The Challenge: Escalating Costs Misaligned with a Sustainability-Driven Strategy
The company is a leading Finnish energy provider with operations spanning multiple European markets and over 20,000 employees. Salesforce served as a critical platform for managing customer engagement, energy efficiency programmes, renewable energy project tracking, and sales automation across its business units. However, the existing Salesforce agreement had become a growing source of cost pressure and strategic misalignment.
As the company expanded its renewable energy initiatives and customer engagement programmes, Salesforce costs had escalated significantly — driven by expanded usage across new business units, premium add-ons acquired for specific projects, and inflexible contract terms that prevented the company from adjusting its licence portfolio as needs evolved. The company lacked visibility into actual licence utilisation, making it impossible to distinguish between productive spending and waste.
📚 Related Reading
Key Issues in the Existing Agreement
🔴 Problems Identified
- Escalating costs from expanded usage across multiple business units
- Misalignment between purchased features and actual operational needs
- Limited scalability to accommodate renewable energy growth initiatives
- Lack of transparency in licence utilisation across European operations
- €1M+ in redundant premium features accumulated over prior contract terms
🟢 What We Achieved
- 30% annual cost reduction through strategic renegotiation
- Licence allocations aligned to actual user needs by business unit
- Scalable terms tied to renewable energy project timelines
- Real-time usage monitoring framework implemented
- Price caps secured for future growth, ensuring cost predictability
The Process: Redress Compliance's Five-Phase Approach
Phase 1: Comprehensive Usage Audit
Redress Compliance reviewed Salesforce deployments across the company's customer service operations, renewable energy project management teams, sustainability initiative groups, and sales automation workflows. We analysed login frequency, feature adoption, and workflow utilisation for every licence type — from Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to Energy & Utilities Cloud capabilities, analytics tools, and premium add-ons.
The audit revealed significant inefficiencies. Several business units held Enterprise Edition licences for users whose workflows were fully supported by Professional Edition features. Analytics add-ons purchased for specific energy efficiency programmes had not been decommissioned after those programmes were completed. And licence counts across regional operations exceeded actual headcount requirements by 15–25%, indicating systematic over-provisioning.
Phase 2: Needs Assessment and Prioritisation
We collaborated directly with business unit leaders across the company's customer operations, renewable energy, and sustainability divisions to understand their critical Salesforce requirements — both current and projected. This needs assessment mapped the company's renewable energy expansion roadmap against Salesforce capability requirements, identifying which features were essential for future growth and which were non-essential subscriptions that could be eliminated.
This phase was particularly important for the energy sector, where Salesforce usage patterns are shifting rapidly as companies invest in smart grid technologies, customer self-service portals, and renewable energy certificate tracking. By mapping future needs precisely, we ensured the renegotiated contract supported the company's strategic direction without over-committing to capabilities that might not materialise.
Phase 3: Benchmarking and Negotiation Preparation
We benchmarked the company's Salesforce costs, discount levels, and contract terms against other European energy sector organisations of comparable size and scope. This benchmarking revealed that the company's per-user pricing was significantly above the median for energy companies with similar licence volumes, and that several contract provisions — including renewal escalators, licence flexibility, and scalability terms — were less favourable than industry norms.
Using this data, we developed a negotiation strategy centred on three objectives: immediate cost reduction through licence optimisation and add-on elimination, competitive repricing aligned with energy sector benchmarks, and structural contract improvements including scalable licensing tied to renewable energy project milestones and price protection caps for the full contract term.
Phase 4: Negotiation and Contract Realignment
Redress Compliance engaged directly with Salesforce's account team, presenting a detailed proposal documenting inefficiencies, benchmarking comparisons, and optimisation opportunities. The negotiation addressed three distinct cost levers.
Lever 1: Enterprise Licence Discounts
We secured significant discounts on the company's enterprise licence base and analytics tools by demonstrating that current pricing was above energy sector benchmarks. The repricing applied to both existing licences and projected growth volumes, ensuring the company's cost per user remained competitive as its Salesforce deployment scaled with renewable energy expansion.
Lever 2: Redundant Feature Elimination
€1 million in redundant premium features were identified and removed from the agreement. These included analytics capabilities duplicated by the company's existing data platform, sandbox environments provisioned beyond actual development needs, integration connectors for systems that had been decommissioned, and premium support tiers that exceeded actual service requirements.
Lever 3: Scalable and Flexible Terms
We negotiated flexible licensing terms that allowed the company to scale its Salesforce deployment up or down based on actual usage and renewable energy project timelines — rather than committing to fixed volumes years in advance. Price caps were secured for future growth, ensuring predictable cost structures regardless of how quickly the company's renewable energy initiatives scaled.
Salesforce renewal coming up? Get expert negotiation support.
