SAP customers are compelled to move their SAP environment to the cloud, driven by a combination of factors, including:

• SAP ECC to S/4HANA greenfield and brownfield upgrades
• Decommissioning of legacy data centers via a broader cloud strategy
• A desire to move away from monolithic managed services agreements.

AWS, Google, Microsoft, SAP and the service providers have responded to this demand with a surplus of service offerings, partnership strategies and commercial models – and in doing so, have significantly disrupted traditional sourcing, vendor evaluation, selection and negotiation strategies.

This webinar will empower you with direct learnings from evaluations of Azure, AWS, GCP, RISE and service providers, including:

• A perspective on the various delivery models and sourcing strategies
• A comparative assessment of Azure, AWS, GCP, and RISE
• A deep dive into the implications of service provider sourcing strategies

Jon Reed, Co-Founder of diginomica, interviews John Belden, Project Execution Advisory Services Practice Leader at UpperEdge. John has outspoken field views on transformation – what works and where companies go wrong. They’ll count them down and, as usual, field plenty of audience questions along the way.

In our first ever benchmarking webinar, UpperEdge will be sharing insights gleaned from our database of system implementation projects totaling $20B in project cost and 172M hours of effort. These projects span hundreds of clients, dozens of industries, multiple vendors, and staffing models ranging from $100K-$500M in external spend.

The information collected enables UpperEdge clients to benchmark a wide range of project attributes, including:

• Expected vendor staffing pyramids
• Expected effort and cost by workstream
• Expected client effort for a wide range of implementation types

This webcast will provide:

• An overview of our database and how we built it
• Data for benchmarking current programs and how to establish a foundation for appropriate contingency amounts
• The expected and unexpected benchmarks of proposal range expectations, the ratios and ranges of staffing for projects, and the trends over time
• Observed variations by project size, project, system implementation vendor, and approach

SAP clients embarking on transformational initiatives are being presented with a plethora of delivery models for realizing transformation outcomes. Options include SAP RISE, going direct with a hyperscaler, bundled service provider solutions and other multi-sourced vendor scenarios. Current market dynamics are encouraging the consideration of these options but overwhelming the companies evaluating them.

This webinar will empower you with a landscape of the various options and the associated risks and opportunities of each, including:

• A holistic view of the various delivery models and sourcing implications for an S/4HANA transformation
• A comparative assessment of going direct with hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services
• A deep dive into SAP RISE including an overview of the service, commercial considerations, and the pros and cons
• A view into the partnership strategies and solution options being offered by SAP service providers

Negotiating with Microsoft has its challenges, but this is especially true for the growing number of customers that already use the Microsoft 365 (M365) cloud bundle. Beyond M365, Microsoft wants expanded adoption of their cloud including the most robust edition (E5), Office 365 for frontline workers (F1 or F3), Teams, Power Platform products, Dynamics 365, LinkedIn, and of course, Azure.

Given Microsoft’s market dominance and overwhelming leverage, it is critically important to develop the right negotiation strategy in advance of your next renewal to ensure the commercial relationship includes appropriate pricing, the right level of flexibility, protections, and investment commitments.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• What is in Microsoft’s playbook
• 4 key challenges customers face and how to overcome them
• 6 steps to effectively prepare for your Microsoft renewal
• Strategies to create leverage during your renewal negotiation

Jon Reed, Co-Founder of diginomica, interviews Adam Mansfield, Advisory Practice Leader at UpperEdge. In this interview Adam counts down his top tips for cloud vendor negotiations and peels back the hype on SaaS software. It’s time to dig into how to achieve project success with cloud vendors – and the obstacles in the way. Adam and John field questions and they also poke deserved fun at what drives cloud buyers crazy.

Whether you are competitively evaluating multiple vendors or going sole source, your success depends on your preparation and approach. In this webinar we will discuss proven approaches and the various preparation activities to drive success.

