An SAP compliance assessment builds your Effective License Position (ELP) — what you are actually consuming versus what you are entitled to — before SAP's annual measurement or a GLAC audit does it for you, with indirect (digital) access the signature high-value exposure. This page explains the mechanics, lists the firms that run SAP ELP assessments with balanced pros and cons, and gives indicative outcomes — a directory, not a ranking.
Last reviewed: 5 June 2026 · Reviewed quarterly · Listed, not ranked. This page is information, not legal advice.
SAP Global License Audit & Compliance (GLAC) measures named users, engines and indirect/digital access, drawing on the USMM and LAW system tools. An assessment rebuilds that position on your terms first.
Third-party systems reading or writing SAP data — Salesforce, bots, e-commerce, IoT — trigger SAP's 2018 document-based digital-access model. It is the signature high-value SAP finding.
Professional, Limited Professional and Employee user types carry very different costs. Misclassification — over-typed users — is a common and recoverable over-spend.
SAP engines (Payroll, BW, PI and others) each carry their own metric; reconciling consumption against entitlement is a core part of the ELP.
SAP measures via USMM per system and consolidates with the License Administration Workbench (LAW). An assessment runs and interprets these before SAP does.
An S/4HANA conversion (with the 2027 ECC deadline approaching) re-bases the licence position; assessing before conversion protects negotiating room.
Digital-access licensing counts documents, not users. How documents are defined and counted is contestable and materially changes the number.
Roughly 30% of organisations report being audited by SAP at least once (2025 surveys), with indirect / digital access the highest-value finding. Around 62% of companies were audited by a major vendor in the last 12 months and about 52% now bring in outside help. Figures are survey-reported for the years shown.
Buyer-side and proactive — ideally before SAP's annual system measurement or an S/4HANA conversion, while user types and integration patterns can still be optimized.
The firm runs or reviews USMM/LAW output, classifies named users correctly and inventories engines and the third-party integrations that drive digital access.
Consumption is reconciled against entitlement to produce a defensible Effective License Position, with digital-access document counts modelled and stress-tested.
Over-typed users are reclassified, integration patterns reviewed, and the position documented so an SAP measurement or negotiation meets a clean baseline.
Listed in neutral alphabetical order with balanced pros and cons — a directory, not a ranking. Independence is shown as a pro; reseller, Big-Four or vendor-side-audit ties are shown as a con, stated as factual trade-offs for you to weigh.
Vendor- and tool-agnostic licensing boutique working across Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and IBM optimization. Engagements run buyer-side, from audit response through negotiation and ongoing optimization.
ServiceNow-centric licensing and estate-reconciliation practice that also covers Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM, Adobe and Salesforce. Reconciles entitlement against actual consumption ahead of renewals and reviews.
Vendor-agnostic licensing boutique founded by ex-vendor auditors. Does not resell, implement or conduct audits, focusing solely on buyer-side Oracle, SAP, IBM and Microsoft defense and negotiation.
Independent multi-vendor licensing practice covering IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Tier-2 publishers, with a stated 100% impartial, buyer-side model.
Independent boutique with strong IBM and VMware/Broadcom review depth and broader multi-vendor coverage, known for current licensing-change analysis.
Buyer-side independent licensing advisory with one of the broadest multi-vendor footprints, covering Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM, Broadcom, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Workday.
Independent boutique covering Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Quest, VMware, Red Hat and SAP across audit defense, negotiation and optimization.
Listed alphabetically — not a ranking. Independence is shown as a pro and reseller, Big-Four or vendor-side-audit ties as a con, stated as factual trade-offs for you to weigh. Firm details are compiled from public sources and are unverified (demo) until the verified registry is live.
Indicative only. Outcomes depend on your contract, evidence and jurisdiction; we publish no firm-specific figures until the verified registry is live.
Re-typing over-classified named users to the correct, lower-cost type is frequently the most immediate recoverable saving.
Quantifying and contesting the document count behind an indirect-access claim is the largest single SAP swing, in either direction.
An accurate position before S/4HANA conversion or a RISE migration protects negotiating room rather than conceding SAP's measurement.
Up to the SAP vendor hub and the Compliance Assessment service hub, and across to sibling services and vendors.
SAP's audit operation, GLAC, indirect access and the metrics →
How ELP engagements run, across vendors →
Contesting a GLAC claim once a review is open →
Digital-access and S/4HANA conversion deals →
Conversion and RISE migration lifecycle →
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Indirect access is when a third-party system or non-SAP application reads or writes SAP data without a human logging into SAP directly — for example Salesforce pulling SAP records, an e-commerce front end, or a bot. Since 2018 SAP licenses much of this through a document-based digital-access model, counting documents rather than users. It is the signature high-value SAP finding, which is why an ELP models it explicitly.
SAP's digital-access model counts the creation of certain document types (sales, invoice, purchase and others) by non-SAP systems. How a document is defined, which types are in scope and how initial versus subsequent documents are treated are all contestable, and they materially change the number — so the count is a core focus of an SAP compliance assessment. This is information, not legal advice.
Effectively, yes — converting from ECC to S/4HANA re-bases the licence model and is a moment SAP uses to re-measure. Building an accurate ELP before conversion (and ahead of the 2027 ECC mainstream-maintenance deadline) protects negotiating room rather than letting SAP's measurement set the baseline.
Often, yes. Users are frequently over-typed — assigned Professional licences when their actual activity fits a Limited Professional or Employee type. Reclassifying them to the correct type is a standard, recoverable optimization that an ELP assessment surfaces, subject to your contract's user-type definitions.
No. This is a directory, not a ranking. Firms appear in neutral alphabetical order with balanced pros and cons. Independence is shown as a pro; a reseller or Big-Four relationship is shown as a con because it is a potential conflict with buyer-side advice. Both are factual trade-offs for you to weigh.
Nothing. The directory and matching are free for buyers, we add no markup and take no money from software publishers, and no vendor sees your brief. Fees are agreed directly with the firm; we publish no prices.
Want a defensible SAP Effective License Position before the next measurement or S/4HANA conversion? Tell us your situation and we will route your brief to firms that run SAP ELP assessments. The directory and matching are free for buyers — no vendor ever sees your brief, and we add no markup.
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