SAP and indirect use: price development

According to SAP, those SAP customers who have not yet switched to S/4 Hana via Contract Conversion or have purchased SAP licenses before 2018 will have the option to choose between the two pricing models for indirect use.

This is only partially true. Existing customers can only remain with the "Sales & Services Order Processing/Execution or Purchase Order Processing/Execution" licensing if they already had this in their license portfolio before April 2018. Otherwise, they can only purchase named-user licenses, such as the "SAP Platform User" license, for indirect use. Named user list prices have not changed since 2015.

There was a significant price increase for "Sales & Services Order Processing" in particular. Until the end of 2016, one thousand orders cost 100 euros (list price). As of 2017, one thousand orders cost 20,000 euros (list price). This is an increase by a factor of 200. As of April 2017, SAP changed the price again, differentiating between B2B and B2C orders.

These were always "whole" orders and not order items (item record, as SAP calls it). Orders are counted per year, but only if the person who created the order has not been assigned a user right (e.g. SAP Professional User) as a defined user.

During the audit, the calculation often led to confusion for this reason. The same was and still is true when determining named-user licenses for indirect use. There are so many exceptions to the calculation that even license experts disagree on the interpretation of the SAP price and conditions list.

To remedy this, SAP introduced its new Digital Access pricing model in April 2018. The new pricing model represents, if you will, an extension of the "Sales & Services Order Processing/Execution or Purchase Order Processing/Execution" licensing.

The main differences are that item records are now partially counted and that documents must also be licensed that have been created by employees via a third-party application who already have usage rights.

In addition to sales and purchase documents, documents from Invoice, Service and Maintenance, Manufacturing, Quality Management, Time Management, Financial and Material are also counted. The latter two are multiplied by 0.2 when counting, which means that five financial or material item records correspond to one document.

It is precisely this expansion at the item record level, as well as the expansion of document types, that makes cost estimation considerably more difficult. According to the current price list for Digital Access, one thousand documents cost 500 euros. With an average of four order items per order, this corresponds to 4000 units at a total list price of 2000 euros.

However, the discount of 90 percent, for example, which SAP is granting until December 31, 2021, as part of its "SAP Digital Access Adoption Program (DAAP)" must still be deducted from the actual purchase price. Then there are the license fees for the other document types that are created via a third-party application by employees with or without a named user license as well as partners, customers or machines.

With regard to the Digital Access pricing model, it should therefore not be disregarded that extending licensing to include item records and additional document types, as well as not taking into account SAP users who are already licensed, will probably lead to an increase in the volume of use and thus to an increase in cost.

What has been your and your company's experience with SAP and indirect usage over the past five years? Have you switched to the new Digital Access pricing model or are you still considering? Take part in our survey and receive the survey results by e-mail (PDF): http://da-survey.com