal look like and how do I know?

    What does a good deal look like?

    How do I secure this deal?

    Without understanding and addressing these questions, customers often experience SAP software agreements that are complex to manage, contain significant shelfware, do not provide the necessary flexibility to support current business needs and are almost impossible to measure compliance.

    At Libertas, not only do we assist with securing the deal at the lowest possible price, more importantly, we leverage our decades of SAP licensing experience and proven approach to ensure you secure an agreement that best supports your immediate objectives while providing the necessary protection in support of your long-term goals.

    Our Services

    SAP Licensing Optimisation

    Complex entitlements, disparate metrics and incomplete auditing tools mean it can be difficult to get an accurate picture of the consumption of your SAP licences against your entitlements, let alone begin to optimise your position.

    Libertas can help you obtain a full understanding of your entitlements, accurately assess your usage, and assess the myriad commercial options available to unlock value for you and protect your future.

    SAP Audit Support

    Whether it’s a standard Annual Audit or SAP’s more involved Enhanced Audit Service, SAP audits can be a daunting experience for many organisations. With the spectre of Indirect Access, intricate forms of licence exposure, and the prospect of back maintenance fees, an audit carries the risk of significant financial liabilities. Libertas can assist you to take control of the situation, understand your full range of options, and enable you to proceed with confidence.

    SAP License Negotiation

    Securing an SAP Software agreement that reflects your current and future business objectives is no easy task. Organisations will often secure contracts that reflect their product needs but little else.

    Libertas can help you asses the full range of commercial options available and target those that align to your specific needs. What further differentiates Libertas from our competitors is that we will ensure you realise the benefit of these options by negotiating with you hand in hand. We will secure you the right Agreement with the right terms and conditions at the right price.

    3rd Party Support Evaluation

    3rd party maintenance providers offer the potential for significant savings over SAP’s standard maintenance offerings. A move away from SAP support, can however, also involve significant potential risks. Libertas can assist you to be fully prepared by ensuring you are confident of your compliance position, your software bill of materials aligns to your current and future needs and you understand your future pathway options back to mainstream support.

    Our Proven Approach

    Our approach to securing the right SAP licence agreement that includes the commercial structures to support your current and future objectives at the lowest cost is based on a 3-step model.

    SAP Product Needs Analysis

    The foundation to any licence negotiation, reset or compliance assessment is to understand what you own today and what you are using. This allows for a baseline of usage to compare to current agreements and to build upon when thinking of upgrading or converting. To ensure our process delivers the most accurate and valuable outcome as possible, Libertas performs the following:
    i. Consolidate and analyse all contractual entitlements.
    ii. Measure the current use of these entitlements, through both Direct Access and Indirect Access, based on the contractual entitlements.
    iii. Identify future SAP product needs through a demand profiling and roadmap approach. These future needs will then be mapped against the current usage to develop an accurate and optimised bill of materials.

    Financial and Commercial Planning

    Once the product needs and timing have been identified, the next step is to identify the commercial needs to be reflected in the agreement. Elements such as financial commitment, total cost of ownership, timing, flexibility, capex vs opex, and future protection will all be considered. It will be these elements that will influence the structure of the agreement that best aligns with your broader objectives. Libertas will propose a number of commercial models that can be evaluated based on your technical and commercial needs and risks.

    Contract Negotiation and Execution

    To secure an agreement that reflects both your SAP product needs and commercial objectives at the most affordable price will require a number of concessions from SAP. To secure these concessions, a negotiation strategy must be developed that leverages SAP’s core value drivers. Libertas will assist in developing this strategy based on agreed roles, responsibilities and tactics and participate in the final negotiation under your instructions.

    Customer Success Stories

    We take pride in our track record of delivering great results for our customers.
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    Retail

    Situation

  • Pre-separation from parent

  • Consumer facing organization

  • Very old legacy systems (including SAP)

  • Outdated agreements that do not reflect current business needs

  • Very significant software liability

    • Outcome
    Negotiated SAP contracts to remove all liability at 15% of the discounted exposure.

    SAP Software contracts reflect business needs and protects from future uncertainty.
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    Utility

    Situation

  • Post merger of businesses

  • Business facing cost pressures

  • Committed to S/4 HANA journey

  • Significant investment in SAP Software

  • Significant cost over-runs

    • Outcome
    Renegotiated SAP Software contracts realising audited savings of $79M over 5 years.

    SAP Software contracts reflect business needs and protects from future uncertainty.
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    Manufacturing

    Situation

  • Significant cost pressures —labour and energy

  • Unstable ECC environment

  • Very weak contractual position

  • Self Managed Maintenance

  • Acceptable business case for change

    • Outcome
    Renegotiated SAP Software contracts saving $18M over 5 years of contracted SAP spend.

    Returned the customer to SAP support without having to pay back maintenance.
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    Pharmaceutical

    Situation

  • Business facing cost pressures

  • Stable ECC environment

  • Complex architectural and integration landscape

  • Significant SAP software liability

  • Weak position to negotiate

    • Outcome
    Designed and deployed a technical remediation that reduced the liability by 94%.

    The solution was formerly verified by the SAP Global Licence Audit Compliance team.