Client Situation: The Challenge

SAP licensing costs had been growing year-over-year with no corresponding growth in actual system usage. Each campus independently managed its own SAP user provisioning and licence allocations, creating a decentralised environment where no single team had visibility into the total licence footprint.

Growing costs with no visibility

Annual SAP maintenance fees compounded the problem: every unnecessary licence incurred 22 percent annual maintenance in addition to the original licence cost.

Licence type misalignment

Administrative staff across multiple campuses held SAP Professional licences (typically $3,200 to $4,600 per user) even though their actual SAP usage was limited to HR self-service tasks, requiring only Employee Self-Service licences at a fraction of the cost ($200 to $400).

Duplicate accounts across campuses

Employees with roles at multiple campuses had duplicate user IDs—one per campus—each consuming a separate named user licence. The audit revealed hundreds of duplicate accounts representing significant unnecessary licence cost.

No centralised governance

Each campus managed SAP access independently with no standard process for licence type assignment, no periodic usage review, and no deprovisioning workflow linked to HR offboarding.

Engagement Approach: Centralised Usage Review

Redress Compliance was engaged to conduct a centralised SAP usage review across all campuses, consolidating usage data, identifying duplicates and inactive accounts, mapping job functions to appropriate licence types, and building a unified licence management framework.

Consolidated usage data collection

Data was extracted from each campus to review system usage data and transaction history.

Duplicate and inactive account identification

The analysis identified hundreds of duplicate user accounts—the same individual with accounts at multiple campuses, each consuming a separate named user licence.

Role analysis and licence type mapping

Each job function across the university system was reviewed to match actual SAP usage with the appropriate licence type. The SAP licence hierarchy (Professional, Limited Professional, Employee/ESS, Test/Developer) was applied based on actual transaction codes executed by each user.

All reclassifications were validated against SAP's USMM (User and System Measurement Message) methodology—the same tool SAP uses during licence audits—to ensure audit-defensibility.

Governance Framework: Preventing Reaccumulation

A unified licence management process was developed with five core mechanisms: centralised provisioning through a single administrator, automated HR-to-SAP deprovisioning within 30 days, annual USMM usage reviews for reclassification, cross-campus identity management with single user IDs, and a quarterly reporting dashboard.

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Before and After: Optimisation Outcomes

Lever 1: Licence type reclassification

Reclassifying users from Professional to Limited Professional or Employee/ESS produced the largest single savings impact. SAP Professional licences cost $3,200 to $4,600 per user per year. Employee/ESS licences cost $200 to $400. The reclassification of several hundred users from Professional to Employee/ESS generated $1.5M to $2M in annual savings.

Lever 2: Duplicate account elimination

Eliminating hundreds of duplicate accounts recovered one full named user licence per duplicate, generating $800K to $1.2M annually.

Lever 3: Inactive account removal

Removing inactive accounts (departed employees, retired faculty, expired temporary staff) recovered licences with zero system usage, generating $400K to $600K annually.

Total result: 31 percent reduction in named user licence costs across the entire university system.

Lessons Learned