Products and services enrollments, price levels, and the structural decisions that quietly set three years of pricing. Three knowledge checks along the way, and 1 clip from a senior cloud advisor.
This is a taught session, not a talking head. The instructor works through analyst grade slides, and three times the video stops on a question with four options on screen. Pause, commit to an answer, and the next slide explains which option is right and why each of the others is wrong. Once in the session the frame splits and a senior cloud advisor gives the view from inside real Oracle negotiations, and the instructor picks the clip apart when the slides return.
The full narration of this session, section by section, for reading and reference. Guest analyst clips are marked.
Welcome back, session six of forty, and the opening of module two. Module one was the landscape and the choice between vehicles. Module two goes inside the Enterprise Agreement and takes it apart mechanically, because for most large estates that is still the container everything sits in, and its mechanics are where a great deal of quiet money lives. We start with the enrollment, and here is why it matters more than it sounds: when people say the EA, they usually mean the enrollment. The master agreement above it is the legal frame, use rights, audit, transfer, and it is rarely what a commercial conversation is actually about. The enrollment holds the products, the price level, the term, the quantities, and the placements, and it fixes all of that for three years. Today: the enrollment as a container, price levels and what compression did to them, the company profile and who counts, placement decisions with their consequences attached, and the five structural choices that set three years of pricing before anyone says the word discount.
Five takeaways. One, the container: what an enrollment actually is, what it fixes for three years, and why one agreement can hold several of them, which matters enormously for multinationals. Two, price levels: how volume bands set your starting point, when the level is established, and what happens when your estate grows past it during the term, which is the first knowledge check and the answer surprises people. Three, the profile: qualified users and devices, who counts, who is excluded, and the fact that these are negotiated definitions rather than arithmetic. Four, placement: which products go inside the enterprise wide commitment and which ride alongside, revisited from session two with the reduction consequences fully attached. And five, the structure: five decisions that set three years of pricing, and a pre signature checklist that catches all of them in about twelve minutes. None of the five is a price. Every one of them decides what your prices apply to.
The enrollment as container, three things to understand. One agreement, one or more enrollments: the enrollment holds the products, the price level, the term, and the quantities, and a group can run more than one, which is exactly how multinationals and separately governed divisions end up with genuinely different terms sitting under the same master agreement, sometimes without anyone at the centre knowing. Three years fixed at signature: the enrollment's term is where session two's price hold actually lives, and everything you negotiate here is inherited by every true up that follows, which is why the enrollment is the document worth arguing about and the master agreement is the document worth reading once. And the two tiers inside it: Enterprise Products carrying the enterprise wide commitment, Additional Products riding alongside with their own frameworks and their own removal rights, and that placement is decided here, at signature, and lasts the term. So the practical habit for the whole of module two: when somebody says the EA, ask which layer they mean. Almost every commercial question is an enrollment question. Almost every legal question is a master agreement one. Confusing the two is how people end up negotiating the wrong document.
Price levels, five rows. The level itself: volume bands, conventionally A through D, set by your qualified count, and the buyer's move is simply to know which band you are in and how far you are from the next one, which is a question most estates cannot answer on demand. Establishment: the level is set from your count at signature and applied to the enrollment, so counting accurately before you sign matters, because the level then carries the whole term. Growth within the term: true ups bill at your contracted rates at your established level, and this is genuinely the EA's strength, growth is cheap inside one. Crossing a band: a larger estate may qualify for a better level, at renewal, and you raise it rather than hoping somebody notices on your behalf. And tier compression, which is the modern context: volume discounts on the enterprise products compressed four to nine percent through 2024 and 2025. The practical consequence of that last row deserves stating plainly: buyers who relied on their volume band to deliver their pricing found the band delivering less than it used to. The mix and the structure now work harder than the level does, which is a real change in how these deals should be approached.
First check. Your estate grows from two thousand nine hundred to four thousand four hundred qualified users during the term, crossing into a better volume band. What happens to your pricing? A, the better level applies automatically from the next true up. B, your enrollment keeps the level established at signature for the term, so the improvement is a renewal argument rather than an automatic adjustment, and it is one you have to raise. C, Microsoft rebates the difference at the anniversary. Or D, the level is recalculated every anniversary as standard. Pause here. When was your level established, and what exactly did the enrollment fix for three years?
The answer is B, and I want to draw out the symmetry in it, because this one genuinely cuts both ways. The enrollment fixes the commercial frame for the term and the price level is part of that frame, so growth inside the term bills at your contracted rates at your established level rather than triggering any reprice. That is why growth is cheap inside an EA: fifteen hundred new users arrive at signature era pricing, which in a market that moved eleven to nineteen percent across two waves is a real and underappreciated benefit. The other side is that the better band you have now earned does not arrive by itself. A and D describe an automatic improvement the structure does not provide. C invents a rebate mechanism that does not exist in any volume agreement I have read. And what B adds is the part buyers miss: the improvement is real, it is simply deferred to the renewal, and it belongs on your renewal ask list as an explicit item. I have seen estates that grew by fifty percent mid term, renewed without ever raising the band, and effectively paid for their own growth twice. Write the distance to the next band into the renewal file today.
