RISE with SAP Advisory
RISE with SAP is a bundled cloud migration offer that locks you into SAP infrastructure, SAP support, and SAP's pricing escalators for 5–7 years. Without independent analysis, most enterprises overpay by 20–40% — and sign away commercial flexibility they can never recover. We review every RISE proposal before you commit.
What SAP Doesn't Tell You About RISE
RISE with SAP is real. The S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition that underpins most RISE deployments is a capable ERP platform. The bundled infrastructure, including SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) credits, is genuinely useful. But the commercial structure of a RISE deal is not designed with the buyer's long-term interests in mind.
The pricing is layered and deliberately opaque. The headline RISE per-user fee bundles infrastructure, licences, support, and BTP credits into a single number — making it nearly impossible to benchmark individual components against market rates. SAP knows this. The bundling is intentional. When you cannot decompose the price, you cannot challenge it.
The escalation clauses are aggressive. Most RISE contracts include annual price escalators tied to indices SAP selects. Over a 5-year term, these escalators compound into material additional spend that is rarely surfaced clearly at signing. And because RISE involves SAP-owned infrastructure, your ability to exit or renegotiate mid-term is more constrained than a traditional on-premise or hyperscaler-hosted arrangement.
SAP bundles BTP credits into every RISE deal. Industry data shows 70% of enterprises never fully consume them — yet you're paying for them in the per-user fee from day one of the contract.
SAP prices RISE based on Named User counts at contract signing. Organisations that over-count during the planning phase pay Professional rates for users who will never need that access level at steady state.
The infrastructure component of RISE — SAP's managed cloud hosting — carries escalation clauses that can increase costs by 3–5% annually. Over five years, this adds significantly to the total contract value SAP quoted you at signing.
RISE includes SAP Enterprise Support. You cannot substitute this for a third-party support provider — a right that on-premise customers retain. This removes a key cost lever that has saved enterprises 30–50% on support fees outside of RISE.
SAP offers migration credits for existing on-premise licences — but the exchange rates and credit mechanics are complex. Enterprises routinely receive less value for their on-premise investments than the credit headline figures suggest.
SAP's RISE proposals are typically presented as a per-user-per-month figure. What is not presented clearly: escalation clauses, BTP credit utilisation shortfalls, and the support premium that accrues over the term. An independent total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis consistently shows the true 5-year cost is 20–40% higher than the headline figure suggests.
Our RISE advisory team has reviewed over 50 RISE proposals. We have never reviewed one that did not contain material negotiation opportunities that the client's own team had not identified.
SAP has positioned GROW with SAP as the route for mid-market customers and RISE with SAP for enterprise. In practice, SAP's commercial team will push enterprise buyers toward RISE regardless of whether it is the optimal commercial or technical choice. An independent assessment of RISE vs. GROW vs. a traditional licence transition is a critical first step before any RISE commitment.
What We Deliver
We work exclusively for the buyer. We do not have an SAP partnership agreement to protect. We do not receive referral fees from implementation partners. Our only objective is to ensure you sign a RISE contract on terms that are genuinely fair.
We decompose the bundled RISE pricing into its component parts — infrastructure, licences, support, BTP credits — and benchmark each individually against market rates and comparable SAP deals. Every component that is above market becomes a negotiation lever.
We build a true 5-year TCO model that includes escalation clauses, projected BTP credit consumption, support obligations, and migration cost accounting. We compare this against the cost of continuing on-premise, third-party hosting, or an alternative cloud path — so your decision is made on complete information.
SAP's user counts in RISE proposals are often inflated. We validate your actual user requirements — by role, by system access pattern, and against the RISE licence type definitions — to ensure you are contracting for the users you actually need, at the right user type and the right price per user.
We review every commercial clause in the RISE contract — escalation indices, exit provisions, infrastructure SLAs, data portability rights, and amendment mechanisms. We identify terms that are standard-but-negotiable and terms that are genuinely problematic, and we draft the counterproposals for your legal and procurement teams.
If you hold existing SAP on-premise licences, your migration credits are a significant asset in the RISE negotiation. We calculate the true economic value of your current licence position and ensure SAP's migration credit mechanism reflects that value accurately — rather than the discounted rate SAP's commercial team will initially propose.
SAP BTP credits included in RISE deals are frequently over-provisioned for the contract year and under-structured for actual use cases. We analyse your planned BTP consumption and negotiate credit volumes, rollover terms, and consumption flexibility that match your implementation roadmap — not SAP's revenue target.
How We Work
SAP's RISE sales cycle typically runs 6–12 months for enterprise deals. We engage early — at the proposal stage — and stay through to contract signature. The longer you wait to bring in independent advice, the more of your negotiating position you give away.
We start the moment you share SAP's RISE proposal with us — Order Form, indicative BoM, and any term sheets. We conduct an initial briefing to understand your current SAP landscape, your migration timeline, and the business objectives driving the RISE decision.
We break down the bundled pricing, validate user counts against actual requirements, model the full 5-year TCO, and identify every clause that requires negotiation or amendment. This analysis is typically completed within 10–15 business days of receiving the proposal documents.
We deliver a structured negotiation brief that prioritises every issue by commercial impact and negotiating probability. We draft the formal counterproposal for SAP — covering pricing, user counts, BTP credits, escalation clauses, and T&C amendments — and brief your procurement and legal teams on the rationale behind each position.
We support your team through the negotiation process — attending commercial calls, advising on SAP's counterarguments, and tracking concessions. SAP will push back. We ensure you understand which pushbacks are genuine constraints and which are standard commercial posturing designed to make you concede.