• Identifying Project Goals and Drivers
• Determining Scope and Commercial Requirements
• Understanding Vendor Goals and Behaviors
• Defining Negotiation Leverage and Strategy
• Determining Engagement and Communication Approach
• Keys to Execution – Initiate, Adapt, and Close

Evaluating an HCM cloud solution poses many challenges, one of which is understanding how to approach and negotiate the different subscription pricing and commercial terms from the various solution providers. Each provider presents its own challenges and level of complexity.

This webinar will compare and contrast the subscription and commercial terms from Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, and Oracle, including the hidden ‘gotchas’ and different approaches from each provider.

This webcast covers:

• Subscription Pricing
• Modules and Metrics
• Ramp-ups
• Pricing and Payment Schedules
• List Pricing and Discounting Practices
• Subscription Flexibility
• Renewal Term and Future Pricing Protections
• Negotiation and Relationship Approaches

A renewed investment in digital transformation puts cloud migration as the centerpiece of enabling these initiatives. Competitive pressures, customer demands, mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures are all driving factors in migrating business-critical workloads to the cloud as a way to increase agility, scale, and innovation.

Assessing and understanding the various platform and migration options and developing a sourcing strategy requires a great deal of diligence. Whether you are contemplating, preparing, mobilizing, or executing your transformational journey, it is imperative to get an early jump on cloud diligence, assessment and planning efforts, given the associated complexity and operational risk, and the impact on business operations and growth.

This webinar will use lessons learned from companies on the journey to address the following foundational elements:

• Key requirements for assessing, evaluating, building and presenting the business case
• The importance of an integrated sourcing plan
• Preparing for successful highly complex vendor negotiations

Digital transformations come with a fair number of risks. But risk management processes implemented by most of the big SIs are seriously flawed and oftentimes increase (not minimize) a client’s risk profile. Failure to mitigate risks is money in your SI’s pocket. All understand that failure on behalf of the client to adequately address their own execution risks will likely lead to profitable change orders.

Relying on your SI to tell you how to mitigate risks can be an imperfect strategy that often does not have a happy ending. Protecting your organization against risks that may seem obvious is often not thoroughly covered in your contracts. This webinar will analyze:

• Why risk management fails
• Failure points and how to mitigate them
• Operationalizing risk management
•  The most overlooked risks

The time has come to take a fundamentally different approach to the evaluation and selection of SAP implementation partners.  No longer should you rely on biased market research, ineffective RFP processes or sole source awards to incumbent providers.  Leveraging the experiences and insights obtained from supporting the evaluation, selection, negotiation, contracting and execution of over $10B in SAP implementation projects, this webinar critiques the performance of Accenture, Deloitte and IBM through each of the following phases:

• Strategy & Planning (“Phase 0”)
• Evaluation, Selection & Negotiation
• Project Mobilization
• Program Delivery & Execution

In this webinar, you will learn:
 

1. What the critical success and evaluation factors are for each phase
2. How each provider differentiates themselves during each phase
3. How these providers navigate the sales and contracting cycle
4. How each provider manages their relationship with SAP
5. What the most effective strategies are to minimize risk and drive expected outcomes

Negotiating with Workday has become more challenging as Workday subscription licensing has become more complex. This webinar will cover the most common licensing and commercial terms, including the different ways Workday uses pricing and payment schedules, and the implications for customers. Workday customers, or those evaluating Workday, can submit a question before or during the webinar, or just come to hear what others are asking. At a minimum, we will discuss Workday licensing basics including:

• Product SKUs and FSE Counts
• Worker Types
• FSE Calculation
• Pricing Impact
• Pricing and Payment Schedules
• Distinction Between the Two
• Ramp-ups
• TCO Impact
• List Pricing and Discounting Practices
• Licensing True-ups and Flexibility
• Renewal Term Protections
• Future Pricing Protections

Many companies have been doing business with Microsoft for a long time and they rely heavily on Microsoft’s solutions, especially as part of their digital transformations. Given this, it is critical that these companies ensure they have an optimized portfolio, the proper roadmap built, the right relationship in place and the appropriate contractual and commercial deal locked down.

