Well planned is half won

In SAP license management, it is not only necessary to define the contractual framework at the time of conclusion, but also to consider what might happen in subsequent years in the event of software maintenance.

This should be looked at more closely, as SAP is subjecting the underlying GTCs as well as the components and definition of the price and condition list to a change process.

This is quite common, as technical progress makes new regulations necessary and new technologies and solutions are integrated into the list of prices and conditions. If necessary, older price components are also dropped.

When concluding a contract, consideration should also be given to the rules that apply if subsequent purchases are made at a later date. That there are good reasons for this is shown by the discussion of the last two years around the license of the SAP NetWeaver Foundation for Third Party Products, which irritated many existing customers with contracts from the beginning of the 2000s, as there was a question of sublicensing.

Fortunately, DSAG has just found a procedural approach and agreement with SAP. Any verbal agreements reached at the time the contract is concluded should therefore always be individually recorded and agreed in addition to the form contract and the GTC as well as the price and condition lists:

The extent to which the user company can repurchase the same price list items at the same conditions at a later date after the contract has been signed, and whether the rights acquired at the time of purchase apply in perpetuity or are variable over time. SAP license management then includes the process of continuous license inventory monitoring after the contract is signed.

I. e.: In addition to the contracts with their supplements, additional individual agreements and the like, the continuous "measuring, counting, weighing" of the use of the SAP software is one of the essential tasks.

According to SAP's recommendations, this should not only be done at the time of the measurement request by SAP, but regularly during the year in a defined management and controlling process.

This raises the following questions:

• What is the request process for new SAP users within the company?
• Which roles and authorization definitions lead to which user classifications?
• How can the optimal user classification be found?

The latter is done, for example, by taking into account roles and authorizations and real usage behavior over time.

For this purpose, there are a large number of different user types and classifications in the price and condition list (PKL), the supplementary SAP measurement guide, and in other documents, whose definitions may also be specified or modified over time.

All of this must be taken into account when monitoring during the year for the periodic SAP license measurement, which usually takes place once a year. This is hardly possible manually in a complex SAP landscape without supplementary software tools.

Even the License Administration Workbench in the original version or the revision in version 2.0, which has been introduced since 2015, does not release the user from his control and monitoring obligation.

Due to possible incorrect basic settings and customizing settings, a self-disclosure protocol that does not correspond to reality can occur with and despite the USMM and the LAW.

Today, a reliable and meaningful license management tool must be able to enable largely automated license inventory monitoring and, at the same time, continuously keep an eye on the contractual license situation.

To this end, the documentation of the contracts and individual contract terms planned and concluded with foresight at the outset in the license management system is just as necessary as the implementation of a secure control process that detects and checks contractual changes and incorporates them into the license management.