How to Successfully Complete an SAP Audit: Insights from an Automotive Company’s Success Story with Trustworthy Data
Company Profile
This organization is the North American arm of a global motor manufacturer. In 2022 they engaged with Anglepoint to build a sustainable SAM program and produce Effective License Positions (ELPs) for many software publishers. Within this project was a requirement to deploy a ServiceNow SAM integration so that accurate, named user data could be measured and accessed to allow a regular flow of data into ServiceNow. This data was crucial for the organization to manage licenses, security, and system access and ensure compliance with SAP’s terms and conditions.
During the engagement, this client received an audit letter from SAP which increased the pressure to deliver the ELP for this software publisher. Anglepoint completed the robust integration with ServiceNow and then, through a process of deep analysis and the remediation of multiple compliance issues, the SAP audit final figure for named-user licenses was reduced to $0.
The client was concerned that providing the current USMM (User Measurement Management) reports would initiate a multi-month dispute with SAP, wasting time and resources and potentially leading to substantial spend on unnecessary SAP licenses.
When Anglepoint arrived on the scene, the data collection for SAP had to be gathered manually by the software asset management team. The SAM team didn’t know how to undertake SAP measurement or how to interpret the SAP entitlement data. There were many contracts with at least a dozen appendices which made it even more difficult to determine what software the client owned and how they could use it. When Anglepoint’s SAP team first executed the license position without the help of ServiceNow, they had to work closely with the SAP security team to produce complex and cumbersome .txt files manually from the USMM tool with each of the many SAP ABAP systems. These reports were the only way to determine accurately what kinds of user licenses had been provisioned inside of SAP and the process was extremely time consuming. The security team was overburdened with mission critical tasks, so getting them to find the time to produce these reports was difficult. Once we were able to secure the reports, often they were in the wrong format causing even more delays and headaches.
Anglepoint would need to deploy the SAP publisher pack in the SAM application within ServiceNow, offering the ability to deliver high quality actionable data increased.
Anglepoint quickly gathered all relevant SAP entitlement information to establish the client’s SAP entitlement position. The majority of their SAP spend was in the Named User category. Anglepoint’s SAP experts looked closely at the 6 different named user types the client had purchased and determined the different methodologies that would be necessary to gather appropriate license consumption data.
For Named User data, Anglepoint worked closely with the client’s SAP security team to instruct them on how to execute and export USMM on each of their production and development SAP systems. This USMM data provides audit-level accuracy so that Anglepoint can produce a trustworthy Effective License Position.
After meticulous analysis of the USMM data and raw table-level data, Anglepoint determined an initial compliance risk of over $1M. This overage was as a result of two key points. Firstly, numerous users were not categorized at all in USMM and therefore, by SAP audit rule, would be assigned the most expensive user license called a Professional Named User. Anglepoint worked closely with the security team to understand which SAP users were “actual” professional users and then provided a comprehensive list of which users should be updated in the system so that instead they were assigned an accurate, less costly “platform” user type. The second was that many users appeared to be “stale” and had not logged in to the system in over 4 months, yet their “validity date” settings were not set. This meant those users could technically still log in, so they would require a Named User license per SAP. Anglepoint provided this analysis to the client’s SAP security team, and they worked to set accurate validity dates on those stale users so that they would no longer require a named user license.
Anglepoint worked diligently to complete the implementation of the robust SAP publisher pack in ServiceNow so that the Named User data could regularly flow into the Software Asset Workspace and not require the USMM reports to be run ad-hoc by the SAP security team. This meant Anglepoint did not have to bother the security team with data requests every time they wanted to do an SAP measurement. Also, SAM could have almost real-time SAP measurement data within the ServiceNow SAM application. This was a huge breakthrough for the client’s ITAM team as it meant they could maintain SAP named user compliance on a regular cadence. A deep analysis of the data flowing into ServiceNow was required to enable them to align the user data with the appropriate discovery models and software models so that proper license reconciliation could occur.
Following this deep user analysis and update, Anglepoint worked with the client’s SAP security team to execute and export the USMM data so that they could analyze the data and amend the Effective License Position once again.
The strong relationship between Anglepoint and the client enabled them to navigate a challenging and complex situation with SAP. Anglepoint’s ServiceNow and SAP expertise coupled with the client’s SAP team’s experience enabled the required remediation to be uncovered and actioned effectively, avoiding excessive future license costs. The result of the software audit was positive, and the findings were reduced to $0 fees in named user licenses.
Today, Anglepoint continues to support this client with a 10-publisher managed service including SAP.
There was a substantial overage, partially because numerous users were not categorized at all in USMM and therefore, by SAP audit rule, would be assigned the most expensive user license called a Professional Named User.
Effective Management Of Your SAP Estate
SAP licensing is complex. The disconnect between what license managers purchase and what SAP administrators deploy can expose your company to compliance risks. Thankfully, we found an easier way to help you understand and optimize your SAP estate.