UK based global business, CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods), £20bn revenue, 60,000 employees, SAP Contracts – Limited-un-limited (LUL) & Unlimited During Deployment (UDD) + “Value Flex”
Challenge
Customer was not clear how to optimise their exit from this contract on expiry as they had other contracts before and after this with additional licence values which presented a confusing Licence Estate. They had also not maintained accurate and up-to-date records of deployment associated with the LUL contract and had not fully or correctly classified users. In addition the original project of global roll-out linked to the LUL contract had significantly changed, was behind schedule and no longer aligned with all of the Bill of Materials in the LUL.
Solution
We carried out detailed analysis of all Named Users which resulted in a plan which we presented for systems administration to be executed by the client. This was to bring this up to date. We then reviewed the Named User Classification rules and re-aligned this with both the contracts and the Roll-Out plan. In parallel we assessed the true use of Engines and correctly applied the contract metrics and rules for measurement, which had not been previously done due to lack of knowledge and understanding. Following this we were able to identify which of the Users and Engines related to the LUL contract and created a Business Case to support this. This enable the client to declare and claim their full entitlement from the LUL contract which SAP were not able to dispute given the supporting detailed analysis.
Results
The whole process took us about 3 months elapsed time and enabled the client to gain £18m of additional licence entitlement than their current plan/expectation. More important to the client than actual discount was the inclusion of Terms and Conditions which provide protection against significant unforeseen increases in Engine Licence Fees and greater flexibility in the future mix of products and their Usage over time. N.B. We have subsequently been re-engaged several times to assist with the first Cloud Services Agreement and negotiations and mapping current and future Licence requirements to a new Future road map for SAP (5-7 years) Planning ahead for the termination of support for ECC in 2025.