Redress Compliance provides SAP negotiation advisors for enterprise buyers facing a RISE with SAP proposal, a renewal, a cloud order, or a maintenance uplift, with no SAP reseller or implementation income. We benchmark the quote, set the target, and prepare every round. You pay a fixed fee, or 25 percent of what we save you.
Optimize the Estate First: The SAP Work That Pays for the Negotiation
SAP prices your future from your present, so a bloated estate converts into a bloated subscription. The user cleanup, engine and shelfware rationalization, resolving indirect access on your terms, and converting clean with the credits you earned.
An SAP negotiation advisor tells you what the deal should cost, then prepares your team to get there. We validate the user and document count, benchmark the quote against comparable closed SAP deals, and assess every SAP proposal in writing through to signature.
The work covers RISE with SAP terms, the digital access document model, and the conversion credit, not just user counts.
All of them. ECC and S/4HANA renewals, RISE subscriptions, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, BTP, Signavio, and Datasphere orders, maintenance and support terms, and digital access settlements attached to any of these.
A reseller earns on the SAP sale. A system integrator earns on the implementation and often resells SAP. A buyer side advisor earns nothing from SAP, so the number favors only your position.
Bring in SAP negotiation advisors nine to twelve months before an S/4HANA conversion or RISE decision, and ideally two quarters before a renewal. Inside a quarter is still workable, because the intake and benchmark stages compress when the calendar demands it.
Your SAP account team runs dozens of negotiations a year, and most customers run one. The tilt comes from five structural advantages, each correctable with preparation:
SAP can claim indirect or digital access for third party systems touching SAP data. We map that flank during intake, so it is handled as a tactic rather than a surprise.
An SAP negotiation runs in four workstreams, and a typical cycle takes about a quarter, timed backward from your renewal date or SAP’s fiscal deadlines.
Your team keeps the chair and the relationship with SAP. We arm it before every exchange.
SAP negotiation advisors cut the deal by sequencing the conversion credit, the indirect access position, and the renewal so SAP cannot trade one against another. The counter is built on the validated document and user baseline, not the SAP opening quote.
This sits at the core of our SAP licensing services. RISE specific work runs through RISE with SAP advisory, and the license position behind it comes from our SAP licensing consultants.
We draft the indirect access classification, the conversion credit position, and the side letter, and brief your steering committee, not just deliver a deck.
Published SAP negotiation outcomes include a RISE renewal 30 percent below the opening, a renewal cut 20 percent with a 10 million euro penalty avoided, and a BTP renewal 26 percent lower.
Fredrik Filipsson, co founder and Group CEO, leads SAP negotiations with Mietske van Ravesteijn, our SAP Commercial Lead. The partner who scopes your engagement runs it.
Fredrik began his career at Oracle in license management services, then held senior commercial roles at IBM and SAP before co founding Redress Compliance in 2018. He leads the firm’s SAP, Oracle, and Java engagements, and his commentary on SAP RISE economics has been cited in trade publications and CIO briefings on three continents.
Read Fredrik’s profile or meet the management team.
You choose a fixed fee, scoped to the deal and agreed up front, or a success fee of 25 percent of what we save you. On a success fee you keep 75 percent, and if we save nothing you pay nothing.
We never bill by the hour. Either structure covers the full cycle, up to four advisory calls, and email support through the term.
We are not an SAP partner. We do not implement S/4HANA, resell RISE, or take SAP referral fees, so the independence test passes before the first meeting.
The standard SAP and integrator pitch is that RISE simplifies the estate and lowers total cost. We disagree. In roughly 6 of 10 RISE proposals we have benchmarked, the bundle raised multi year cost and handed SAP commercial control of sizing and renewal.
The buyer side move is to unbundle RISE into license, infrastructure, and support, price each independently, and keep an exit path to on premise or hyperscaler hosting, rather than accept the headline simplification.
The difference is who pays the advisor, and how often they sit across from SAP. Each option below can work, depending on whether you need independence, SAP commercial depth, or implementation capacity.
SAP negotiation support compared: Redress, Big Four, SAP partner or reseller, in house
| Test | Redress | Big Four consultancy | SAP partner or reseller | In house team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independence | 100 percent buyer side; zero vendor affiliations, no reseller agreements, no referral fees | Independent of SAP sales; other units may hold SAP alliance or implementation work | Part of the SAP sales channel | Full |
| Conflicts of interest | None; the advisory fee is the only revenue | Worth checking before engaging | Earns resale margin or implementation revenue on the outcome | None, but project timelines push toward signing early |
| SAP negotiation experience | Former SAP commercial staff; RISE, renewal, audit, and indirect access files | Strong implementation benches; commercial benchmark depth varies | Sees SAP deals from the sell side | Negotiates SAP every few years against a team that negotiates daily |
| How fees work | Fixed fee, or 25 percent of what we save you; never hourly | Usually day rates or time and materials | Often folded into license or project pricing | Staff time |
For a neutral checklist, read our guide on how to choose a software licensing advisor or the independent advisor versus Big Four comparison.
Four changes shift SAP negotiations this year, and two of them hand buyers new leverage if they know to use it.
Source: Redress Compliance advisory engagement file, 2024 to 2025.
White Paper · SAP
SAP RISE vs On Premises TCO 2026
RISE with SAP rarely beats a tuned on premises estate on raw TCO; it wins on exit from hosting and upgrade debt. Read it free.
Our SAP negotiation advisors work for a fixed fee agreed up front, or a success fee of 25 percent of what we save you. You keep 75 percent, and if we save nothing you pay nothing. We never bill by the hour.
Published outcomes include a RISE renewal 30 percent below the opening proposal, a renewal cut 20 percent with a 10 million euro penalty avoided, and a BTP renewal 26 percent lower. The movement comes from benchmarked targets, timing, and credible alternatives, not from asking nicely.
Two quarters before a renewal is ideal, and nine to twelve months before a RISE or S/4HANA conversion. Inside a quarter still works, because the intake and benchmark stages compress when the deal demands it.
Yes. We hold zero vendor affiliations, no reseller agreements, and no referral fees, and we do not implement SAP. When walking away or deferring is the right move, that is the recommendation.
Expect deadline pressure tied to its quarter or December year end, bundle offers, and sometimes an audit or indirect access question mid deal. We map those moves during intake, so each one is answered on evidence rather than urgency.
Bring it anyway. Best and final is a negotiating position, not a fact, and we test it against comparable deals. If the deal is genuinely strong we say so in writing, and you sign with confidence.
Your team keeps the chair and the relationship. We prepare every exchange: written assessments of each SAP proposal, talking points before meetings, and a final review of the contract package before signature.
The SAP proposal, your existing agreements and order forms, the renewal date, and recent USMM and LAW output. We respond within one business day with scope, fee, and a delivery plan.
A System Integrator inside the RISE deal is not your buyer side advisor. They earn on the SAP implementation. The independence test fails before the digital access count is even opened.
Engage our SAP negotiation advisors for a RISE proposal, a renewal, or a cloud order. We validate the baseline and reset the deal on a buyer side basis. See all SAP licensing services.
Independent. Buyer side. Zero reseller margin, zero referral fee, zero vendor influence.
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