INTERVIEW BETWEEN KELLY YIP & SHARON RYAN
SAP licensing has long felt like a gated discipline. It’s dense, technical and often navigated only by seasoned professionals. For many, stepping into the SAP world without years of experience can feel intimidating and borderline impossible, as if the rules are written for insiders only.
We at LISA, want to change this perception by providing you with courses that change this dynamic.
Our three new SAP courses are designed to demystify SAP licensing and build practical understanding from the ground up, whilst also helping you keep track of any changes. A breakdown of these new courses can be found here.
To bring these courses to life, we spoke with the person who knows them best: The course leader herself, Sharon Ryan. With the aim of understanding what it really takes to become an SAP expert, we asked her about her journey and learned how she navigated the twists and turns of SAP licensing.
I joined a previous company at the same time as it was establishing a global SAP license practice. The global service owner was a former head of SAP’s APAC LMS team. He needed help closing advisory projects and I was interested in becoming a licensing SME. So, we agreed that if any projects I helped him close, he would in return provide me training on how to deliver those projects. Win-win!
I’m grateful to many people who have invested time and energy in my career over the years; I felt it was time for me to try and return the favour.
They tend to fall into three categories:
(i) License Optimisation where SAP customers wish to squeeze maximum value out of their investment, maybe as part of a cost savings initiative or audit readiness.
(ii) License Transformation where customers want to understand the options available to them and what this looks like from a contractual, TCO and license modelling perspective.
(iii) License Restructuring where SAP customers are engaged with M&A activity or organisational restructuring and they need support designing the current and target states.
In recent years SAP has really delivered a lot of great tools and resources to support customers managing their licenses. I believe as more people invest the time and energy to use these, the focus is going to switch from “how do I measure my licenses?” to focusing more on FinOps across multiple and diverse product lines, optimising use of negotiated contractual concessions and controlling costs. AI will play a key role in this transition.
Take the time to learn the basics. I can’t emphasise that enough. While it is fun (yes, I am an SAPophile if that’s a word!) to lead projects and playing key roles in developing negotiation strategies, trying to get there too fast without understanding the basics will screw you long-term.
I spent many years in the wings supporting other more senior consultants and doing the heavy lifting. The benefit of having gone through that is, that it’s now much easier to see the big picture, but jump into the low-level detail with various stakeholders and bring everyone along during a customer project. This significantly increases your chances of delivering the project on schedule with quantitative successes and most importantly, a very happy customer at the end!
I designed the courses in a way that provides practical step-by-step guidance on how to do specific tasks and it’s not just theory e.g. how to interpret the LAW Report, measure indirect / digital access, interpret a license agreement, and build a consolidated view of entitlement and rights, etc. Passing the exam will prove that you will be able to deliver specific licensing tasks.
The session provides an overview of what you need to do to make moving to RISE with SAP a success. If you are an existing LISA subscriber, it will cross-reference specific modules that provide low-level guidance e.g. how to run and interpret the STAR Report but also useful to non-LISA subscribers that would like to understand what steps need to be followed to set your organisation up for success.
Join Sharon on February 19th for her live training session – Rise with SAP Licensing: A Strategy for Success
Sharon has successfully worked in both SAP licensing consultancy and license audit roles, affording her with a practical understanding and fact-based approach to the options and rights SAP customers can expect in their SAP business dealings.
Sharon founded Xactitud in 2021, a niche consultancy exclusively focused on SAP licensing. Xactitud delivers SAP licensing projects globally, empowering customers with SAP license intelligence and enabling them to achieve their business goals.