Join Microsoft Practice Leader Adam Mansfield as he facilitates a discussion with a panel of the following accomplished CIOs:

• Amit Shah, CIO, Excelitas Technologies
• Grant Shih, CIO, National DCP
• Brad Whitehall, VP of IT, CIO, Unifirst

Service providers are leading the charge with improved IT Run support, leveraging tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve delivery through automation. Suppliers like TCS, Infosys and Cognizant are making advancements to increase their profit margins and meet their Wall Street commitments. To date, these efforts have limited visibility with customers.

This webinar will uncover:

Various go-to-market strategies of providers, positioning unique automation suites as differentiators but falling short on commitments to customer outcomes based on automation

How to raise the bar with service providers demanding increased transparency and contractual commitments to both improve outcomes and reduce costs, including where to negotiate in agreements and renewals

Case studies detailing the most effective strategies to drive improvements to your bottom line by aligning internally to accelerate savings and synergies across all aspects of Run support

Many companies have had long-standing relationships with their cloud vendors, and their experiences garner lessons to be learned. Regardless of how long they have been doing business together, the size of the organization or the size of the investments made, there are certain ways cloud vendors can help differentiate themselves as true strategic partners.

Join Practice Leader Adam Mansfield as he facilitates a discussion with a panel of accomplished IT executives:

Joe Caro, CIO, SVP, Post Holdings

Michael Blinzler, CIO, Leggett & Platt

Tim Brown, Director ERP, Rayonier Advanced Materials

Jeff DeSandre, Chief Integration Officer, AmerCareRoyal

This webinar will cover the IT executive’s perspective on:

• Balancing the pros and cons of the cloud. What are the top business and IT benefits you’ve realized being in the cloud? Does cloud foster a greater degree of vendor lock-in than more traditional perpetual license models? How can companies mitigate the leverage or stronghold cloud providers may have?
• Key elements of successful relationships with cloud vendors. For those relationships that are your strongest and most successful, what was the secret sauce? What are some of your biggest challenges with cloud vendors and what is your wish-list to make your relationship optimal?
• Cloud negotiations. Do you have a playbook for successful cloud negotiations? Have you found some vendors more difficult to negotiate with than others?

COVID-19 has forced everyone to think hard about cost management, and for IT this includes optimizing the spend on software licensing and support. Join us for an open dialog on how effective management of licensing and support can not only save your organization on your software investments, but also improve the relationship between you and your software and support providers.

Speaker: Ron Gilson, VP and CIO, Johnsonville Sausage, Len Riley, SAP Commercial Advisory Practice Leader, UpperEdge and David Blake, Founder and CEO, UpperEdge
Moderator: David Wascom, SVP of Executive Programs, ASUG

In today’s economic environment, no company is immune from evaluating and addressing the cost of every line item of spend in their IT budget. While your relationship with SAP and those that support your SAP ecosystem may have escaped such scrutiny in the past, this is no longer the case given the unprecedented events facing all organizations.

In these extraordinary times, SAP and its partners are expecting customers to come to them with an ask to cut costs. Those that employ a holistic, creative and credible approach to drive the discussion will see results.

In this webinar, you will be provided with an effective and timely strategy to:

• Rationalize the cost of your SAP software and determine areas to reduce spend
• Engage your SAP Systems Integrator and bring the cost and value equation closer to equal
•  Optimize your SAP AMS spend profile to better align with your requirements
• Right size your SAP hosting environment to reflect your demand in today’s market

As the impact of COVID-19 evolved, many companies shifted from digital transformation investment strategies to the conservation of cash. Not all industries and companies are being impacted the same, however, most companies are undertaking extensive re-planning efforts and cost reduction initiatives.

