Summary
Summary
A global food and beverage company was approaching the renewal of its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, a multi-million-euro, five-year commitment covering its entire technology estate. SAMexpert supported the client through licence analysis, commercial negotiation and executive advisory.
The client secured a net saving of €1.65 million over five years, alongside a €1.5 million SKU correction that Microsoft acknowledged.
Mid-engagement, another advisory firm approached the client, offering further savings in return for a success fee of up to €1 million. The CIO declined. The client took a three-stream negotiation strategy into its executive session with Microsoft, and signed the agreement with the Microsoft relationship intact.
Anonymity guarantee
We must never give our clients away to the wrath of Microsoft. To protect them and their business, the client referenced here has been kept anonymous. Everything else is 100% a true story.
A five-year renewal and a complicated estate
The client was renewing for five years. A five-year term is non-standard, so it needed approval from Microsoft's deal desk, the internal team that signs off unusual contract terms.
The estate was complicated. Windows Server licensing was spread across hundreds of servers. Azure Hybrid Benefit entitlements, which let you use existing licences in Azure, were moving from Enterprise Agreement billing to direct Azure consumption. The client also planned to move frontline workers from E1 to F3 licences, which needed a 90-day coexistence window built into the agreement.
A major SAP S/4HANA programme was running at the same time, adding pressure to the IT budget and to the people available internally.
The Microsoft account team had pressures of its own. Year 1 of the new agreement was coming in €200,000 below the prior year, which creates friction with any account team bonus structure.
What the licence analysis found
Before any commercial conversation with Microsoft began, SAMexpert carried out a full baseline analysis of the client's licence position.
The Windows Server count needed a lot of work. The initial estimate was materially higher than the defensible position. After recalculation, the correct figure was confirmed at 630 licences, and the move of Azure Hybrid Benefit costs to direct consumption billing was modelled and tracked. The gap between the original estimate and the correct number was one of the main drivers of the €1.65 million net saving.
The SKU analysis uncovered a separate issue. Microsoft had made an error on the Windows Server and GitHub Security SKUs, and it had gone unnoticed. SAMexpert identified and documented the error and put it to Microsoft. Microsoft acknowledged the error, and the correction was worth €1.5 million.
An offer from another advisory firm
Mid-engagement, the negotiation team at another advisory firm approached the client. It offered to deliver a further 2% to 3% in savings. Its success fee would be 25% of the savings achieved, estimated at €0.5 million to €1 million.
The client's CIO declined. The success fee was more than the Q1 budget could absorb, and the firm's tactics carried a real risk of damaging the relationship with Microsoft. SAMexpert's approach, built on a fair partnership with Microsoft, was already delivering results.
Three negotiation streams
The commercial terms were settled before the executive session with Microsoft. The session itself was structured around three negotiation streams, each serving a different time horizon:
Tactical: SKU-level optimisation, rebundling E1 to E3 and trading licence types at the same overall contract value.
Midterm: securing better commercial terms for a planned Copilot expansion before the expansion happened.
Strategic: a commitment from Microsoft, locked into the current agreement, to cap increases at no more than 5% at the next renewal.
With three streams on the table, Microsoft had something constructive to engage with beyond the immediate contract, and the conversation stayed collaborative.
The legal review
The client's legal team pushed for stronger liability clauses in the Microsoft contract. SAMexpert gave the legal team calibrated advice, separating achievable best practice from requests Microsoft would never agree to.
That advice shortened the legal review and avoided friction that could have delayed signature.
The outcome
Metric | Result |
|---|---|
Net saving over 5 years | €1.65 million (about €330,000 a year) |
SKU correction (acknowledged by Microsoft) | €1.5 million |
Contract term | 5 years, non-standard, approved by Microsoft's deal desk |
Year 6 renewal cap | No more than 5%, agreed and on record |
Contract signed | On time |
What the client has now
The client starts its five-year agreement with a fully documented and defensible licence position. It has a commercial framework for Copilot expansion that doesn't require renegotiation, and a cap on increases at Year 6. Azure Hybrid Benefit cost tracking is part of post-signature operations from day one.
The Microsoft relationship is intact. The partnership approach the CIO backed kept the door open for further conversations on Copilot, Azure growth and what comes next.
If you need help with your Microsoft Enterprise Agreement or licensing strategy, get in touch. We don't sell Microsoft licences or cloud services, so our advice is always independent.