In 2019, SAP intro­duced its Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram at SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence. After extend­ed con­ver­sa­tions between SAP lead­ers and the user groups ASUG and DSAG, the three enti­ties col­lab­o­rat­ed on a pro­gram designed to help cus­tomers move away from tra­di­tion­al ​“hands on key­boards,” named-user licens­ing to SAP’s dig­i­tal access license model.

Esti­mat­ing Cre­ation of the 9 SAP Doc­u­ment Types

Cus­tomers have now had a year to eval­u­ate whether the pro­gram is a sen­si­ble option for them. We’ve learned that it’s not always a fast or easy process to deter­mine how many of what SAP counts as ​“Doc­u­ments” you’re cre­at­ing in your SAP sys­tems today — let alone the num­ber of these you might gen­er­ate in the future. It’s these nine Doc­u­ment types that SAP’s dig­i­tal access mod­el cov­ers. The fact is, this process takes time, as ASUG board mem­ber and John­sonville CIO Ron Gilson shared in his arti­cles about what John­sonville learned dur­ing its eval­u­a­tion process.

It’s Not Too Late to Adopt Dig­i­tal Access

But there is good news for cus­tomers who haven’t yet start­ed this process. In May 2020, SAP announced that it would extend the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram. This makes its two finan­cial­ly attrac­tive incen­tives avail­able to cus­tomers who switch to dig­i­tal access licens­ing before the end of 2021. It turns out that cus­tomers have been tak­ing advan­tage of the pro­gram already, as they’re mov­ing over to the dig­i­tal licens­ing mod­el at an increas­ing rate. 

On the heels of this announce­ment, we spoke with Matt Angell, VP and head of strate­gic pric­ing and com­mer­cial­iza­tion at SAP, to find out how adop­tion of the pro­gram has been going over the past year and why SAP decid­ed to extend it. 

Ann Marie: What has changed since the intro­duc­tion of the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram at 2019 SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Conference?

Matt: Since we launched the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram, we’ve seen pos­i­tive trac­tion, with well over a 100% increase in the num­ber of cus­tomers adopt­ing the dig­i­tal access mod­el. It’s excit­ing to see so many of our cus­tomers start­ing to real­ize the ben­e­fits of mak­ing the move to dig­i­tal access.

Ann Marie: The pro­gram was orig­i­nal­ly due to end in May 2020. Why did you decide to extend the program? 

Matt: In two words: We lis­tened. We spent a lot of time lis­ten­ing to cus­tomers, ana­lysts, part­ners, and espe­cial­ly our glob­al user groups. Through these con­ver­sa­tions, we heard clear­ly that the pro­gram has been well received. And as I men­tioned, this is also some­thing we’re see­ing in our adop­tion num­bers. Through ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions, we also learned that many of our cus­tomers could use more time to eval­u­ate their licens­ing needs. Based on this feed­back and our desire to con­tin­ue to dri­ve greater trans­paren­cy and pre­dictabil­i­ty, it was clear that the right thing to do was to extend the program.

Ann Marie: Of those cus­tomers who have adopt­ed the pro­gram, are you see­ing cer­tain regions or indus­tries take advan­tage of it more than others? 

Matt: That’s been one of the inter­est­ing things. We’ve real­ly seen broad-based adop­tion. It’s tak­en off across all regions, chan­nels, and industries. 

Ann Marie: You also made some changes recent­ly to the SAP S/4HANA con­ver­sion pol­i­cy. Could you explain those changes? 

Matt: In Feb­ru­ary 2020, in con­junc­tion with the deci­sion to extend main­stream main­te­nance for Busi­ness Suite 7 through 2027 and to offer extend­ed main­te­nance through 2030, SAP has decid­ed to grant cus­tomers exe­cut­ing an SAP S/4HANA con­ver­sion con­tract, dual use rights until they com­plete their tran­si­tion to SAP S/4HANA.

Under the pre­vi­ous con­ver­sion pol­i­cy, cus­tomers had dual use rights through just 2025, which was con­sis­tent with the end of main­stream main­te­nance sup­port. If cus­tomers hadn’t com­plet­ed their tran­si­tion to SAP S/4HANA by the end of 2025, then they would have lost the right to con­tin­ue to use their Busi­ness Suite 7 licenses.

Ann Marie: What kind of feed­back have you received from cus­tomers on this pro­gram so far? 

Matt: The feed­back from cus­tomers has been over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive. By com­bin­ing the exten­sion of main­stream main­te­nance sup­port with the dual-use rights for cus­tomers exe­cut­ing SAP S/4HANA con­ver­sions, cus­tomers have told us that they now have the flex­i­bil­i­ty they need to take advan­tage of what they cur­rent­ly own and adopt SAP S/4HANA.

Ann Marie: We’ve been talk­ing with cus­tomers reg­u­lar­ly about the effects of COVID-19 on their orga­ni­za­tions in our ASUG Pulse Check. They have been telling us they’re post­pon­ing, delay­ing, or in some case can­celling their projects. I’m sure these cus­tomers will appre­ci­ate this flex­i­bil­i­ty, as they may be putting their SAP S/4HANA projects on hold not by choice, but by necessity. 