Salesforce Negotiation →Phase 5: Implementation and Governance
Following the renegotiation, Redress Compliance implemented a licence management framework enabling real-time monitoring of Salesforce usage across all business units and geographies. We delivered training sessions for the company's IT and procurement teams covering Salesforce licensing models, usage optimisation techniques, and renewal preparation strategies. Regular review cadences were established to ensure continued alignment between Salesforce spend and operational objectives.
The Results: €3.8 Million in Savings with Sustainability-Aligned Scalability
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Total Savings (3-Year Term) | €3,800,000 |
| Annual Cost Reduction | 30% |
| Redundant Features Eliminated | €1,000,000 |
| Contract Flexibility | ✓ Scalable terms tied to project milestones |
| Price Protection | ✓ Growth caps secured for full term |
| Licence Alignment | ✓ Optimised across all business units |
| Governance Framework | ✓ Real-time usage monitoring implemented |
| Team Training | ✓ IT and procurement teams upskilled |
Redress Compliance provided us with the expertise to optimize our Salesforce agreement. Their strategic approach delivered significant cost savings and ensured our licensing aligned with our sustainability and growth objectives. Their support has been invaluable.
— CFO, Finnish Energy Company
Why Energy Companies Overpay for Salesforce
Energy companies across Europe face a distinctive set of Salesforce licensing pressures that consistently lead to overspending. Understanding these dynamics is essential for any energy company approaching a Salesforce renewal.
Green Transition Creates Licence Sprawl
As energy companies invest in renewable generation, smart grids, electric vehicle infrastructure, and customer sustainability programmes, each initiative generates demand for new Salesforce capabilities. These are typically addressed by adding licences and premium features — but rarely accompanied by a review of whether existing entitlements could serve the same purpose. Over successive contract terms, this pattern creates a bloated Salesforce estate where 25–35% of spending delivers no incremental value.
Project-Based Usage Creates Permanent Costs
Energy companies frequently deploy Salesforce for specific projects — renewable energy certificate tracking, energy efficiency programme management, regulatory compliance reporting. When these projects conclude or evolve, the associated Salesforce licences and add-ons are rarely decommissioned. They become permanent line items in the contract, compounding with each renewal cycle. In this engagement, €1 million in redundant features traced directly to completed or superseded project deployments.
Multi-Market Complexity Obscures Utilisation
European energy companies operating across multiple national markets face fragmented Salesforce deployments with different languages, regulatory requirements, and business processes. This complexity makes centralised visibility into licence utilisation extremely difficult — creating persistent over-provisioning that is invisible without a systematic, enterprise-wide usage audit.
Strategic Dependency Weakens Negotiation Position
Energy companies increasingly depend on Salesforce for customer-facing digital experiences, smart meter data management, and sustainability reporting. Salesforce's account teams are adept at leveraging this dependency to justify premium pricing and resist licence reductions. Without independent benchmarking data and expert negotiation support, energy companies lack the leverage to challenge above-market terms.
The Nordic Energy Pattern
Nordic energy companies are among the most advanced in Europe in their sustainability and digital transformation initiatives — which means they are also among the most exposed to Salesforce overspending. The combination of rapid green transition investment, multi-market operations, and deep Salesforce dependency creates the conditions for 25–35% cost waste. Independent negotiation support consistently closes this gap, redirecting savings toward the sustainability investments that matter most.
Key Takeaways
- Align Salesforce negotiations with your sustainability roadmap. By framing the contract around the company's renewable energy expansion and sustainability KPIs, we created a negotiation structure that delivered better terms than a pure cost-reduction approach — securing both savings and scalability.
- Usage audits across all business units are non-negotiable. Energy companies with multi-market operations consistently over-provision Salesforce licences at the regional level. A systematic usage audit across every business unit and geography is the foundation of every successful negotiation.
- Eliminate project-based licence accumulation. Premium features and add-ons deployed for specific energy projects rarely get decommissioned when those projects end. In this case, €1 million in redundant features were traced to completed or superseded initiatives.
- Benchmarking creates genuine negotiation leverage. Salesforce's pricing opacity means energy companies cannot evaluate their terms without peer comparison data. Benchmarking against European energy sector peers revealed above-market pricing that directly drove significant repricing concessions.
- Scalable terms protect against future overspending. Energy companies in green transition need licensing terms that flex with project timelines — not fixed volumes that force overcommitment. Scalable licensing with price protection caps ensures cost predictability as renewable initiatives scale.
- Governance ensures savings persist. Without real-time usage monitoring and regular review cadences, Salesforce cost optimisation is temporary. The governance framework established in this engagement prevents licence sprawl from recurring.
How Redress Compliance Optimises Salesforce Agreements
Salesforce Renewal Coming Up? Don't Negotiate Alone.
European energy companies consistently overpay for Salesforce by 25–35% — especially those in green transition with rapidly evolving licence needs. Our proven methodology combines granular usage analysis, energy sector benchmarking, and expert negotiation to deliver substantial savings while securing flexible, sustainability-aligned contract terms. Get a confidential assessment today.