These efforts include an all-hands-on-deck approach to rightsizing project portfolios and reducing operating expense, while maintaining business continuity. Those companies that possess the ability to quickly accelerate and scale their cost reduction initiatives to meet short-term financial targets while balancing long-term strategic objectives will come out on top.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• How companies are aligning internally to accelerate results
• What the most effective short-/long-term cost reduction levers are
• How suppliers are responding to cost optimization initiatives
• What the most effective strategies are to drive results
• How companies can position themselves for the future
Learn More

The near-term impact of the global coronavirus pandemic continues to deepen with each passing day while the longer-term impact remains unclear. At the start of this year, outlooks were extremely positive with bullish corporate sentiment for digital transformation programs that would bring companies closer to their customers and suppliers.

As the impact of COVID-19 evolved, the rug was pulled out from beneath these companies and the focus shifted to employee health and safety, cash management and business stabilization. Not all industries and companies are being impacted the same. Some companies continue to maintain momentum on their transformation programs, others are rebalancing their plans, and others are pausing their programs.

Companies have all-hands-on-deck trying to figure out how to weather the storm and come out on the other side well prepared to ramp. Those companies that act quickly and decisively to handle the near-term impact while also applying effort to strategize and implement plans for evolving to the future will come out on top.

In this webcast, you will learn:

• How the current environment is impacting companies and their key transformation programs
• What companies can do to effectively ramp down initiatives
• How to engage suppliers for sustainable support
• What companies can do to position themselves to accelerate on the other side
• What companies should be considering for the future

Oracle claims that two key products will determine its future – Fusion (Cloud) ERP and Autonomous Database. They’re confident they will be the overwhelming winner in Cloud ERP with the only complete cloud solution. They also believe that Autonomous Database is on track to be the most successful product launch in their history.

Oracle has stated they prefer small deals for the Autonomous Database because they can close them much quicker with less scrutiny and feel they can grow customer usage from $30K — $600K/month. What can organizations expect from Oracle leading up to their May 31st fiscal year-end and how can they prepare?

This webinar will analyze:

• Oracle’s Fusion ERP strategy and why they believe they’ll win the ERP Cloud market (including migrating SAP customers)
• How Oracle’s land and expand approach could have negative long-term ramifications for companies
• The challenges Oracle must overcome to succeed and fulfill their bold claims
• Tips for navigating Oracle’s sales approach

With the advent of digital technologies, hybrid cloud solutions and the evolution of ERP implementation models that demand higher levels of participation from the software vendors, the necessity to put in place high-performing multi-vendor teams is becoming more common. Program leaders are having to increasingly deal with vendors that have misaligned incentive plans or are looking to target each other’s project territory.

This webcast will analyze:

• The risks associated with multiple vendors
• The 5 management levers to pull to turn co-existing vendors into high performance teams
• The comprehensive sourcing strategy needed to make these work

In today’s world, most IT organizations are facing a unique set of challenges forcing them to rethink their hosting and cloud strategies. More times than not, this appears to be a by-product of increasing customer expectations, the overall pace of change within the market, and their company’s plans for a digital transformation journey. Speed of outcomes cannot be hampered by technical debt, infrastructure refresh cycles, and flat or decreasing IT budgets.

And while the technical and financial benefits of hosting SAP workloads with a hyperscaler are well documented, a customer’s third-party support options are not. Far more IT leaders are setting aside their reservations with the public cloud and diving right in.

This webcast will analyze:

• Your support model options and the sourcing considerations that enable them
• The various contractual and architectural factors to take into account
• What you need to know to ensure you have a well-crafted sourcing and vendor management strategy.

As companies have evolved and progressed through the pioneering stage of Agile, there has been a tendency to take on larger and larger efforts. There have even been inroads made in the application of Agile to support the deployment of ERP (projects that are notoriously complex with a significant amount of integration). But the benefits of Agile that were derived from smaller-scale efforts have not naturally transferred to Agile projects at scale.

