SAP | Livingstone Group

Take control to optimise the costs of your SAP estate

SAP have been very acquisitive over the last 15 years and this has added layers’ upon of layers of complexity when trying to understand your overall licensing position and ensuring value is being obtained from the investment. ERP is typically the largest part of an SAP footprint and in terms of opportunity, the best place to focus on is the standard metrics. When looking into these enterprise applications there is always confusion and complexity around what has been provisioned and what is actually required. You need to license what is provisioned, but this might not reflect what you actually need. Understanding and optimizing profiles often provides the biggest bang for your buck.

Something that is becoming more common are the issues associated to the virtualization of some of the older SAP technologies such as Business Objects. This is very similar to the issues, for example, you might find with the virtualization of Oracle DB and SAP is currently very active in terms of finding users where virtualization terms are not being met within existing or historical contracts.

In general, SAP contracts are very in difficult to change. This means that once you have made the commitment it is virtually impossible to downsize or reduce spend. Therefore it is crucial you have a clear understanding of your specific obligations before signing up. You then have limited opportunities, which will only happen every few years, to reassess and change contractual arrangements so seeking expertise advice in advance of signing on the dotted line to is essential.

SAP S/4 HANA Advisory

After 2025 SAP will only be supporting Customers who are converted to S/4 HANA. Many of Livingstone Groups’s clients are already in the process of planning the technical migration since this is a quite complex exercise. Whilst the technical migration is complicated, the license contract conversion will also present its own challenges. It is essential to understand the new products offered and the impact on updated licences. Additionally, there are changes to user types which are very different from the old SAP. Livingstone’s experts will help you understand what is new in S/4 HANA and when & why you should migrate.