The company profile, which is the question of who counts, and five points on it. Qualified users and devices: the enterprise wide commitment applies to a defined population, and that definition is written into the enrollment rather than derived from your headcount, which is the distinction the second check turns on. The exclusions matter: which categories sit outside the qualified population is a negotiated question, and every category correctly excluded at signature is a category you do not pay for across three years. Affiliates and entities: which legal entities are inside the enrollment and what happens to one you acquire, decided here, expensive to revisit under a transaction, and module eight will show you exactly how expensive. Geographic scope: multinationals often run several enrollments for perfectly good reasons, and consolidating for a better band can be right, and it can also import terms that a region deliberately avoided, which is the last check today. And the count is yours: you establish the profile and you report it, which makes accuracy your responsibility and reconciliation your opportunity, exactly as with the true up next session. Our guest analyst has a story about a profile nobody rechecked.
Guest analyst The enrollment finding I am proudest of took about forty minutes and it was worth just over one point three million. A manufacturing group, roughly six thousand qualified users on paper, coming up to their second EA renewal. I asked for the enrollment, found the qualified user definition, and read it properly, which as far as I could tell nobody had done since the original signature six years earlier. The definition swept in every employee of the group. Fine. Except that in the intervening years they had built a substantial shared floor operation: about nine hundred production staff who clocked in on shared terminals, had no individual mailbox, no individual account, and no personal device. They were being counted as qualified users because the original definition had been written when that population did not exist, and every true up since had faithfully included them, because the person doing the true up was reporting against the definition they were given. Nine hundred users, six years, and nobody in the chain had a reason to question it: the account team was reporting what the contract said, and the customer was counting what they had always counted. We renegotiated the profile at the renewal with that population properly defined out, and we were pushing at an open door, because the argument is not adversarial, it is simply accurate. So my instruction to every EA holder is a small one with a large payoff: once a term, read the qualified user definition against how your business actually works now. Definitions age. Businesses change shape. Nobody else in the process is looking for that gap on your behalf.
Forty minutes, one point three million, and the finding was simply that a six year old definition no longer matched how the business worked. Definitions age, businesses change shape, and nobody in the chain is looking for that gap on your behalf. Second check is exactly that situation, caught before signature instead of after.
Check two. Before signing, you find your qualified user definition sweeps in eight hundred warehouse staff who use only a shared kiosk and have no individual account. The correct move: A, include them, the enterprise wide commitment means everyone is counted. B, negotiate the profile before signature: whether that population is qualified is a definitional question decided in the enrollment, and eight hundred users priced across three years is worth an argument that costs nothing to have now. C, include them and reclaim the cost through the true up later. Or D, exclude them silently and correct it if anyone asks. Pause here. Where is the qualified population defined, and when is the last moment that definition is negotiable?
The answer is B, and the misconception it targets is the phrase enterprise wide. Enterprise wide does not mean every human being in your organisation. It means the qualified population as your enrollment defines it, and that definition is a negotiated term rather than a law of nature. Eight hundred users across three years is a large thing to concede by default, and the conversation costs you nothing while the deal is still competitive, which it is, right up until signature. A accepts a definition as though it were arithmetic, which is Tom's manufacturing group before anyone read the sentence. C leans on the downward true up, which by session six should be reflexive: it does not exist. And D deserves a moment, because it arrives at a defensible destination by an indefensible route: an undocumented exclusion is a compliance finding waiting for module seven, and the identical commercial outcome is available legitimately by negotiating the definition and writing it down. The lesson for the whole of module two: in an EA, definitions are priced, and every one of them is settled at signature.
Placement decisions, which session two introduced and which we can now make properly, product by product. What belongs enterprise wide: the products every qualified user genuinely needs for the whole term, the productivity core, the platform everybody runs on, and these earn the volume treatment and you would not want to shed them anyway, so the commitment costs you nothing. What should ride alongside as Additional Products: anything whose future you are not certain of, newer subscriptions, departmental tools, anything tied to a project, and anything you might want to reduce, because Additional Products carry their own discount frameworks and their own removal rights. And then the test, which is the useful part of this slide, apply it to each material line: would we want to shed this in year two if the business changed? If the answer is possibly, then placing it inside the enterprise wide commitment converts that possibility into three years of payment. That is the whole calculation. And notice who normally makes this decision, in the note: whoever assembled the quote, optimising for the discount rather than for your optionality, which is entirely rational from where they sit. It is a negotiable decision, and it is the cheapest thing in this session to get right.
