RISE with SAP Benchmarking: Cost Optimisation Tactics

1. Right-Sizing Named User Allocations

One of the most immediate cost optimisation opportunities in any RISE with SAP benchmarking exercise is re-evaluating your named user allocation strategy. Many organisations inherit oversized user profiles from legacy systems or purchase user licenses defensively without conducting thorough entitlement audits.

Professional vs. Limited Professional Classification

The distinction between Professional Users and Limited Professional Users represents one of the largest value gaps in SAP licensing models. A Professional User licence covers all functionalities across SAP Cloud applications, while a Limited Professional User licence restricts access to specific modules. The licensing cost difference can exceed 40% per user, making reclassification a high-impact optimisation tactic.

To identify reclassification opportunities, conduct a detailed user activity audit across your RISE environment:

• Access Pattern Analysis: Use SAP User Activity Monitoring (UAM) and STAR reporting tools to track which features each user actually consumes. Users accessing fewer than three distinct modules are often over-provisioned as Professional Users.
• Functional Role Assessment: Finance users, supply chain specialists, and manufacturing engineers typically operate within constrained functional domains. These roles are prime candidates for Limited Professional User downgrading, often reducing per-user costs by 30-45%.
• Seasonal Demand Patterns: Identify users with fluctuating consumption patterns—such as month-end close teams or quarterly reporting groups—who might qualify for restricted-term licensing or consultant licenses rather than full annual Professional User allocations.

Eliminating Ghost Users and Inactive Accounts

A secondary but substantial cost lever involves identifying and deprovisioning unused named user accounts. Enterprise environments frequently accumulate inactive users from departmental restructures, employee departures, and system migrations.

• 30-60-90 Day Analysis: Pull reports of users with zero logins over the past 90 days. These accounts represent pure licensing waste. Many organisations discover 15-25% of their total user base falls into this category.
• USMM and LAW Integration: SAP's User and License Administration Workbench (LAW) provides monthly user consumption data. Cross-reference this with your HR systems to identify users who have departed but maintain active licenses.
• Contractor and Temporary Access: Classify temporary workers on time-limited contracts separately. Rather than annual Professional User licenses, these roles should utilise consultant licenses, which typically carry 50-70% cost savings for short-term engagements.

2. Optimising BTP Credit Consumption

SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) credit models introduce significant hidden cost risks within RISE with SAP agreements. Unlike traditional perpetual software licensing, BTP operates on a metered consumption model where unused credits expire at the end of each contract period—creating a "use it or lose it" dynamic that encourages wasteful deployment practices.

Understanding the BTP Credit Allocation Model

BTP credits fund cloud infrastructure, middleware services, and platform capabilities including Integration Suite, Analytics Cloud, Process Automation, and low-code development environments. Organisations receive monthly or annual credit allocations, but surplus credits do not roll forward. This creates two opposing risks: over-purchasing to avoid forfeit, or under-purchasing and facing unexpected overage charges at premium rates (often 3-5x standard pricing).

Effective BTP cost optimisation requires three parallel strategies:

• Consumption Baseline Establishment: Implement SAP's Cloud Usage Analytics to establish 12 months of actual consumption baseline before agreeing to annual credit quantities. Many organisations anchor BTP purchases to peak monthly usage rather than average consumption, inflating annual commitments by 40-60%.
• Usage Monitoring Infrastructure: Deploy SAP's cloud metering and reporting tools across all BTP service instances. This enables real-time visibility into consumption patterns and early identification of inefficient deployments that can be optimised or retired.
• Negotiation of Rollover Policies: During benchmarking exercises, actively negotiate for credit rollover provisions (typically 20-30% of annual allocation) or true-up mechanisms that allow unused credits to offset future periods, rather than accepting standard SAP terms with no carryover provisions.

Service-Level Cost Optimisation Within BTP

Within the BTP ecosystem, specific services exhibit significant cost variation based on deployment patterns. Integration Suite, for example, consumes dramatically different credit quantities depending on whether you implement synchronous integrations, batch processes, or high-frequency event streaming.

Common cost optimisation tactics include:

• Consolidating middleware across multiple integration platforms rather than deploying redundant integration instances
• Scheduling batch processes and non-critical integrations during off-peak hours to benefit from lower compute credit consumption
• Retiring deprecated API endpoints and webhook handlers that continue consuming credits despite obsolescence
• Implementing connection pooling and query optimisation in HANA Cloud instances to reduce database credit consumption by 25-40%

3. Challenging SAP's Infrastructure Markup vs. Direct Hyperscaler Pricing

Many organisations overlook the infrastructure cost component embedded within RISE with SAP agreements. SAP's managed cloud services include substantial infrastructure provider margins (typically 40-60% above equivalent Infrastructure-as-a-Service pricing from AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud).

