Company Profile

Sector:        Retail

Region:       EMEA

Product:     Certero for SAP Applications
                    SAM Services for SAP

Turnover:   $1.8bn

Help from a Trusted SAM Partner

The customer initially didn’t know what the problem really was, just that the information presented to them within their Certero for SAP solution was different to the SLAW reports. As part of Certero’s ongoing customer care processes, an account manager checked that the solutions purchased are delivering value and, in this case it was flagged that help was needed, and specifically, there was a common skills-gap when it came to SAP licensing. Filling the SAP skills gap with Certero could not be easier; a number of consultancy days were purchased and a dedicated SAP licensing consultant was assigned by Certero to help the customer to review, interpret and understand their new SAP licensing terms.

Optimizing SAP Licensing

Certero’s SAP licensing experts worked with the customer to interpret the contracts accurately and then build those analysis rules and intelligence into the Certero for SAP Applications solution, providing a live, alternative view of their licensing, compliance, usage and costs.

This meant that the customer didn’t just have to rely on a SLAW report being correct each quarter and hope for the best, with Certero for SAP in place, they could now verify if SLAW is correct and proactively see any changes that would impact their SAP license position and costs.

Certero for SAP Applications provides two key views of their licensing – the first is the complete view of allocated licenses, as would be seen in the SLAW report, so they know exactly where they stand.

Secondly, Certero for SAP Applications captures the customers’ actual usage of SAP to contrast with the contractual analysis rules built-in. This enables Certero to present a clear optimized license recommendation for your estate, identifying where license types aren’t being used and can be therefore downgraded to right-size and reduce cost, without impacting upon how users use SAP to deliver value to the business.

The exercise identified opportunities to remove users who:

• No longer used the system but had not been expired
• Did not have any Roles assigned and should be expired
• Could be right-sized, based upon their usage within the system

Furthermore, having analysis rules and intelligence built in means that the customer now has a live view of their licensing to use whenever and however they need it. Certero does not require laborious recalculating every time you want to look at information, it’s live and ready to go as and when you need it.

Business Benefits

The customer now has a number of advantages thanks to the Certero:

• Sustained visibility of their SAP licensing, so they can see and address potential issues before running SLAW reports and being charged,
• A repeatable solution – unlike relying on expensive SAP Consultancy services, the customer has their contractual intelligence built-in to their Certero for SAP Applications solution, for instant analysis against future system changes.
• Clear visibility of where they’re over-spending on SAP licenses and the actionable intelligence to remediate waste and measure the resulting cost-savings.
• Support with skills and resources required for SAP licensing, delivered with flexibility and efficiency from a single trusted partner, whenever they need it.

Summary 

This example of a Technology-Led SAM service from Certero demonstrates how having support from a trusted partner who can uniquely provide both the technology and services can enable businesses to fill any skills gaps they have to control and optimize licensing, and how thorough management of software licensing as valuable business assets can reduce costs. Datacenter licensing though complex, can still be optimized and managed in a unified way along with desktop, cloud and other ‘mega vendors’ like IBM and Oracle – all through the Certero ‘single pane of glass’. Certero technology unifies visibility and control over all IT hardware, software and cloud asset costs everywhere, plus services and expertise are at hand to make sure value is achieved.