RISE with SAP: Why User Management Deserves a Seat at the Table

With 20 years of experience in IT, I've witnessed several technological shifts—from hardware evolution to cloud migrations, from monolithic architectures to micro-services. Each transformation brings new opportunities, but also new responsibilities. One of the most significant shifts in the SAP ecosystem today is the move toward RISE with SAP.

While much of the discussion around RISE focuses on infrastructure abstraction, business transformation, or process optimization, there is one critical dimension that is often overlooked in early stages of planning: user management and licensing governance.

The Old World: User Licensing in On-Premise Environments

Let’s rewind a little.

In the traditional SAP on-premise world, user management—particularly licensing—was largely under the customer's control. The system ran on our infrastructure (whether in-house or through a managed private cloud), and we were responsible for maintaining the user base, assigning access, and ensuring licensing compliance.

However, in practice, this control often translated into limited visibility. Changes in user roles or responsibilities weren’t always reflected promptly. Former employees might retain active licenses. Expensive user types (e.g., “Professional”) might be assigned when lighter ones (e.g., “Functional”) would have sufficed. And in many cases, the only moment of reckoning came during a SAP audit.

This reactive approach to user management meant that compliance and optimization were often delayed or deprioritized. Most attention went to technical performance indicators like CPU usage, memory, and database growth, especially in private cloud setups where cost was tied to capacity. Meanwhile, user licensing stayed in the shadows—until it became a problem.

The New World: Real-Time Transparency with RISE

With RISE with SAP, the paradigm changes fundamentally. SAP becomes not just your software provider, but your infrastructure and service partner. And with this model comes greater transparency—on both sides.

Tools like SAP for Me and related dashboards now provide near real-time visibility into your license consumption. SAP knows how you're using the system. And so do you.

This immediacy means there's less room for ambiguity or delay. If your licensed user count exceeds your entitlements, the discrepancy is visible. If you're not cleaning up inactive users or rightsizing access permissions, the impact is measurable. Compliance is no longer something that happens once a year—it’s ongoing.

Why This Demands a Rethink

This new landscape requires a strategic and operational shift in how we approach user management.

Here are two key pillars to focus on:

🔹 1. Preventive Measures: License Smart, Not Hard

Before you onboard new users or migrate existing ones, take a step back. Reassess your license types and user roles.

• Are your users categorized appropriately based on what they actually do?

• Are you granting access based on minimum necessary permissions?

• Are you following a structured joiner–mover–leaver process?

The goal is to avoid over-licensing from the start. Assigning a Professional license to someone who only needs basic functionality has a tangible cost. At scale, those costs can be significant.

🔹 2. Corrective Actions: Clean House, Continuously

User environments are dynamic. People change roles, leave companies, or shift responsibilities. Yet systems don’t always reflect those changes.

You should implement ongoing audits of user activity, with rules such as:

• Deactivate users inactive for 90+ days.

• Reassess roles and permissions quarterly.

• Reclassify user types based on actual usage patterns.

These adjustments may seem small, but over time they ensure your license consumption reflects reality, not legacy.

Leveraging the Right Tools

While some of this can be done manually, it becomes unsustainable as environments grow. That’s where specialized tools come in.

Solutions like Flexera, SAMQ, ServiceNow, or others in the Software Asset Management (SAM) space can automate much of the analysis and remediation. They provide insights, simulate impact of changes, and help maintain control in a world where SAP is watching in real time.

These tools not only help manage compliance—they empower optimization.

What About FUEs?

With RISE, SAP introduces a new metric for licensing: Full User Equivalents (FUEs).

The idea behind FUEs is flexibility. Instead of buying individual license types, you acquire a pool of FUEs that correspond to your organization's needs. You can then distribute these across user types according to predefined equivalences.

It’s a more adaptable model—but it still demands rigorous control. Misclassifications, dormant users, or poor governance can exhaust your FUE allocation faster than expected, leading to unplanned costs or compliance discussions.

In other words, flexibility doesn’t replace responsibility.

Closing Thoughts

RISE with SAP brings many benefits: faster innovation, streamlined operations, cloud agility. But it also brings a new level of visibility and accountability—especially in licensing.

User management is no longer an administrative task to be dealt with once a year. It’s a strategic function that needs ongoing attention, dedicated tooling, and cross-functional collaboration between IT, Security, HR, and Procurement.

If you’re moving to RISE (or already there), now is the time to:

• Review your licensing strategy

• Implement governance processes

• Explore tooling that supports real-time compliance and optimization

Because in this new world, SAP can see how you use the licenses you bought—every day. Make sure what they see is what you want them to see.

📩 If you're navigating a RISE migration and want to discuss governance, user strategy, or lessons learned, feel free to reach out. I'm always happy to exchange experiences.