Building a Hyperscaler Comparison Baseline

During benchmarking exercises, request detailed infrastructure consumption reports from SAP, including:

• Compute instance sizing (vCPU, memory allocation, instance hours)
• Storage consumption (database storage, backup storage, archival storage)
• Network bandwidth egress charges
• Premium services (database backup, high availability infrastructure, geographic redundancy)

Cross-reference these specifications with AWS EC2, Azure VM, or Google Compute Engine pricing calculators to establish a direct-purchase baseline. This exercise frequently reveals 30-50% infrastructure cost inflation within RISE agreements.

Negotiation Leverage Points

Armed with hyperscaler price comparisons, you gain substantial negotiation leverage:

• Competitive Alternative Positioning: Present SAP with your analysis indicating equivalent infrastructure could be procured directly at a 35% discount, positioning infrastructure costs as a discrete negotiation item separate from software licensing.
• Hybrid Deployment Models: Propose hybrid architectures where non-core or non-mission-critical systems operate on low-cost hyperscaler infrastructure, with only core ERP systems receiving SAP's managed infrastructure premium.
• Geographic Cost Arbitrage: If SAP deploys your systems in high-cost regions (US-East, Western Europe), negotiate relocation to tier-2 regions where equivalent infrastructure commands 25-40% discounts, provided application performance requirements permit.

4. Reducing SAP Enterprise Support Costs

Enterprise Support for RISE with SAP systems typically represents 22% of annual licensing costs, creating a substantial lever for cost reduction. However, support negotiation requires sophisticated understanding of entitlement structure and vendor alternatives.

Understanding Enterprise Support Mechanics

SAP Enterprise Support encompasses:

• 24x7 technical support with specified response times
• Critical updates, patches, and security fixes
• System monitoring and performance optimisation recommendations
• Support for SAP's partner ecosystem and third-party integrations

The 22% annual levy applies to all licensed software, including products you may not actively support (e.g., SAP Analytics Cloud or Signavio within a RISE contract bundle). This creates immediate optimisation opportunities.

Tiered Support Model Implementation

Rather than purchasing identical support levels across all RISE systems, implement a tiered model:

• Tier 1 (24x7 Enterprise Support): Core ERP systems and mission-critical processes. This tier justifies premium support costs due to business continuity requirements.
• Tier 2 (Business Hours Support): Secondary systems and non-critical applications. Business hours support (typically 8am-6pm local time, Monday-Friday) costs 40-50% less than 24x7 support while meeting genuine availability requirements.
• Tier 3 (Standard Support): Development, testing, and low-usage systems. Standard support with 48-72 hour response times provides cost reduction of 60-70% for non-production environments.

Third-Party Support Provider Alternatives

For non-critical systems or development infrastructure, third-party support providers (Rimini Street, Spinnaker Support, Axolt) offer SAP technical support at 40-60% cost reductions compared to SAP Enterprise Support. While these providers lack access to SAP's product development teams, they effectively address operational support needs, bug fixes, and performance optimisation.

Specific use cases for third-party support include:

• Non-production environments (development, testing, staging)
• Legacy systems on extended support roadmaps with limited feature releases
• Systems approaching end-of-life within 2-3 years
• Systems operating within stable maintenance periods with minimal change requirements

5. Eliminating Redundant Bundled Services

RISE with SAP bundling includes several sophisticated cloud applications—SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), Signavio Business Process Management, and Datasphere—often included at attractive starter quantities. However, many organisations discover these applications remain underutilised months after deployment, representing pure cost waste.

Service Utilisation Assessment

Conduct comprehensive usage audits on bundled services:

• SAC Adoption: Audit dashboard creation frequency, report consumption, and analytical user engagement. Many organisations include 200-500 SAC users within RISE bundles but actual analytical user populations rarely exceed 10-20% of allocated licenses.
• Signavio Process Mining: Verify whether process discovery initiatives have transitioned from pilot phases to operational deployment. Unused Signavio subscriptions frequently generate 5-10% of total RISE costs while remaining dormant.
• Datasphere Adoption: Data fabric and semantic layer implementations require significant data engineering resources. Assess whether available resources justify dedicated Datasphere licensing versus alternative data warehousing approaches.

Renegotiation or Retirement Strategies

Based on utilisation findings:

• Selective Reduction: If SAC adoption demonstrates 75-100 active users, negotiate to reduce the bundled allocation from 500 to 150 licenses, generating ongoing cost savings of 8-12% annually.
• Complete Retirement: For unused services (zero Signavio projects executed, zero Datasphere data spaces created), remove bundled quantities and pursue alternative vendors if capabilities later become relevant.
• Staggered Adoption: For services with initial low adoption but strategic importance (business process automation), negotiate reduced initial quantities with automatic expansion provisions tied to adoption milestones rather than purchasing full bundles defensively.