Before you sign, we conduct a final line-by-line review of the agreed RISE contract against our negotiation objectives. We confirm that every agreed amendment has been correctly incorporated and identify any language that has been altered from what was agreed verbally. Nothing is signed until we have cleared it.
Who This Is For
CIO / IT Director
SAP's commercial team creates urgency — limited-time pricing, end-of-quarter deadlines, named enterprise discounts that will "expire." This is negotiating tactics, not genuine constraint. We help you resist the pressure and take the time required to evaluate the deal properly.
CFO / Finance Director
Monthly per-user pricing is SAP's way of making a large capital commitment look manageable. Our TCO modelling converts the proposal into the true multiyear commitment so your board can make the decision with complete financial visibility.
Procurement Lead
General enterprise procurement skills are not sufficient for a RISE negotiation. SAP's commercial teams are highly specialised, deal repeatedly with buyers who are negotiating for the first and only time, and operate from positions developed over years of RISE engagements. You need SAP-specific counterweight.
ERP Programme Director
RISE contract terms — migration milestones, go-live dates, user ramp schedules — directly affect your programme delivery. We ensure the contract's commercial structure reflects your implementation reality, not SAP's idealised timeline.
Track Record
See how we've helped enterprise organisations negotiate RISE with SAP contracts in our SAP licensing case studies.
Related Services
Get Your RISE Proposal Reviewed
Before you sign a 5-year RISE with SAP commitment, get an independent review. Our RISE advisory engagement typically takes 4–8 weeks and is consistently the highest-returning investment our clients make in their SAP programmes.
Frequently Asked Questions
As early as possible — ideally before SAP's commercial team has built significant momentum around a specific proposal. The best time is at the RFP or initial proposal stage, before term sheets have been exchanged. We have also engaged on deals that are "close to signature" and still found material savings. But the earlier we are involved, the more negotiating leverage you retain.
It depends entirely on the deal terms and your organisation's specific situation. RISE offers real value — managed infrastructure, streamlined support, and a defined migration path to S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. But value is not determined by what SAP charges for it. An independent TCO comparison — accounting for your existing licence investments, infrastructure costs, and the RISE contract's full 5-year economics — is the only way to answer this honestly. See our RISE with SAP guide for a framework for making this assessment.
Almost everything in a RISE proposal is negotiable — user counts, user type classifications, BTP credit volumes, escalation indices, migration credit exchange rates, and contract T&Cs. SAP's commercial team will present the proposal as standardised pricing. It is not. The RISE commercial structure has more flexibility than SAP's sales team will initially acknowledge, particularly for enterprise deals above certain thresholds. Our contract negotiation experience confirms this repeatedly.
Your existing on-premise licences are converted into migration credits within the RISE structure. The credit exchange mechanism — how much value SAP assigns to your existing investment — is one of the most important financial elements of the RISE negotiation. SAP's initial migration credit proposals almost always undervalue existing licence investments. Our advisory includes a detailed analysis of your current licence position and its true economic value in the RISE context. For more on this, see our SAP licence optimisation service.
Yes. RISE with SAP bundles SAP Enterprise Support, and the terms prevent substitution with third-party support providers — a lever that on-premise customers can use to save 30–50% on support costs. This is a genuine commercial cost of RISE that must be factored into any TCO comparison. Our SAP support cost reduction service is specifically relevant for on-premise customers who want to reduce costs before transitioning to RISE.
SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is SAP's integration, extension, and data management platform. RISE bundles BTP credits — a fixed consumption allowance — into the contract. The problem is that BTP credits are bundled based on SAP's projections of what you'll need, not what you'll actually consume. 70% of enterprises under-consume their BTP credits while paying for them in the per-user fee. We right-size BTP credit volumes and negotiate consumption flexibility to ensure you pay for what you use. Contact our SAP advisory team to discuss your specific BTP requirements.
Every RISE with SAP agreement contains clauses that quietly expand SAP's audit rights and pricing leverage. This guide identifies all six categories of red flags before you commit.
Read the guide → 💸The ten most financially damaging clauses SAP embeds in enterprise agreements — including RISE-specific migration traps and locked-in escalation mechanisms.
Read the guide → 📈RISE with SAP agreements typically contain no price caps. Six contractual protections — with model language — that limit SAP's annual pricing leverage over your cloud term.
Read the guide → 🔄RISE contracts often auto-renew at SAP's discretion. How to find these provisions, negotiate termination rights, and avoid being locked into renewals you didn't intend to sign.
Read the guide → 🏗️SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition licensing explained — subscription mechanics, Named User types, contract traps, and how to negotiate 20–35% savings on your Cloud ERP PE deal.
Read the guide → ⚖️What actually changed between RISE with SAP and Cloud ERP Private Edition — contract structure, licensing, lock-in differences, and what enterprise buyers need to know before signing.
Read the guide → ⬡BTP credits, optional modules, digital access, user classification, and the negotiation strategies that consistently deliver 25–35% savings on RISE add-on commitments.
Read the guide → ❓18 questions SAP least wants to answer — covering BTP credits, optional modules, digital access volumes, renewal pricing, and the BoM demand SAP always resists.
Read the guide → 🔄When your RISE contract comes up for renewal, the window before expiry defines your leverage. Understand the six renewal phases, seven negotiable components, and how to achieve 25–35% savings.
Read the guide → 🤝Eight proven strategies for RISE renewal negotiations — disaggregation plays, competitive benchmarking, fiscal calendar judo, escalation ceiling caps, and countering SAP's five-move renewal playbook.
Read the guide →