SAP RISE Negotiation Guide | Redress Compliance

Inside This White Paper

Eight chapters, one transition decision

The guide opens with the only question that matters: should you migrate to RISE, build a hybrid path, or stay on premise. The remaining chapters give you the economics, the contractual mechanics, and the negotiation calendar to answer it with conviction.

Chapters

01RISE is not a product; it is a contractual repackaging
02The 2027 ECC deadline is the leverage moment
03FUE conversion: where the user metric inflation hides
04Indirect access and the digital access reset

Continued

05The RISE versus S/4HANA total cost of ownership
06The hybrid pattern: the most common best outcome
07The contractual flexibility provisions that matter
08SAP's counter moves and how to handle them

Who This Is For

Built for the executives accountable for the ERP

Chief Information Officer

Owns the migrate, hybrid, or stay decision. Needs the board level case in one slide.

VP of Procurement

Runs the SAP commercial relationship. Needs the FUE conversion math and the contract clauses.

Software Asset Manager

Owns the user classification record. Needs the indirect access framework and digital access models.

CFO and Finance

Models the cash impact across migrate, hybrid, and stay. Needs the five year cost case.

Why this white paper exists

RISE with SAP is sold as the modernisation path for every ERP customer. In practice, RISE is a contractual repackaging that bundles S/4HANA, infrastructure, and managed services into a single subscription. The bundle is sometimes the right answer, often is not, and almost never matches the way SAP account teams describe it. The decision that determines your next five to seven years of ERP cost is not whether to move to S/4HANA; it is on what commercial terms.

This guide is the document we use internally with clients in the eighteen months before an ECC contract expires or a S/4HANA migration is committed. It walks through the three real paths (RISE migration, on premise S/4HANA, hybrid), the FUE conversion math that reshapes user licensing, and the contract clauses that determine flexibility for the next term. It is written for the executives who own the decision but should not have to relearn SAP's commercial model from scratch.

The guide is updated annually. The current edition incorporates SAP's 2025 commercial framework changes, the 2027 ECC end of mainstream maintenance deadline that has reshaped negotiating leverage, and the digital access pricing models that have stabilised since 2023. Where examples are anonymized, they are drawn from our SAP engagement portfolio and twenty other RISE evaluations closed across 2023 to 2025.

Free Download