Tooling, governance, and the standing baseline that ends the surprises. Three knowledge checks along the way, and 4 clips from a senior licensing analyst.
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. 4 times in the session the frame splits and a senior licensing analyst gives the view from inside real SAP 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 thirty five, and this closes module seven. Everything in this module has been reactive: the measurement arrives, the finding arrives, the settlement gets negotiated. Today is the opposite, which is how you stop needing most of it. Software asset management for SAP, and I want to be honest at the start that this is the least glamorous session in the course. It is also the one that decides whether everything before it compounds or evaporates. Today: what tooling does and cannot do, the entitlement half nobody has assembled, governance that actually survives, and what good looks like. Three knowledge checks. Let's begin.
Five objectives. First, put tooling in its place, because a tool reports the estate and it does not archive a leaver or rewrite an interface, so buy it to scale a discipline. Second, build the entitlement register, since consumption is easy and entitlement is scattered, and without both halves you have a number rather than a position. Third, design governance that survives, meaning one owner, one quarterly review, and one checkpoint in a process that already exists. Fourth, report three numbers: consumption, entitlement, gap, because everything else is detail that belongs underneath them. And fifth, know what good looks like, which is being able to state your position this week without a project.
Four things to frame it. Knowing beats arguing, because a current position turns an audit from an investigation into a comparison. Both halves, since consumption without entitlement is a number and entitlement without consumption is a filing cabinet. People then tools, as a tool makes an existing routine cheaper and cannot create one that nobody owns. And small and standing: one owner, three numbers, four times a year, because programmes fail where routines survive. Let me start with tooling, and say the unpopular thing first.
Guest analyst clip.
Buy it to scale a discipline you already have, not to create one you do not. I want to be clear that I am not against these products, and several of them are very good. The failure I keep seeing is a sequencing failure rather than a product failure, and it is expensive because the licence fee starts immediately while the benefit waits for a routine that never arrived.
So, four things about what a tool does. It collects and consolidates, giving you continuous measurement across systems without waiting for the annual run, and that is real value. It simulates: what if we reclassify this population, retire that engine, restructure these roles, which is cheap answers to expensive questions. It cannot decide, because classification follows authorisations and somebody has to own that decision, so a tool proposes and a person disposes. And it cannot act, since leavers stay licensed until somebody archives them, and a dashboard showing you that monthly changes nothing on its own. The sequence is routine first with a spreadsheet and a named person, then tooling to make the routine continuous.
First knowledge check. You buy a licence management tool and deploy it properly. What changes at the next measurement? A, the declaration falls, since the tool optimises the estate. B, you can see the position clearly, and whether it improves depends on who acts on it. C, nothing at all, because tools do not help with SAP. D, SAP accepts the tool's figures instead of running the measurement. Pause here and pick an answer before you continue.
B. Visibility is what you bought, and visibility is worth a great deal provided somebody owns the actions it surfaces. A is the assumption that sells tools and disappoints buyers, because optimisation is a decision rather than a calculation. C is unfair, since continuous measurement and simulation genuinely save time and money once the routine exists. And D is simply wrong on the contract, because the measurement your agreement requires is the one you run and submit, whatever your own tooling says.
Now, the two halves, because a position is consumption measured against entitlement and most organisations have only one of them. Where it lives: consumption is in the systems, produced automatically, while entitlement is in contracts, order forms and settlements. How current: consumption is as current as your last measurement, and entitlement is as current as the last person who read the paperwork. Effort to get: consumption is low and tooling makes it lower, while entitlement is weeks of reading once and then minutes per deal. Who owns it: consumption sits with Basis and the licence owner, and entitlement with the licence owner alongside procurement and legal. And without it: no consumption data means you cannot see the estate, and no entitlement means you cannot say whether the estate is a problem.
So, building the register, five steps. Gather everything first: the original agreement, every order form since, amendments, acquisitions and any settlement. Record what you own per metric, so user types, engine volumes, document tiers and database terms, in the contract's own words rather than a summary. Note the source for each line, meaning which document, which clause and which date, because an entitlement you cannot evidence is one you cannot claim. Include the definitions, since your contract defines the user types and metrics and those definitions are the ones that count. And update it at every transaction, which is five minutes per order form or a three week reconstruction during an audit. Let me explain why I would start here if I could only fix one thing.
Guest analyst clip.
Dull, a few weeks, and the foundation everything else sits on. And notice it is the one item in this session that no tool and no vendor can do for you, because it is your paperwork, in your filing systems, and only your organisation knows where all of it went.
Second knowledge check. Your organisation has excellent consumption data and no consolidated entitlement record. What do you have? A, a compliance position, since consumption is the harder half. B, half of one, because without entitlement you cannot say whether the number is a problem. C, enough, because SAP holds the entitlement records anyway. D, a reason to buy a tool. Pause here before you continue.
B. A position is consumption measured against entitlement, so one half on its own is a figure with no meaning attached. A has it backwards, because consumption is the easy half since systems produce it, while entitlement has to be assembled from paper nobody has read in years. C is a genuinely dangerous assumption, since relying on the other side's record of what you own is not a position you can argue from, and organisations have discovered mid audit that they owned more than they could prove. And D would not help, because tools import entitlement, they do not find your contracts for you.
