How to Get the Perfect S/4HANA Licensing Deal

In case you were unable to catch our webinar, ‘How to Get a Perfect S/4HANA Licensing Deal’, we took some notes for you.

Watch our webinar on How to Get the Perfect S/4HANA Licensing Deal.


Why S/4HANA

• SAP will discontinue mainstream maintenance at the end of 2025 for SAP Business Suite 7 core application releases.
  
• This means that customers must migrate to S/4HANA.
  
• It could take months to years to migrate so planning is crucial.
  

What are some major differences between S/4HANA and legacy licensing?

• S/4HANA is “KPI-based licensing” (engine licensing only). Legacy is named user and engine-based licensing.
  
• S/4HANA provides 3 licensing options:
        – Perpetual
        – Subscription
        – Consumption (SAP cloud services)
  
• There are also differences in price:

How to convert to S/4HANA?

• There are 2 ways to convert – product conversion and contract conversion.
      
  • Product:
             – Can only convert into products with a valid conversion path.
             – Requires line-item mapping.
             – 100% of classic product maintenance base is carried forward.
             – Customer may be entitled to 100% credit up to net payable of new S4 product.
          
  • Contract:
             – Customer can reconfigure their landscape – re-allocate shelfware and apply credit to new, unrelated software licenses.
             – Conversion credit equal to the lesser of 100% of prior maintenance base or 90% of new net payable.
    
    
    How to best prepare for conversion?
    
    
  • The first step when preparing to convert to S/4HANA is to ask yourself a few questions:
          – What SAP licenses do I own today?
          – How many SAP licenses do I need today?
          – Can I optimize my current license consumption?
          – Will my license needs change over time and if so, how?
    
  • Cleaning up your SAP environment is crucial before converting:
          – Measure your SAP systems to identify relevant SAP user accounts.
          – Deactivate inactive user accounts and check on suspicious service user accounts.
          – Identify and review authorization roles including authorization objects.
          – Optimize authorization roles and derive appropriate license types.
          – Consolidate user accounts for SAP named users and derive license demand.
    
    
    What are some tips when it comes to negotiating the deal?
    
    
  • Make sure that “your house is in order” (clean up – see above).
    
  • Know your current and future license demand and your shelf-ware.
    
  • Fight for high discounts and lock them for future purchases as long as possible.
    
  • Try to keep legacy use rights where needed.
    
  • Agree on a system measurement pause as long as possible.
    
  • Consider commitment rather than selective purchase.
    
    
    We can help.
    
    Anglepoint can help as you convert to S/4HANA:
    
    
  • S/4HANA Licensing Roadmap (1-4 weeks).
    
  • Digital Access Risk Analysis (4-8 weeks).
    
  • Named User Baseline (4-8 weeks).
    
  • Authorization Role Optimization (12+ weeks).
    
    If you have any additional questions, you can schedule a time to meet with one of our experts or contact us at info@anglepoint.com.