How to qualify for an SAP audit

My first question to license managers is always whether they have already installed license optimization software. With said customer, the answer was:

"I don't need anything like that. I've got this covered."

Then how he imagines that I help him?

"Could you come over and take a good look at everything?"

Sure, but I still convinced him that I needed to install software to check, at least temporarily. Because without technical support, it becomes difficult to determine which licenses are needed across multiple SAP systems.

Then, on site, it turned out that my customer doesn't deal much with his license distribution over the year. "No time." Then, when the request to survey comes every year, he first looks at all the inactive users.

"I built a report especially for this".

he said proudly.

In it, he could adjust the time so that bit by bit he approaches the number of licenses that he also has in the inventory. Then he creates the USMM logs and looks at the consolidated result in LAW.

"Well, and then the fine-tuning takes place. I move the existing licenses back and forth until the result is right, and then send that to SAP."

He is also very successful with this approach, says the license manager:

"It's been three years since we've had to buy new licenses."

They had not yet had a license audit in house, but nevertheless they wanted to know more precisely whether they were doing everything right.

"In principle, yes. But in principle, it is not advisable to always make generous changes in the systems just before the survey."

I explained to the customer.

"Even if they're justified, from the outside it always looks like something was quickly adjusted here to cut costs."

This concerns the deactivation of users as well as the reclassification of users. I explained to him that you have to be especially careful if you haven't made any purchases for a long time.

"It's a quick way to qualify for an audit."

Because an SAP salesperson is measured by his sales figures. It doesn't help if they have a lot of customers who don't buy anything.

In the meantime, I had looked at the license report of my software and had a better overview of the license distribution and the license requirements.

"The good news is that you are properly licensed. But you have a few too many expensive licenses."

The reason: My customer distributes the licenses based on the granted permissions. As a result, some users have received expensive professional licenses that they need according to the authorization concept, but not when you consider their actual usage. If my customer had to buy new licenses, he could fall back on less expensive ones and allocate the expensive licenses to other users.

"If you want to license accurately based on permissions and not overpay, you need to set up an individual role concept for almost every employee."

Worry lines on the customer's forehead.

"If there is an audit now, SAP wouldn't care about those over-licensed users. But you would still have to pay for the underlicensed users."

"So what do I do now?"

The magic word is "active license management". SAP customers must continuously deal with their license management. Changes must be traceable throughout the entire year.

In order to relieve the license manager and his team, the use of license optimization software is a good solution. This not only saves time, but also automatically ensures correct and transparent licensing.

This is the only way to have a real overview of your own license landscape, and in the event of an audit, this information is then available at the push of a button. But the better you know your way around, the less likely an audit will be.

Because SAP knows that it probably won't be worth the effort. That reassured my customer and drove away the worry lines on his forehead again.