The ten moves every CIO, CFO, and Chief Procurement Officer should make in the 18 months before a SAP RISE conversion or S/4HANA migration. Strategy, tactics, FUE math, and contract language in one paper.
The SAP RISE subscription and the broader S/4HANA migration sit at the center of every large enterprise SAP relationship in 2026. ECC mainstream maintenance ends December 31, 2027. Extended maintenance is available at substantial uplift through 2030. Beyond 2030, customers must be on S/4HANA, on a third party support arrangement, or off SAP. The decision tree is therefore unavoidable, and SAP account teams know it. The RISE subscription is SAP's preferred destination because it bundles software, infrastructure, application management, and BTP into a single commercial vehicle that maximizes account team compensation and customer lock in. The alternatives (S/4HANA on premises with private hosting, GROW for greenfield, ECC extended maintenance with delayed migration, third party support) all remain viable, but each requires deliberate analysis. The default path is rarely the right path.
This paper is the executive briefing we hand to clients eighteen months before any RISE conversion, S/4HANA migration, or ECC extension decision. It distills what we learned from 120 SAP engagements across RISE conversions, S/4HANA on premises migrations, GROW evaluations, Digital Access settlements, and ECC extended maintenance negotiations completed between January 2023 and April 2026. The recommendations are deliberately ordered. Recommendation one earns the right to use recommendations two through ten.
We wrote it in May 2026, after the SAP fiscal year 2025 pricing recalibration, after the GROW with SAP commercial model stabilized, and after SAP account teams shifted decisively toward bundling BTP credits and AMS into RISE as part of a single discount band. The recommendations are current. If you want the deeper procedural RISE Migration Playbook, the companion paper covers clause by clause RISE mechanics. If you want the live advisory engagement that wraps around both, the SAP buyer side advisory page describes the scope.
The paper opens with a one page executive brief, walks through each of the ten recommendations with strategy plus tactics, and closes with the contract clause appendix, the discount benchmark tables, and a self assessment diagnostic.
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Talk to a buyer side advisor →Inside twelve months of a SAP renewal and need to talk to a human first?
Schedule a SAP Advisory Call →The biggest levers are the FUE baseline, the uplift cap, and the exit terms. Get those three right and the rest of the deal follows.
Most buyers spend their energy on the headline discount. The structural terms move far more money over the life of the contract.
The Full Use Equivalent baseline sets what you pay for across the whole term. A baseline built on real usage, not the SAP estimate, is the single largest saving.
Sequence matters. Settle the baseline and scope before you discuss price, because price negotiated on the wrong baseline saves nothing.
The high impact RISE negotiation levers
| Lever | Buyer risk | Buyer move |
|---|---|---|
| FUE baseline | Set on SAP estimate | Build from real usage data |
| Uplift cap | Missing from first draft | Cap each year in writing |
| Exit and egress | Left vague | Define exit assistance and data return |
Settle the FUE baseline, the digital access position, and the scope of managed services first. Price negotiated after these holds; price negotiated before them slips.
Track the levers on one negotiation sheet, not in scattered email threads. A single view of baseline, caps, and exit terms stops SAP from trading a win on one against a loss on another.
The standard advice is to chase the deepest headline discount on the bundle and sign a long term to secure it. We disagree.
In the deals Fredrik benchmarked, the deepest discounts came with the weakest uplift caps and exit terms, so the saving evaporated by year two. The buyer side move is to win the structural terms first, then negotiate price against a baseline you can defend.
The buyer side move is to treat the discount as the last item, not the first, and to make the baseline and the caps the price you actually negotiate.
In RISE the structural terms outlast the discount, so win the caps and the baseline before you talk price.
Read the bundle scope on the RISE with SAP page and confirm the licensing model on the SAP digital access page before you accept the proposed baseline.
Start twelve months out and lead with your usage data. The data sets the FUE baseline.
Bring help in by month nine when the FUE baseline, digital access, and exit terms are all in play. That combination decides the value of the whole deal.
Fredrik Filipsson benchmarked these SAP negotiations himself. He will walk your baseline and your three biggest levers in a 30 minute call. No pitch.
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