6. Negotiating Volume-Based Tiered Pricing Structures

Most organisations approach RISE with SAP licensing negotiations as binary exercises: accept SAP's published pricing or risk negotiations breakdown. However, volume-based tiered pricing models offer sophisticated cost reduction mechanics for enterprises committing to multi-year relationships.

Tiered Pricing Framework Development

Propose pricing structures that align incentives:

• Named User Commitment Tiers: Structure pricing where annual costs decrease as total named user populations increase. For example: 1-100 users at list pricing, 101-250 users at 10% discount, 251-500 users at 15% discount. This creates incentives for transparent user growth planning while rewarding volume consolidation.
• BTP Credit Volume Discounts: Negotiate declining credit costs as annual consumption increases. Standard tiers might include: 0-5M credits at standard rate, 5-10M credits at 5% discount, 10-25M credits at 10% discount. This encourages healthy platform adoption while reducing the risk of over-purchasing defensive credit buffers.
• Multi-Year Commitment Multipliers: Three-year agreements typically command 12-18% discounts versus annual renewal pricing, while five-year commitments can justify 20-25% reductions. These discounts should appear explicitly in agreements rather than embedded within overall pricing as undisclosed concessions.

Performance-Based Pricing Incentives

Advanced organisations implement performance-based pricing mechanisms tied to SAP's service delivery:

• System availability guarantees: 99.9% annual uptime triggers automatic 2-5% annual cost reductions
• Support response time performance: Failure to meet contracted support response times (e.g., less than 1-hour response for critical issues) triggers automatic service credit adjustments
• Upgrade and feature parity: Automatic pricing adjustments if SAP delays standard security updates or feature releases beyond contractual service level agreements

7. Benchmarking Against Industry-Specific Reference Data

Effective RISE with SAP benchmarking requires comparison against industry peer benchmarks and published pricing data. Several sources provide reference data:

• SAP USMM Reports: SAP's Utilisation and Sizing Methodology reports provide aggregate market data on user population sizing, module consumption, and BTP usage across industry verticals. These reports establish baseline expectations for financial services, manufacturing, retail, and healthcare implementations.
• Gartner Magic Quadrant Reports: Gartner's cloud ERP analyses include pricing comparison frameworks that identify whether your negotiated rates fall within 20-80 percentile ranges versus comparable enterprises.
• Technology Procurement Networks: Organisations like TrustRadius and G2 maintain crowdsourced pricing databases from thousands of enterprises, enabling benchmarking of actual negotiated rates against published list pricing.
• Consulting Firm Benchmarks: Deloitte, Accenture, and Capgemini publish SAP licensing benchmark reports that reflect negotiated rate averages across their client portfolios, representing realistic market rates outside of list pricing.

Using Benchmark Data Strategically

Present benchmark data during negotiations to establish reference anchors:

• "According to Gartner's 2025 Cloud ERP pricing analysis, comparable enterprises are achieving 15-20% discounts versus published list pricing for RISE with SAP commitments. We propose similar pricing alignment given our multi-year commitment."
• "SAP's published USMM reports indicate enterprises in our industry vertical average 3.2 named users per 1,000 revenue dollars. Our sizing targets 2.8 users per 1,000 revenue dollars, suggesting efficient licensing posture."
• "Industry benchmarks indicate infrastructure costs should represent 18-22% of total RISE costs. Your current proposal allocates 28% to infrastructure, indicating potential misalignment with market-rate infrastructure pricing."

Frequently Asked Questions

Implementation Roadmap

Effective RISE with SAP benchmarking cost optimisation follows a structured implementation sequence over 8-12 weeks:

• Weeks 1-2: Establish baseline consumption metrics across named users, BTP credits, and infrastructure resources. Audit bundled service utilisation. Request SAP USMM and LAW reports.
• Weeks 3-4: Conduct user entitlement audit; identify reclassification and ghost user elimination opportunities. Benchmark infrastructure costs against hyperscaler pricing. Develop industry-specific pricing comparisons.
• Weeks 5-6: Negotiate with SAP account team; present benchmarking analysis and cost reduction recommendations. Propose volume-based tiered pricing structure and support tier consolidation.
• Weeks 7-8: Finalise contract amendments reflecting negotiated cost reductions. Implement user reclassification and deprovisioning decisions. Update BTP credit allocation based on consumption baselines.
• Weeks 9-12: Establish ongoing monitoring cadence using LAW, USMM, and cloud analytics. Implement quarterly reviews to identify emerging optimisation opportunities and track projected savings realization.

This structured approach typically generates 15-20% annual cost reductions while simultaneously improving system utilisation metrics and user productivity outcomes.