This article will describe the basic SAP licensing model, its difficulties, and how SAP customers typically handle the issue of licensing. In order to keep it simple, we will not include a discussion of “engines” (e.g., payroll, etc.), which are additional components that are charged separately, on top of the basic licensing fees.

This how to guide is designed for you to gain greater insight to your SAP contract and provides you with a simpler explanation on some keys sections. When companies purchase software from SAP, they are required to sign a contract as they would with any other software vendor. This contract defines a lot of issues like what the exact software is that they’re buying and what exactly is included in the purchase. For our purposes, the contract is also what defines the licensing structure. As this is a practical document about SAP license optimization and not a legal-oriented document, we will only highlight the most important topics for our perspective, which is to understand the relevant contract parts for future negotiations.

Hypothetical situation - say you’re the authorization manager – either a SAP authorization manager or a general authorization manager and you need to grant authorizations to users. Now this isnt really your actual job but it was delegated to you by someone who said, "Hey, you can grant authorizations to users, it’s really not that complicated". In fact, it is really quite simple; technically it is just to add the right authorization to the user. Now, say someone is filling out paperwork requesting the authorization for MM01 (to create materials) – you would search for one authorization role that includes this activity (out of 50 possible options) and grant it. That’s it, right? Good job?!
No, not really. Let me show you the correct way to grant authorizations.

This How To Guide is a bit different than most document you have seen in the past, because we feel there isn’t anything better than hearing from actual customers. This is a collection of select tips, tricks, and advice that have been gathered from our customers who continuously pass one licensing audit after the next, and are well prepared at all times. These customers are continuously checking their licensing status and constantly optimizing it according to changes that occur at their companies.

SAP audits can be time-consuming and a drain on your resources. If you are not prepared, you can spend weeks combing through the data. Once you have completed all the data mining and prepare your report, do you know what risks you have or have identified risks you didn’t know existed? If you follow these tips from our actual customers, you will be one step closer in preparation for your next audit.

Recently, indirect access has been a hot topic that many organizations cannot get away from these days. This how to guide shows organizations how to take better control of their SAP licensing focusing around indirect access.

Although they are spending millions of dollars, many SAP customers do not really know what licenses they actually have, what licenses they really need, and what they don’t.

SAP is one of the most expensive software systems in the market, yet many organizations still treat their SAP licensing like a black box; they see it in terms of input and output without any knowledge of how it works. We were shocked to find some customers that felt that their SAP licensing was an invincible force that they were powerless against.