Optimize SAP ECC Licenses and User Classification ...

Siarhei · ‎2025 May 15

Introduction

Many SAP customers find value in the extended reporting capabilities provided by the Accelerator for SAM4U Adoption (available on the SAP Store) - especially for S/4HANA license management and optimization. However, what about customers who are still operating SAP ECC and plan to do so for several more years? These organizations are still subject to SAP audits and need effective tools for managing and optimizing their SAP ECC licenses.

Let’s explore how Accelerator for SAM4U can also support SAP ECC customers in preparing for SAP audits and optimizing their current license usage.

Analyze Current Classification vs. Authorization-Based Classification

There is no direct mapping between SAP ECC named user license metrics and S/4HANA ruleset metrics. Still, it’s crucial to focus on high-cost license types, such as Professional and Limited Professional users, to unlock potential savings.

For example, in one customer case, the SAP ECC license usage looked like this:

52 Professional Users
53 Limited Professional Users

Using the Authorization Analysis feature of SAM4U’s extended reporting and simulation, we can map users' current manual classifications against their actual usage potential - based on their roles and profiles in the SAP ECC system. This gives insight into what kind of system footprint a user is authorized to leave, aligning more closely with S/4HANA’s licensing logic.

Example: Reclassifying Professional Users

Pic. 1 – Current Classification vs. Authorization-Based Classification

Let’s focus on the 52 Professional Users:

Only 101 users truly have professional roles (mapped to the HB Professional User metric in S/4HANA).
126 users currently classified as Professional Users have roles corresponding only to an HC Functional footprint. These users can be considered, roughly, as 53 Limited Professional Users.

Instead of analyzing each user in the HC Functional group in detail (which is time-consuming), the extended reporting for SAM4U dashboard allows you to drill down and extract a list of these 126 users with a single click. This list can then be sent to your SAP system administrator to update their license metric accordingly.

Pic. 2 – Users to Reclassify from 52 Professional to 53 Limited Professional

Additionally, there are 184 users classified as 52 Professional Users whose assigned roles do not match any classification in the S/4HANA ruleset.

For these, we recommend mapping them to 59 Core Users - a more cost-effective metric in SAP ECC for unclassified users.

Pic. 3 – Users to Reclassify from 52 Professional to 59 Core

This rough reclassification already opens up a path to significant license cost savings by reducing the number of users under the expensive 52 Professional Users metric.

Identify Missing Upgrades: Core Users Who Should Be Professional

The final step in this license "homework" is to identify users who are underclassified - those listed as 59 Core Users in SAP ECC, but whose roles match HB Professional in the S/4HANA ruleset.

These users may need to be upgraded to 52 Professional Users to ensure compliance and avoid audit risk. Again, this can be done easily through the drill-down functionality in SAM4U’s reporting dashboard.

Pic. 4 – Users to Reclassify from 59 Core to 52 Professional

Conclusion

The extended reporting and simulation provided by the Accelerator for SAM4U offers powerful, independent insights into your SAP ECC user classifications. By comparing current user classifications with authorization-based projections (using S/4HANA rulesets), you can:

Optimize license allocation
Identify over- and under-classified users
Prepare confidently for SAP audits
Uncover significant cost-saving opportunities

You can request free demo access to the Accelerator for SAM4U Adoption tenant from SAP Store to explore these features and validate your own SAP ECC user classification strategy.