Matt: This is the most cus­tomer-cen­tric change we could pos­si­bly make. By intro­duc­ing more flex­i­bil­i­ty from a tim­ing point of view, we allow cus­tomers to do what makes sense for their orga­ni­za­tions as they plan and exe­cute those transitions.

Ann Marie: What tools are avail­able to help cus­tomers eval­u­ate their licens­ing require­ments through the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Program?

Matt: Cus­tomers can use the SAP Esti­ma­tion Tool and the SAP Pass­port func­tion­al­i­ty. One of the biggest learn­ings over the past year is that it’s been help­ful for cus­tomers to take advan­tage of our com­pli­men­ta­ry offer of sup­port from our Glob­al Licens­ing Audit and Com­pli­ance (GLAC) team to make sure to get their licens­ing require­ments esti­ma­tion right. If cus­tomers use the tools on their own, there is a risk that they could over­es­ti­mate their cur­rent require­ments. By part­ner­ing with our col­leagues on the GLAC team, they’re able to get a much more accu­rate esti­mate of their cur­rent and future needs.

Ann Marie: We did hear from some of our mem­bers that they were see­ing over­es­ti­ma­tion of Doc­u­ment counts as they were eval­u­at­ing their use. Will the con­sul­ta­tion ser­vice from the GLAC team remain avail­able until the end of 2021 along with this offer?

Matt: I’m extreme­ly hap­py to say that yes, the offer of com­pli­men­ta­ry sup­port from our GLAC team is extend­ed with this offer. So until the end of 2021, cus­tomers will be able to take advan­tage of their sup­port in mak­ing sure they have an accu­rate under­stand­ing of how many Doc­u­ments they are cre­at­ing, a view into what their future use might look like, and then how to take advan­tage of the pro­gram to its fullest extent. There’s been an enor­mous uptick in the num­ber of requests for assess­ments and for help in under­stand­ing cur­rent Doc­u­ment counts. 

Ann Marie: One of the last big rev­e­la­tions from May 2019 when this pro­gram launched was that a lot of cus­tomers ASUG was speak­ing with had not real­ized that EDI use could be con­sid­ered indi­rect access. Has SAP issued any new clar­i­fi­ca­tions or def­i­n­i­tions about the dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions that could be con­strued as indi­rect use to help cus­tomers under­stand whether they’re engag­ing in it?

Matt: There have been no pol­i­cy changes. What I would say is, use is defined as to acti­vate the pro­cess­ing capa­bil­i­ties of the soft­ware. And to expand on this def­i­n­i­tion, it’s the right to load, exe­cute, access, employ the soft­ware, or dis­play infor­ma­tion result­ing from such capa­bil­i­ties. Specif­i­cal­ly, indi­rect use is when peo­ple or things use the SAP ERP with­out direct­ly log­ging into the sys­tem. It doesn’t real­ly mat­ter if that indi­rect use is from a third-par­ty sys­tem ver­sus an exter­nal user or from robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA). What I would advise cus­tomers is that one of the great things about the dig­i­tal access mod­el is that use is out­come-based. It doesn’t real­ly mat­ter what trig­gers that out­come. We sim­ply count the out­come, which is the cre­ation of one of the nine Doc­u­ment types.

Ann Marie: One of the major ben­e­fits of mov­ing to the dig­i­tal access mod­el is that cus­tomers who are plan­ning inno­va­tion projects that involve tech­nolo­gies such as RPA are freed from hav­ing to wor­ry about poten­tial­ly run­ning into the risk of indi­rect use. How do you think that the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram will help cus­tomers pre­pare to dig­i­tal­ly trans­form and inno­vate over the next few years?

Matt: The Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram was specif­i­cal­ly designed to address cus­tomer con­cerns relat­ed to indi­rect access licens­ing require­ments. By help­ing cus­tomers under­stand their Doc­u­ment cre­ation lev­els and by pro­vid­ing them a com­pelling incen­tive, we’ve large­ly been able to take those con­cerns off the table.

Ann Marie: Is there any­thing else you’d like to add? 

Matt: I want­ed to high­light that it’s unlike­ly that we’ll be able to extend the pro­gram beyond the two-and-a-half-year peri­od end­ing on Decem­ber 31, 2021. So, I would love to encour­age cus­tomers to take advan­tage of this extra time to ful­ly under­stand their Doc­u­ment cre­ation num­bers today and what they might be in the future. This is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to adopt the dig­i­tal access mod­el and make the move to the intel­li­gent enter­prise.

Ann Marie: Our advice at ASUG was to take advan­tage of this pro­gram right away because we knew that it would take cus­tomers some time to go through the process of eval­u­at­ing whether it makes sense for their orga­ni­za­tions. Our board mem­ber Ron Gilson, CIO of John­sonville, shared with us the process he went through in eval­u­at­ing whether to move to the new pro­gram. It does take some time, so that’s good advice. Thanks, Matt, for catch­ing up with us on the exten­sion of the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Program. 

Vis­it our Licens­ing Resource Cen­ter for in-depth cov­er­age of this top­ic or send your SAP licens­ing ques­tions to licensing@​asug.​com. You can also vis­it the SAP Dig­i­tal Access microsite for details.