Top Tips for Effective Enterprise Agreement Renewals

For some busy organisations with a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA), it’s possible that your EA renewal date will arrive out of the blue, creating a cascade of activities to ensure continuation of license coverage. It’s our experience that some businesses with impending EA renewals are overlooking some of the considerable benefits to take advantage of as they simply don’t have the time and/or resource internally to support such an activity, or they don’t appreciate what is available to them as part of the re-negotiation.

However, all is not lost. Given that you have some time (6 months at least), there are just a few straightforward actions that you can do to start your EA renewal planning now. This post will outline some of the benefits you will enjoy and top tips to help you prepare for an effective EA renewal.

Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Planning Benefits

Depending on your circumstances, there are numerous benefits to enjoy as a result of effective renewal planning — some of which are as follows:

• The potential for improving your commercial arrangement. Your renewal is an opportunity to reduce the cost of your on-premise and cloud software licensing. If you engage early enough with Microsoft there are opportunities to create savings.
• Identifying where there may be a risk of license waste, redundancy and/or non-compliance. Taking the time to resolve or manage this out will improve your commercial position prior to renewal negotiations.
• Understand whether your technology plans moving forward would benefit from a change in your Microsoft contractual arrangements. Again, this type of revision does require time and careful negotiation with Microsoft. My post on common EA negotiation mistakes will help guide your negotiation planning.
• Is an Enterprise Agreement the best way forward? Your EA renewal could be the perfect time to consider the CSP license model.

We are all familiar with the quote ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’ (Benjamin Franklin) and this is certainly true for contract renewals. So, I have put together our 3 top tips to help you plan for EA renewal success.

Top Tips for Effective EA Renewal Planning

1. Start Early — depending on the size of your estate you should be starting to think about your renewal ideally 12 months in advance. Start to document what success would look like for your situation. What are the imperatives that you must achieve? What are your technology plans for the next 3 years and will this impact your EA? Are you aware of or suspect any compliance concerns in your estate that should be resolved before the negotiation or any waste/redundancy that can be addressed?

2. Create Your Team — It’s very important to build a team for this activity. Do not try to do this on your own. Select your team from stakeholders across the business; finance, commercial/procurement and any specific technology areas in order for them to contribute to this exercise effectively. If this is not achievable or you would feel that outside expertise would be beneficial, then contacting experts such as Version 1 would be prudent.

3. Do Your Research — Take time to read online resources, attend webinars and talk to your industry peers to arm yourself with knowledge. As experts in Microsoft licensing, we have a considerable library of resources on this topic to support your EA lifecycle.

Summary

The key takeaway for effective EA renewal planning is don’t leave it too late. As I have outlined above, depending on your circumstances and plans, this exercise is not trivial. Understanding your goals and what activities need to happen and when will go a long way in ensuring EA renewal success.

Version 1’s Microsoft License consultants have considerable experience in helping organisations optimise their software cost base, reduce the risk of any license exposure, and advise and guide on the best licensing models based on your business’s technology goals and ambitions.

For more information on effective EA renewal planning, watch our Fireside Chat or contact us with any questions.

About the Author

Karl is a Principal Licensing Consultant at Version 1, providing Microsoft license expertise to organisations globally and ensuring customers get the best value from their Microsoft assets.