This webinar will analyze:

• Hertz vs. Accenture – Why this case is important, it’s history, what we know, and what we hope to discover
• How to use the SI contract to balance and mitigate agile-at-scale risks and to ensure you have the proper protections in your base contracts to hold them accountable
• What absolutely needs to be done during the project to guarantee SI accountability
• When to use a Value check assessment.

Negotiating with Workday can be more unforgiving than you may think. With the precedent that is set from your initial transaction, it is critical to achieve a highly competitive deal construct from the beginning. This will empower your organization to have pricing transparency and predictability, expand into Workday’s other solutions at highly competitive discounting, mitigate against downstream risk, and derive the greatest value from your investment.

In this webcast we will discuss:

• Workday’s go-to-market approach
• Organizational readiness for engaging with Workday
• Negotiation levers and communication approaches
• Key commercial terms to address

Competitive pressures, customer demands, mergers & acquisitions and SAP’s commitment to de-support ECC by 2025 are driving renewed investment in digital transformations. For many existing SAP customers, migrating from SAP ECC to S/4HANA will become a centerpiece of enabling these initiatives.

Assessing and understanding the various S/4 migration options, pros/cons, operational impacts, risks, benefits, costs, sequencing, timing and overall sourcing strategy requires a ton of diligence given the breadth of current SAP customer landscapes.

It is imperative SAP customers get an early jump on their S/4 diligence, assessment and planning efforts given the associated complexity and operational risk. Corporate leadership is making it very clear they must have confidence in the strategy, business case, and execution plans presented.

This webinar will address the following foundational elements that will set your ECC to S/4 journey and digital transformation initiative up for success:

• Key requirements for assessing, evaluating, building and presenting the business case
• Appreciating the importance of an integrated sourcing plan for software, implementation, infrastructure and application support
• Understanding the complexity and cost implications of converting your ECC licenses to S/4
• Case study review: Lessons learned from companies on the journey

While many Microsoft enterprise customers have already moved to at least one of the Office 365 plans or even the Microsoft 365 cloud bundle, there are still those that have not — or some that have only partially rolled out Office 365. Regardless of which scenario applies, Microsoft is aggressively targeting enterprise customers to adopt or add more. These same enterprises are also being aggressively approached by Google to get a foot in the door.

Google has made significant investments and organizational changes to be in a position to win, but Microsoft has made investments to keep Google out. The competitive landscape is heating up with more enterprises genuinely interested in adopting Google G Suite, even if only for a portion of their users.

If you are a current or potential Microsoft Office 365 customer and you are also considering a possible move to Google G Suite, this webinar will provide insights including:

• An Office 365 vs. G Suite cloud plan comparison
• The approach Microsoft and Google are taking to ramp adoption
• The motivations behind each vendor’s tactics
• How to effectively run an evaluation and negotiation

The pace of SAP customer migrations to S/4HANA has not been as robust as expected. With ECC 6.0 mainstream support expiring in 2025, now is the time to invest in understanding and developing a roadmap for moving to S/4HANA. Both SAP and SIs are pushing the benefits of agile transformations, however most enterprises have only used agile methods for internal development. Organizations that conduct their own independent due diligence will be best positioned to succeed in this critical SAP transformation.

This webinar will analyze:

• How SIs are positioning the benefits of an agile engagement vs. traditional waterfall methods, without specifically calling out the need to revisit the engagement contract.
Learn More

At least one new study comes out each year showing that 30-60% of all large IT-enabled transformation projects exceed their expected budgets by 25% or more. Consequently, purchasing departments have been implementing tighter contracts with system integrators in hopes of reducing the amount of budget uncertainty. But SI’s have reacted, with a goal to ensure that any unquantifiable risks associated with their budget and schedule are solely the responsibility of the client.

