SAP customers told to bargain hard

SAP users should drive a harder bargain with the vendor, experts urged today

SAP customers have been urged to demand better value from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) giant, and to reduce the number of instances of software running in their environments in order to make the most of their implementations.

Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang argued at the SAP UK & Ireland User Group Conference 2008 in London that the current economic climate could provide a perfect time for SAP customers to demand more for less.

"You have got to fight for more discounts. Your costs are not going to go down and your profits are not necessarily going to go up," he said. "The balance has tilted. We are definitely seeing that there are opportunities here."

Sasha Drennan, head of business improvement at Lincolnshire County Council, said that she had been able to bargain with SAP before over costs, and that it is something she would consider again as the council embarks on major efficiency savings.

"We are looking at master data management in the future so we will be looking to leverage SAP here," she added.

Wang argued that firms could make significant savings and improve return on investment by instance consolidation. "We calculated that you could improve ROI by 380 per cent by consolidating 10 instances to one," he said.

"A single instance is a goal. It doesn't mean you have to get there, it's a goal. And you could use it as an opportunity to standardise your business processes."