Major UK Retailer Optimizes and Renews Their Microsoft EA Early to Avoid Price Increase and Secure £1M Savings
Company Profile
This major UK retailer and its brands provide jobs to over 50,000 employees. They have a Multi-Vendor Managed Service through Anglepoint and were preparing for a Microsoft EA renewal that was due in June 2023. Microsoft announced the 10% price increase that would come in to play on April 1st, this client had to act quickly to avoid the increased spend and protect the business’s stakeholders from impacts the extra unbudgeted spend would have on their earnings. With a lack of resources and expertise in-house, they called upon their Managed Service with Anglepoint to deliver the renewal 6 months early, this secured the renewal with a lower price increase and uncovered additional savings of £1M.
Renewal in the face of a painful price increase
This Anglepoint client has a large and complex Microsoft estate that supports a number of brands meaning they have a responsibility to many stakeholders to ensure this is managed effectively, the Multi-Vendor Managed Service was put in place to provide this support.
With an EA renewal due at the end of June, the announcement of Microsoft’s 10% price increase for 365 Business Premium on April 1st meant that they would have to act quickly to secure the current pricing. The renewal had to be brought forward by 3 months and would require resources and Microsoft expertise to ensure that the 10% increase was avoided but, more importantly, the optimization of their Microsoft estate was delivered to the same standard. The client didn’t have the resources in house to deliver this in the time frame.
The client had access to the 2022 True-Up figures but without the licensing skills internally they were unable to apply the knowledge & experience required to analyze each item and understand where unused software could be removed and where they were under licensed, opening them up to the risk of unnecessary spend.
Negotiating the new Bill of Material
Anglepoint worked with the client to scrutinize every line in the True Up. They looked at usage data and spoke with each department responsible then overlaid years of experience of this vendor’s licensing to deduce the exact requirements for each application and how it should be purchased. Through this process they were able to uncover substantial opportunities to remove unused licenses, in one instance 3k licenses were removed totaling annual costs of £500k. They mitigated risk on other products where there were inadequate licenses.
They worked with the client to negotiate the new Bill of Material with their reseller to lock in the renewal 3 months early to ensure the pricing for their 2023 renewal.
Mitigated £100K of risk
Through the proactive management of their software Estate supported by Anglepoint’s Managed Service and scalable access to a team of experts, the client secured the cost avoidance that would have been incurred due to the 10% price increase and, in addition to this, they realized a further £1M of saving on unused software and mitigated £100K of risk. The client continues to deliver value to their stakeholders year over year.
With an EA renewal due at the end of June, the announcement of Microsoft’s 10% price increase for 365 Business Premium on April 1st meant that they would have to act quickly to secure the current pricing.
