S/4HANA: The path to an optimized license landscape

The costliest mistake can be made right at the beginning

The silly thing is that you sometimes don't even notice it: most companies still firmly believe that their license landscape is halfway in order, after all, they have always put a lot of - mostly manual - effort into it over the years. They may know that some licenses are missing, but they are also very sure that they know which ones will have to be purchased soon.

So now we come and say: "You could be very wrong!"

The S/4HANA transformation is not easy. The options for switching are not always clearly structured or transparent. There are several options with different financial implications. The cloud version is heavily discounted by SAP. Whether this will still be the case later, when the first rental contract has expired, remains to be seen.

But let's get straight to the first mistake mentioned, which is unfortunately made very often: What do you normally do when you move into a new house or a new apartment? Exactly, you look at what can go, what has never been used and what will ultimately save space in your new home. Because moving house is expensive enough as it is.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what most companies do not do and they simply move into the S/4HANA world with bags and baggage. Perhaps a product is considered that was once purchased but is no longer needed, but the cost drivers tend to remain unaffected. Because SAP is aware of this problem, it offers a service - more on this in a moment.

Let's reveal the secret, which is actually no secret at all:

User licenses: take along, converted, or rented via FUEs?

The user licenses can be taken along in a "Product Conversion", converted into the new S/4HANA licenses in a Contract Conversion, or rented and populated under "RISE with SAP" using FUEs.

SAP will be happy to show you what the right change variables should be with its STAR analysis. This analysis quickly looks at all currently distributed authorization objects and then spits out a corresponding license per user in this SAP system - perfectly fine.

What SAP does not do, however, is to first clean out everything that has accumulated over the years and that can be removed. This is exactly what VOQUZ Labs has been doing for companies for years and is now involved in numerous transformation projects worldwide.

With samQ - Licence Optimizer for SAP® Software, we have the "license declutterer" par excellence. It not only automatically optimizes the complex existing license landscape and quickly determines what can be removed, but also uses its integrated analyses to evaluate what will really be needed in the new S/4HANA world in the future.

Stay compliant with samQ and pass every SAPaudit? Of course, you can!

Admittedly, it is not easy to find out whether a user really needs their "Professional License" or whether a "Worker" would suffice. It is complicated to determine whether a former "Worker" in the S/4HANA world needs a Professional, Advanced, Functionality, Core or Productivity or a Self-Service license. Or might they not need a paid license at all because their current activities are licensed by other metrics?

That's why you should have this done by reliable, established, fast and secure software - accompanied by experts who don't just wipe the surface before the "new furniture" arrives.

We then use this basic data from samQ to feed our next tool, visoryQ - Business Case Builder for SAP® Software, and can use this as a basis to determine a wide variety of strategies for S/4HANA transformation and show which path suits the respective company and how the most costs can be saved.