Eight specialist services covering every high-stakes commercial interaction you will have with SAP: audits, contract negotiations, RISE migrations, indirect access assessments, S/4HANA transitions, and ongoing licence management. All delivered by former SAP insiders with no SAP commercial relationships.
SAP's commercial organisation is structured to extract maximum value from every customer interaction. Our services are structured to prevent that. Every engagement is adversarial toward SAP's tactics, not facilitative of them.
SAP's audit process is not a compliance check — it is a commercial tool designed to generate back-licence claims and upgrade pressure. When SAP's measurement team runs USMM across your landscape and delivers an Effective License Position (ELP) showing a significant compliance gap, that number is almost always inflated. Our forensic audit defence service challenges the measurement methodology, disputes user classifications, and resolves claims at a fraction of SAP's opening position.
Your SAP Master Agreement, Order Forms, and associated T&Cs were drafted by SAP's legal team to serve SAP's interests. Price escalators, one-sided audit rights, restrictive licence transfer terms, and unfavourable indirect access clauses are standard in most SAP agreements. Our contract negotiation service provides forensic review and active renegotiation — informed by deep knowledge of SAP's Deal Desk architecture and commercial thresholds.
Most large SAP estates contain 20-40% of licences that are misclassified, over-provisioned, or assigned to users who no longer require them. Our forensic licence optimisation service runs independent analysis using USMM and LAW measurement data, cross-references against actual system usage patterns, and identifies every opportunity to reclassify, right-size, or return licences without operational disruption.
RISE with SAP is the most commercially complex deal in SAP's current portfolio. It bundles S/4HANA Private Edition, SAP BTP, cloud infrastructure, and SAP Enterprise Support into a single agreement — with pricing, SLA frameworks, and exit terms constructed entirely by SAP. Most enterprises sign without independent analysis and discover the structural problems later. Our advisory service provides independent RISE contract review, BTP credit consumption modelling, and full negotiation support before signature.
Reactive compliance — managing licence positions only when SAP triggers an audit — creates unnecessary risk and negotiating disadvantage. Our proactive compliance service establishes your current Effective License Position (ELP), closes genuine gaps before SAP identifies them, and builds the documented, evidence-based compliance posture that gives you confidence in any commercial interaction with SAP.
SAP's Digital Access model, introduced in 2018, changed the liability framework for every enterprise that allows third-party systems to trigger transactions in SAP. Document licences — covering Orders, Deliveries, Invoices, and Material documents — can create significant unexpected exposure if not properly assessed. Most organisations do not understand their actual Document licence consumption until an audit reveals the gap. Our indirect access advisory service establishes your position before SAP does.
Every S/4HANA migration is also a commercial inflection point. SAP uses the migration process to restructure BoMs, introduce new licence requirements, and upsell products that were not part of the original SAP estate. The transition from ECC to S/4HANA touches user classifications, engine metrics, and contract structures in ways that are rarely obvious and frequently expensive. Our migration licensing service ensures your S/4HANA BoM reflects what you actually need — not what SAP wants to sell you.
SAP Enterprise Support costs 22% of licence value per year — and SAP consistently uses renewal negotiations to increase that base. For a large enterprise with €50M in SAP software, that is €11M per year in support costs alone. Third-party support options, support holiday arrangements, and renegotiated maintenance schedules can reduce this material. Our support cost reduction service identifies and quantifies every available saving without compromising your operational support quality.
The SAP advisory market is dominated by firms that are also SAP partners, SAP resellers, or SAP implementation consultancies. Every one of those firms has a structural reason to maintain its relationship with SAP — which creates an inherent conflict in any situation where the advice should be adversarial toward SAP's commercial position.
We are not any of those things. We are independent SAP advisors with no commercial relationship with SAP in any form. That independence is not a differentiator we market — it is the foundation that makes genuine buyer-side advice possible.
Read more about our team and philosophy, or explore our SAP licensing case studies to see what independent advice delivers in practice.
A 45-minute expert assessment of your current SAP licensing position, commercial risks, and immediate priorities. No obligation, no sales pitch. We tell you what we see.
We review your contracts, measurement data, and system landscape. This forensic baseline is the foundation for all subsequent analysis and negotiation strategy.
We run independent analysis of your ELP, user classifications, Digital Access exposure, and contractual obligations. We identify every disputable position and quantify the opportunity.
We build and present your commercial position to SAP. We lead or support negotiations, apply pressure at the right points, and drive resolution to a documented outcome.
Average reduction from SAP's initial audit claim in engagements where our team leads the defence. SAP's opening position is rarely their final one.
Average commercial savings achieved on RISE with SAP contracts when independent analysis identifies pricing, BTP, and SLA improvement opportunities before signature.
In total SAP audit exposure resolved for enterprise clients across manufacturing, financial services, retail, energy, and healthcare sectors since our founding.
SAP partners and systems integrators depend on their SAP relationship for revenue — implementation work, licence referrals, and support contracts all flow through SAP's partner ecosystem. This creates a structural conflict: they cannot be fully adversarial toward SAP in an audit or negotiation without risking their SAP relationship.
We have no SAP relationship. No partner status, no implementation revenue, no licence referral fees. Our only commercial relationship is with the enterprise buyers we advise. That means we can — and regularly do — take positions that directly oppose SAP's commercial interests, challenge SAP's audit findings, and recommend third-party support where it makes commercial sense.
As early as possible. The ideal engagement is before the audit begins — when we can prepare your measurement configuration, document your licence position, and brief your team on what to share and what not to share. The second-best time is immediately after receiving the audit notification letter, before SAP's measurement team arrives.
We can also engage during an audit that is already in progress, or after SAP has delivered its ELP findings — there is still significant opportunity to challenge the findings and reduce the settlement. However, earlier engagement produces better outcomes and avoids unnecessary commercial exposure during the measurement phase. See our SAP audit defence service for details.
Yes. Whether you are at the proposal stage, in active negotiation, or reviewing a near-final contract, our RISE with SAP advisory service provides independent analysis of the commercial model, BTP credit structure, SLA framework, and exit terms. We then support negotiation to improve the terms before signature.
The most critical point is to engage before you sign. Once a RISE contract is executed, the leverage to renegotiate fundamental terms is significantly reduced.
The free consultation is a 45-minute session with a senior independent SAP licensing expert. We review your current situation — whether that is an audit notification, an upcoming renewal, a RISE proposal, or a general concern about your licence position — and give you an honest assessment of your risks and options.
There is no obligation and no sales pressure. If we can help, we will tell you how. If your situation is one we think you can manage independently, we will tell you that too. Book your consultation here.
Our engagements are typically with mid-size and large enterprises — organisations with SAP estates of 500+ named users, significant licence investments, or complex RISE and S/4HANA migration scenarios. The commercial stakes in these environments make independent expert advice highly valuable.
If you are a smaller organisation facing a specific issue — such as an audit notification or a contract renewal — contact us and we will let you know whether we are the right fit for your situation.
Book a free consultation to discuss your SAP licensing situation with an independent expert. We will identify your most significant risks and opportunities — at no cost and with no obligation.