Right, governance, and five elements. One named owner: a person rather than a committee, accountable for the SAP licence position, and everything else follows from this. A quarterly review with three numbers, so consumption, entitlement and gap, in thirty minutes, four times a year, in the same format every time. A seat at architecture, with licensing represented where integrations get approved, because that is where the next finding gets designed. A checkpoint before go live, so new interfaces and new user populations get a licensing check, since a question at build time is free. And escalation on material change, meaning acquisitions, divestments and big rollouts reach licensing early rather than through the invoice.
Guest analyst clip.
Somebody specific looks at three numbers every quarter. That is the whole system, and I would rather have that than the most sophisticated tooling in the market attached to nobody in particular.
Which brings me to those numbers. One page, five rows, every quarter. Consumption per metric, meaning what the estate is using, watched monthly by the licence owner and quarterly by everybody else. Entitlement per metric, evidenced, updated at every transaction rather than rebuilt each year. The gap, which is exposure or headroom by metric, and that is the number finance and the CIO actually need. Adoption by module, so what is used and what is shelfware, which feeds the renewal review from session thirty. And document volume and trend, which is your digital access exposure, read by architecture and licensing together. Same format every quarter, because a report that changes shape each time is a report nobody reads twice.
Five ways a SAM effort dies. Tool first and routine never, where the product is deployed, the reports go to a shared mailbox, and nothing changes for three years. Owned by a committee, because shared accountability for a number means nobody explains it when it moves. A programme rather than a routine, so twelve months of effort, a clean baseline, then two years of drift because nothing recurring was built. Entitlement left in contracts, which is the half that needs a person, skipped because it is dull, and it is the half that decides the position. And no link to architecture, meaning licensing sees the estate after it is built, which is exactly when changes stop being free.
Last knowledge check. You have budget for one of these. Which produces the most durable value? A, a licence management tool. B, a named owner, an entitlement register and a quarterly review. C, an external baseline assessment. D, training the whole IT department on licensing. Pause here, and think about which one is still working in three years.
B. That combination is the smallest thing that keeps working after the enthusiasm fades, and every later option depends on it anyway. A without B produces excellent reports nobody acts on. C gives you an accurate photograph that starts ageing the day it is delivered, and it is genuinely useful as a starting point for B rather than as a substitute for it. And D spreads thin knowledge widely when the problem needs deep knowledge in one place plus a checkpoint everybody else passes through. Let me describe what all of this adds up to, because we are at the end of the module.
Guest analyst clip.
Knowing is what turns every conversation from a defence into a negotiation. So if you are starting from nothing, here is ninety days. Weeks one to two, name the owner: one person with the time allocated, because nothing else on this list happens without that line. Weeks two to six, build entitlement, putting every agreement, order form, amendment and settlement into one register with sources. Weeks four to eight, run a dry measurement, your own numbers, corrected, with the correction log started on day one. Weeks eight to ten, list the interfaces: what connects, what it creates, and whether a licensed human sits behind it. And weeks ten to twelve, hold the first review, three numbers on one page, in the diary quarterly from then on. That is the whole system running, and none of it needed a budget approval.
Three sentences, and they cover the module rather than just today. Tooling reports the estate and cannot act on it, so build the routine with a named person first and buy tooling to make that routine continuous rather than to create one nobody owns. A compliance position is consumption measured against entitlement, and entitlement is the half scattered across contracts nobody has assembled, which makes the entitlement register the highest value dull task in this course. And governance that survives is small: one owner, three numbers reviewed quarterly, a seat where integrations get approved, and a licensing checkpoint before go live rather than after it. That closes module seven. Next session opens module eight with SAP support: Standard, Enterprise Support, PSLE and the third party alternatives.
Homework before session thirty six, about two hours. One, answer the test question: can you state your compliance position this week, and if not, you now know exactly what is missing. Two, find the entitlement documents, listing where they live, because just locating them is most of the work and almost nobody has done it. Three, identify the owner, asking who is accountable for the SAP licence position today, and if the answer takes more than a sentence then that is the finding. Four, check the architecture link, so does any design or change forum ask a licensing question, and find out where you could add one. And five, draft the one page report: consumption, entitlement, gap, adoption, documents, leaving the numbers blank if you must, because fixing the format is the point.
Five guides, all on redresscompliance dot com. SAM tooling for SAP estates covers what the products do, what they cost and when to buy one, which is the reference version of the first half of today. Building an entitlement register walks through the half that decides your position, step by step. USMM and LAW in practice is session thirty two's reference and covers the measurement your routine runs quarterly. The SAP audit process explained is what the baseline is defending you against, from session thirty one. And SAP support options compared is where session thirty six picks up, so Standard, Enterprise and third party support.
That is session thirty five, and that is module seven complete. Across five sessions we covered the measurement, the tools that run it, the digital access defence, the settlement, and the baseline that makes all of it routine. The thing to take away is that knowing your own numbers is the whole game, and it costs a named person and three numbers a quarter. Next time, module eight opens on SAP support. See you then.