This webcast will analyze:

• The budget danger zone, also known as the SI profit center
• 4 traps laid by System Integrators
• Proven proactive tactics to avoid stepping foot in the danger zone

The reality facing customers is that SAP will use multiple business practices to opportunistically create events that take control away from customers and move them onto S/4HANA in the cloud as quickly as possible. This webcast analyzes:

• SAP’s sales strategies influencing digital transformations, driving ECC to S/4HANA migrations, capitalizing on M&A, and driving sales through audits
• SAP’s business practices used to eliminate a customer’s ability to shape their journey to S/4HANA
• Strategies to anticipate SAP’s actions and take control of your journey and technology roadmap

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to maximize your ServiceNow investment with executive strategies to drive long-term platform value. This panel of UpperEdge and Acorio executives will cover how to:

– Strengthen your relationship with ServiceNow and/or your ServiceNow partner
– Build a rock-solid ServiceNow roadmap to avoid common customer challenges
– Make the most out of your time at Knowledge19, ServiceNow’s largest annual user conference

Presented by
Adam Mansfield, Brian Murphy, Jared Romaine, Meghan Lockwood

In the current environment, those who want to maintain or even improve the commercial relationship they established with ServiceNow must have the right strategy in place come renewal time.

This webcast will provide crucial insights on:

• How to effectively prepare for your upcoming ServiceNow renewal
• What matters most to ServiceNow
• Which actionable strategies will increase your leverage

Oracle can no longer wait for customers to migrate to the cloud. So ready or not, Oracle will be trying to force migrations according to their own timeline.

In this webcast you will learn:

• The importance of these two strategic initiatives and why they will define Oracle’s future
• Oracle’s sales tactics for driving customers to migrate sooner rather than later
• Pitfalls to avoid – Why you only have one chance to get this right
• How to capitalize on this opportunity or fend off Oracle’s advances

Large IT projects continue to fail at the same rate they have failed for the last 40 years. New software platforms, methodologies, and automation of IT practices have done little to stem the tide of catastrophic failures. Look no further then recent failures like MillerCoors and Bridgestone. And these failures are just the tip of the iceberg.

Most IT failures never make it into the press or into lawsuits and are often concealed relative to their impact on a company’s earnings performance. You would think that after 40 years the industry would have progressed to the point that failures were the exception and not the rule.

In this webinar, UpperEdge will:

• Drill down into several of these disasters to uncover the decisions that resulted in a failed or stopped program
• Identify 3 characteristics these 12 high profile failures have in common
• Establish 4 things that organizations need to get right from the very beginning
• Provide 3 techniques that companies can use to reduce the risks associated with IT programs

Oracle audits are feared by many customers and can be a daunting process to go through. This does not have to be the case if you are properly prepared and proactive in your approach. This webinar will remove some of the mystery behind Oracle audits and provide customers with a game plan to tackle an audit head-on.

In this webcast you will learn:

• How Oracle exploits the audit process to manufacture leverage and create sales cycles
• Common customer compliance pitfalls on Oracle’s technology licenses
• What customers can do to get their house in order before an audit
• How best to engage with Oracle to resolve compliance issues

Implementing an SAP system is a costly, often multi-year, endeavor. You only get one chance to do it right. Whether you’re evaluating the investment in SAP’s S/4HANA suite or have already made the purchase and are now looking for an SI, this webinar will highlight several key areas often overlooked as you prepare and execute your SI evaluation process.

This webcast will provide crucial insights on:

• Agile, Big Bang or Phased – The impacts your implementation approach has on your SI evaluation
• Resourcing with SAP, your SI, and your own team – 4 things you need to get right when staffing your project
• Sourcing strategies and the impacts of material SI investments
• 3 high profile SI failures and what you can learn from them

Implementing agile at global scale introduces new challenges – team sizes are often in the hundreds, implementations are global, compliance is life critical, and the domain is very complex. The larger the project, the greater the risk and need for oversight and constant involvement. When the project is so long, its benefits are often not realized quickly.

