During cloud contract renewal windows, organizations often fail to capture the full value of their agreement. The drivers, typically a set of common but preventable mistakes: 

• Auto-Renewal – The majority of customers discover at least one contract that auto-renewed without their knowledge, which may also include price hikes.   
• No visibility to current usage and compliance floors – ITAA have found multiple organizations utilizing less than half of purchased licenses, creating both waste and compliance risk. 
• Vendor Lock-in acceptance – anchored business critical systems. 
• Price invisibility – without pricing benchmarks, organizations cannot guarantee a truly competitive deal is signed. 
• Sizing & future-proofing errors – Companies often lose ~25% of SaaS spend to over-provisioning (Source) 
• Double Licensing – Companies often run multiple overlapping solutions across business units. 

Key Lessons For SAP S/4HANA Renewals In 2026

Quantisync ltd, a global financial services organization recently sought ITAA’s support regarding an upcoming SAP Cloud renewal with the in-scope contract value of circa 15 million Eur. The objective was simple – achieve the best possible outcome whilst ensuring the common shortfalls and complexities listed above were effectively navigated. 

Challenges

• The customer wanted support on how to renew and achieve better terms and conditions on their existing contract before auto renewal. 
• A limited renewal window. 
• Significant company growth expected to increase licensing requirement. 
• Limited view into risks based upon current usage. 

What Was The Solution?

The objective of this assignment was to develop a comprehensive cost model to support informed decision-making at the SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud contract renewal stage and support on negotiations with SAP. 

Using a proven & structured approach, ITAA performed all necessary due diligence to ensure that Quantisync ltd, could utilize their company-specific leverage points and benefit from ITAA’s benchmarking capabilities and pricing visibility to ensure they optimize their deal proposal. 

• Bill of Materials (Current Entitlement): ITAA performed a contractual extraction & analysis to visualize Quantisync ltd, current software ownership. This analysis provided an insightful category breakdown of OPEX with figures being confirmed by a current invoice review. 

• Effective License Position (ELP): This part of the project analyzed the clients cloud usage data which was collected and compared against the entitlement to measure and quantify the value of any shelfware or incompliance. 

• Cost Model: The scenario modeling provided the projected Total Cost of Ownership of continuing with the existing SAP landscape under renewed contractual terms or transitioning to alternative, SAP Public Cloud products and service combinations. 

The variance between deployment options was visualized for decision making purposes. 

• Negotiation Support: Provided end-to-end negotiation support, including strategic preparation, cost optimization, licensing framework design, price benchmarking and support through to final agreement. 

Turning Strategy Into Measurable Results

Successful negotiation with SAP to retain existing licensing structures, avoiding transition to newer, less favorable license models. 

• Secured a multi-year agreement at below market average rates. 
• Demonstrated a high level of negotiation readiness through thorough preparation and strategic planning. 
• Leveraged ITAA benchmarking insights to gain a deep understanding of the customer’s historical discounting and industry-specific pricing across solution areas. 
• Achieved inclusion of tailored, customer-specific clauses and commercial allowances in the final agreement, enhancing overall contract value and flexibility. 

2026 represents the final year of push to get SAP S/4HANA migrations across the line. ITAA has supported many clients in achieving the best possible deal, using in-house benchmarking, in-depth cost modeling frameworks and decades of SAP Licensing and contract negotiation expertise. 

The organisation referenced in this case study is represented by a fictitious name to preserve confidentiality.