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Maynilad Water Services, Inc.

Snow Optimizer for SAP Software gave us the confidence to defend an SAP audit successfully, ensuring we run the most cost-effective licensing regime, and delivering operational excellence to our more than 9.8 million customers.
Korina Monoso, IT Operations Head, Maynilad
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See how Maynilad saved several hundred thousand US dollars on SAP license costs using Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software.

Overview

Maynilad saves upwards of several hundred thousand US dollars on SAP license costs using Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software

Challenges & Opportunities

Maynilad Water Services, Inc. (Maynilad) is the water and wastewater services provider for the 17 cities and municipalities that comprise the West Zone of the Greater Manila Area. It is the largest water concessionaire in the Philippines in terms of customer base, currently serving more than 9.8 million customers. Some 2,200 staff at Maynilad rely on SAP® software, paid for on a per-user license basis, to manage essential water and wastewater services.

The sister company of Maynilad extended an Unlimited During Deployment (UDD) licensing scheme to them, enabling fixed fee payments, regardless of actual usage, for a set period.

The UDD approach eliminates the need to monitor and manage SAP licensing, and provides significant flexibility and unlimited usage when companies are in transition or transformation. Compared with the commonly known per-user licensing, UDD delivers this agility at a premium fee.

Korina Monoso, IT operations head of Maynilad, elaborates: “Maynilad maintained both direct licensing and the UDD model. To reduce costs and complexity, we wanted to move all users into the main Maynilad agreement when the UDD license came to its end. But manually tracking and consolidating SAP licenses during this transitional period was challenging and time-consuming. In addition, keeping track of our SAP software usage was difficult.”

Part of the UDD agreement includes an SAP audit to assess software usage. SAP uses this audit for license fee renewal negotiations. “The UDD pre-termination audit was challenging. It was where we really found Snow software useful. We used it for license usage clean-up, and for the audit results finalization. It also firmed up the correct license count. Coming up with a complete count during audit closing is important because it sets the final license count that we shall have moving forward. As a result, we were able to avoid additional count beyond the set baseline, which could have cost us extra charges and result in audit compliance risk,” notes Monoso.

Solution

Maynilad realized that it needed validated data showing current SAP licensing and usage for both direct and indirect usage scenarios to successfully mitigate the risk of fee increases. With many geographically dispersed users, manual surveys would be inefficient and unreliable; thus, the team looked for an intelligent tool to extract and analyze information automatically.

“Maynilad selected Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software because it is quick to implement and easy to configure, without impacting SAP,” reports Monoso. “Both SAP and KPMG certify Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software, and it is a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader, which confirmed our choice.”

Maynilad deployed Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software to build a full picture of its direct and indirect licensing position, including SAP BusinessObjects. With the assistance of a specialist Snow consultant, the company transferred all SAP software asset management capabilities to its SAP Basis and functional teams, concluding with presentations of results to senior management.

“The Snow consultancy helped us to clarify our license position before the audit process commenced, with guidance on the right areas to focus on and the level of detail required,” says Monoso. “Post-delivery, we continue to receive great support from Snow in terms of additional references, and upcoming licensing schemes that may be more cost-effective for Maynilad.”

When the UDD agreement ended, SAP completed its software audit, and the results were compared with reports from Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software to identify discrepancies and discover the root causes. Monoso comments, “In the short-term, Snow Optimizer helped us rationalize and clean up our SAP license allocations. Subsequently, during the audit process, we used the data from Snow Optimizer to establish the correct usage, reduce liabilities and negotiate the best possible outcome for our company.”

Impact & Results

Moving on from the expiration of the UDD, Maynilad now operates Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software as its standard SAP license management solution. Each month, the company reports on SAP access and user privileges, manages its internal audit processes, and establishes its current license position.

“A clear understanding of our SAP environment enabled us to negotiate the right deal with SAP. Based on the validated data provided by Snow Optimizer, Maynilad was able to avoid several hundred thousand USD in potential audit exposure compared with an unmanaged UDD license,” says Maynilad CIO Francisco Castillo.

For example, the company can now monitor license usage and status across all SAP platforms/products. The solution allows automatic cross referencing, ensuring non-duplicity of accounts. In many cases, Maynilad can maintain an optimized number of licenses assigned with the appropriate and most cost-effective license type.

One specific illustration is how Maynilad uses Snow Optimizer to rationalize its SAP BusinessObjects licenses. SAP BOBJ licenses were matched against ECC Professional, which is instantaneous using Snow. Aligned with SAP’s changing license metric scheme, this solution helps Maynilad adapt almost immediately.

“With our previous processes, simply discovering the users and extracting the data from different systems would take more than five hours, followed by manual comparison in Excel worksheets. With Snow Optimizer we can extract reports quickly, advise our CIO, and make fact-based decisions to optimize our SAP licenses,” says Monoso.

Castillo concludes, “Like many other companies, we are very budget-conscious, particularly during the economic uncertainty caused by the global pandemic. Snow Optimizer for SAP® Software gave us the confidence to defend our SAP audit successfully, ensuring we run the most cost-effective licensing regime, and allowing us to deliver operational excellence to our more than 9.8 million customers.”