This webcast will provide valuable insights on the following:

• Fundamental differences in contracting agile vs more traditional waterfall programs
• 18 structural risks of agile at scale projects
• How to use the contract to transfer and mitigate Agile at scale risks
• Useful measures of vendor performance and accountability for Agile at scale programs
• Basics of incentive structures of Agile at scale contracts
• Useful measures of vendor performance and accountability for Agile at scale programs
• Basics of incentive structures of Agile at scale contracts

Mainstream support for SAP’s ECC platform is set to expire in 2025, driving companies to make the conversion to SAP S/4HANA. This webcast will provide valuable insights on the following:

• SAP’s 2020 Ambitions 
• Defining The S/4 HANA Journey
• Next Generation SAP Agreement 
• Recommended Path Forward

Every cloud solution Salesforce sells comes with a subscription that must be renewed. Their approach to taking advantage of their customers’ inability to walk away once product adoption has occurred has been critical to their success. If you are considering adding Salesforce to your supplier portfolio or are already a customer, this webcast will provide many valuable insights, including:

• Outlining how to effectively prepare for your SFDC renewal
• Providing actionable strategies to increase your leverage with SFDC
• Addressing SFDC’s sales tactics come renewal time

Over the past couple of years, Oracle has been transforming itself from a traditional perpetual license application and database company to a Cloud company offering SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS solutions. If you are an Oracle customer or you’re considering an Oracle relationship, it is critical to understand how this transformation and evolution will impact your Oracle relationship.

This webcast will:

• Uncover Oracle’s cloud transformation strategy
• Provide insights on what Oracle’s evolving customer approach and sales team compensation policies mean for you
• Detail the tactics Oracle is using to generate sales opportunities
• Prepare you for Oracle’s approach and enhance your negotiation leverage

Software vendors are pushing hard on cloud-based solutions and they’re highly incented to make SaaS sales. Total cost of use calculations comparing Software as a Service versus the licensing of software are fairly well established, however they only provide a partial answer. This webcast takes a deeper dive into not-so-obvious differences between these options, like the cost of legacy integration.

Experts from the UpperEdge SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Digital practices discussed:

• Business Agility – The masked challenges of SaaS in a growing business
• Enterprise Integrity – A clear understanding of the risks of SaaS to your company
• Time-to-Value – Factors to consider to determine when your investment will really pay off

The results of the SAP v. Diageo case are compelling executives to assess the state of their SAP relationship and potential financial risk. This webcast will address the significance of indirect access, its impact on architecture and buying decisions, and the importance of getting a proactive handle on your SAP relationship to drive predictable outcomes.

Topics covered during the webcast include:

• SAP’s approach to indirect access and enforcement
• Real world customer scenarios of indirect use
• Significance of the SAP v. Diageo case
• Downstream implications of HANA
• Best practice approaches for assessing and mitigating your indirect use risk

The same critical success factors and best practices for large IT programs have been around for years. Yet, large IT programs, professionally managed by well-compensated consultants, continue to fail at the same rate they did 20 years ago. The reason for this is not what you think. Our research shows there is a single factor most correlated with project success and your system integrator will likely not to tell you about it.

In this webcast, UpperEdge Governance & Risk Practice Lead, John Belden and CEO David Blake discuss what this critical success factor is and how you can hold your IT consulting partner more accountable to enabling your program

SAP’s ongoing integration of multiple acquisitions, incessant push for the HANA platform and its transformation to the cloud represent new layers of complexity and opportunity for customers. This complexity, coupled with SAP’s approach to software audits and relationship management, is driving customers to proactively reassess their SAP relationship.

In this webcast, UpperEdge SAP Practice Lead, Len Riley and CEO David Blake, discuss how SAP customers are assessing relationship risk, uncovering optimization opportunities, and redefining their next generation relationship with SAP.