Structuring the enrollment, five decisions that set three years. Price level, established from your qualified count, and getting it wrong means a band you outgrow with no correction until renewal. Company profile, the definition of who is qualified, and getting it wrong means populations you pay for and never needed, which is nine hundred production staff for six years. Placement, which tier each product sits in, and getting it wrong means products you cannot shed when the estate changes. Enrollment split, one enrollment or several by region or entity, and getting it wrong means either imported terms you did not want or a band you failed to consolidate into. And the anniversary date, when the true up falls each year, and getting that wrong means a count taken at your seasonal peak, which is session two's logistics business and two million dollars. Now the observation that ties the slide together, and it is the reason this session sits at the start of module two rather than at the end: not one of those five decisions is a price. All five decide what your prices apply to and what you are able to change later. Which is precisely why they should be settled before the discount conversation, not after it, because after it you have already spent the leverage that would have moved them.
Last check. A multinational runs three regional enrollments. Consolidating into one would reach a better price level. What has to be checked before consolidating? A, nothing, a better level is strictly better across a larger base. B, what each region loses: consolidation harmonises terms, anniversary dates, and profiles, so a region with a favourable definition, a well timed anniversary, or products placed as Additional may import worse terms alongside the better band. C, only whether the regions use the same currency. Or D, whether Microsoft permits it, since consolidation is at their discretion. Pause here. A better level is one input. What are the other four from the structure table?
The answer is B, and I want to be clear that consolidation is usually right, so this is not an argument against it. It is an argument against doing it on one input. Merging enrollments merges everything inside them: the profile definitions, the anniversary dates, the placements, and every negotiated exception. So a region that quietly negotiated a favourable qualified user definition years ago, or whose anniversary sits safely three months away from its peak season, can lose both of those to reach a band that gains a few points, and nobody notices until the first true up lands in the wrong month. The correct method is the same shape as the vehicle framework from last session: inventory what each enrollment currently provides, price the consolidated position against the sum of the parts, and where the band genuinely wins, take the better terms upward rather than levelling everybody down to the weakest set. A takes one input for the whole answer, which is the error this course keeps returning to. C names a real operational detail that is not the decision. And D is a process question that follows the analysis rather than replacing it, though it is worth confirming early so you are not modelling something unavailable.
The pre signature checklist, which takes about twelve minutes and decides three years. The counts and the definitions: which population is qualified, in writing, with the exclusions named explicitly; the count reconciled before it is reported; the price level established, and the distance to the next band recorded in the renewal file while somebody knows it. The placements: every material product with its tier, and the shed test applied to each one, would we want to remove this in year two, and anything answered possibly moves to Additional Products or gets removal language written for it. And the dates and the scope: the anniversary checked against your seasonal peak, the entity list checked against your current legal structure, and any consolidation priced against what each enrollment currently provides rather than against the band alone. Twelve minutes, five decisions, three years. And the thing I would say to anyone who thinks this is administrative detail rather than negotiation: Tom's forty minutes found one point three million, and it found it by reading one sentence carefully. Next session takes the enrollment into operation, the annual order and the true up, the reconciliation calendar, and the counting discipline that keeps the reported number honest.
Session six, three sentences. One: the enrollment is where the commercial deal actually lives, fixing the price level, the profile, the placements, and the dates for three years, which makes it the document to argue about rather than the master agreement sitting above it. Two: the price level is established at signature and carried by the enrollment, which is why growth is cheap inside the term and why a band you have grown into is a renewal argument you must raise rather than an adjustment that arrives by itself. Three: definitions are priced, who is qualified, which entities are inside, and where each product sits, all negotiated once at signature, and each of them deciding both what you pay for and what you are able to shed when the business changes. Next week, the annual order and the true up: how the counting works, when it bites, and the calendar that turns a submission into a decision. See you there.
Homework, about an hour, and this week you read your own enrollment, which a surprising number of people have never done. One, find the qualified definition: the actual sentence that defines qualified users or devices, plus the exclusions, and copy it out into your file, because reading it once is how Tom found nine hundred production staff. Two, establish your level: which price level you are on and what count the next band requires, and note the distance in both directions. Three, map the placements: your ten largest products, each marked enterprise wide or Additional, with the shed test applied to each in a single word, yes, no, or possibly. Four, check the anniversary against your business's seasonal shape, and if it sits on your peak, write it onto the renewal ask list, because moving it costs nothing to request. And five, list the entities named in the enrollment against your current legal structure, since missing new ones and dissolved old ones are both findings and both are common in any group that has done a transaction in the last few years. One hour with the actual document. It is the highest paid reading in this module.
Five reads before next session, all free on redress compliance dot com. First, the Enterprise Agreement pillar, for the enrollment structure and the tier compression data in reference depth. Second, the Microsoft licensing guide, for price levels and programme mechanics across the whole landscape, useful when a term in your enrollment is unfamiliar. Third, EA discount negotiation levers, on what actually moves on the enterprise products tier once the structure is settled, which is the right sequence, structure first and then lever. Fourth, the EA benchmarking report, so you can see where your level and discount sit against comparable estates rather than against your own history. And fifth, Microsoft contract terms negotiation, which carries the clause language for definitions, placements, and removal rights, and is the document to have open while you draft your asks. That is session six. The enrollment is the deal, definitions are priced, and five decisions that are not prices set three years of pricing. Next week, the true up. See you there.