Engagement Snapshot
A prominent US-based professional services firm with over 200,000 employees engaged Redress Compliance to assist with its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement renewal. The company's IT environment supported diverse operations including consulting, digital transformation projects, and technology integration services for global clients. The upcoming EA renewal represented a critical opportunity to assess current deployments across business units, optimise licence allocations, align the licensing strategy with future growth plans, benchmark costs against industry peers, and negotiate flexible terms for scalability and cost predictability.
Professional services firms with 200,000+ employees operate among the most licence-intensive Microsoft environments in any industry. The combination of consultants working across multiple client environments, project-based teams that scale rapidly, global office networks, and heavy reliance on collaboration tools creates enormous scope for over-provisioning. Microsoft's default EA proposals assign uniform licence tiers that fail to account for the diverse usage profiles across consulting, technology, and back-office functions. Without usage-pattern analysis, professional services firms of this scale routinely pay 20 to 35% more than necessary on their Microsoft EA.
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Phase 1: Deployment Assessment
Redress conducted a comprehensive inventory of the firm's entire Microsoft estate: a detailed inventory of Microsoft product usage including Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform; analysis of licence utilisation across global offices to identify inefficiencies and underutilised resources; assessment of cloud and on-premise hybrid setups to ensure alignment with IT goals; and mapping of usage patterns by business unit, role, and geography.
Phase 2: Optimisation Strategies
Licences were consolidated across overlapping business functions to eliminate redundancy. Select teams were transitioned to more cost-effective licensing models based on usage patterns. Low-priority solutions were identified and recommended for discontinuation to streamline the portfolio. Total annual licence optimisation savings: $8.4 million. This optimisation baseline is critical — at 200,000+ employees, even small per-seat savings compound into millions, and the negotiated percentage savings are applied against the already-reduced number.
Phase 3: Strategic Roadmap Development
A three-year cloud-first transformation plan was created in collaboration with IT leadership. Investments in AI-driven analytics and collaborative platforms were prioritised to enhance client delivery. Flexibility was built in to adapt to evolving client demands and employee needs. Licensing commitments were aligned with planned adoption milestones to ensure the EA supported planned workload growth without triggering costly mid-term renegotiations.
Phase 4: Benchmarking and Negotiation
Redress benchmarked licensing terms and pricing against other professional services firms with similar global footprints. Key cost-saving opportunities in Azure and Dynamics 365 were identified based on market trends. A robust negotiation plan achieved volume-based discounts and favourable terms. Data-driven recommendations were presented to Microsoft, leveraging deployment insights to secure cost savings. A flexible agreement structure accommodated growth and seasonal demand fluctuations. Concessions were secured on advanced features and training packages for workforce enablement. Additional negotiated discount savings beyond optimisation: $4.6 million over the three-year EA term.
Results
Annual savings from licence optimisation reached $8.4 million. Additional negotiated discount savings added $4.6 million over the three-year term. Total savings over the EA term: $13 million. The firm achieved full compliance with all Microsoft licensing policies. Licence complexity was reduced across departments with streamlined management. Collaboration tools were improved for global teams. A flexible EA was secured supporting future technology initiatives and scalability. For more on our approach, see our Microsoft contract negotiation service and EA optimisation service.
"Redress Compliance delivered exceptional value by optimizing our Microsoft licensing strategy. Their insights and negotiation expertise ensured we secured a flexible agreement aligned with our business goals while achieving significant cost savings. They were a trusted partner throughout the process."
CIO, Large US Professional Services Company
How Redress Compliance Can Help
As a fully independent advisory firm, Redress Compliance provides objective Microsoft EA advisory, licence optimisation, and negotiation support — with no commercial relationship with Microsoft. Professional services firms with large, distributed workforces represent some of the highest-value Microsoft EA renewal opportunities. The combination of deployment assessment across global offices, role-based optimisation for consultants versus corporate staff, Power Platform and Dynamics 365 rationalisation, industry benchmarking, and evidence-based negotiation typically delivers 20 to 35% reductions in overall EA cost. At 200,000+ employees, even small per-seat savings compound into millions.
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