My name is Brandon Gaovongphet and I am the managing director for the Americas at Xpandion, an Ivanti One certified partner and Gold Sponsor at this year’s Ivanti Interchange 2019 in Nashville.

We are looking forward to showcasing our products and talking to Ivanti customers about SAP license optimization, behavior-based profiling, and GRC. We have helped hundreds of organizations around Europe and Asia with automating process controls and securing their data for over a decade. Recently we've expanded our offering to the North American market.

Classifying SAP Users

Every organization should make it a point to classify their SAP users to the right license types in accordance with their SAP contract. 

However, the challenge here is that the definitions in the contract are typically quite vague. Therefore, you need to develop some sort of method to understand and classify users to license types and stick with the chosen classification method for years to come.

The chosen classification method should be recognized and accepted by SAP. If you do not have a method in place and you receive notice of an SAP audit, it will be too late to start. 

SAP T-Code SLAW

Many customers have been led to believe that the SAP T-Code SLAW—which sends information to SAP—also classifies users to their license types correctly. This is FALSE. This transaction does not classify anything automatically. All it does is gather the existing licensing classifications that you previously updated and sends it as is to SAP. 

If you have not classified or have classified license types, SAP will receive this information as well. About 90% of the licensing costs, not including unpredictable surprises, are attributed to classifying users, so it is very important to make sure it is done correctly. 

Automating the Classification Process

In case we have not stressed it enough, the best way to be confident in your SAP licensing is to have a good method for classifying users to license types and to have a software solution to execute this method automatically and continuously. If it is done manually, you run the risk of this not being part of your normal business practice. When done manually, only the person or team responsible for classifying users have the knowledge.

Automating the classification process is the best way to control all users in the SAP system. This way you can do your own internal audits every quarter or six months and know you are in compliance with your SAP contract. 

Having a software solution to execute the method that you have put into place, and knowing that the preferred method of classifying users is standardized, puts a company’s mind at ease. We have found that organizations feel more comfortable and have a better understanding when meeting with their internal auditing team to review the results.

If you go to your SAP audit prepared with a good system that classifies your users’ long-term, then SAP will be open to listen and negotiate. Staying compliant is not only necessary but it is also a legal issue. 

To learn more about automating your SAP licensing, visit the website or contact your local representative and schedule a free demo.

take control of sap licensing and only pay for what you use