A SmartBuyer software licensing specialist negotiated the client’s Microsoft Enterprise Agreements across 80 territories, working alongside its IT and Procurement teams to take 35% out of the cost.
reduction
CLIENT
Global multinational
CATEGORY
Microsoft licensing
(EA)
SPECIALIST
Software licensing
& negotiation
OUTCOME
35%
cost reduction
A Microsoft Enterprise Agreement rarely overspends in one obvious place. Cost builds in the gaps between decisions: licences bought for people who never adopted them, suite tiers chosen once and never revisited, prices agreed one entity at a time. Across 80 territories that effect multiplies, and no one inside the business can see the whole position, let alone defend it to Microsoft.
Microsoft negotiates agreements like this all the time. The client negotiates one every few years. Closing that gap needed someone who had run a Microsoft negotiation at this scale before, and the time to build the evidence first. Neither sat inside the business.
A large multinational licensing Microsoft software across 80 territories, with usage, local terms and pricing spread across a broad and fragmented set of agreements.
Client identity not disclosed.
The specialist ran the engagement alongside the client’s IT and Procurement teams, building the evidence before the first commercial conversation with Microsoft.
Measure
Establish what is really used
Reconciled licences bought against licences in use across the territories, separating genuine need from shelfware, so the client’s real requirement was known before any price was discussed.
Right-size
Match the product mix to the work
Tested whether suite tiers and add-ons matched how each group of users actually worked, and stepped down or removed what was not earning its cost, so price was set on the right scope.
Negotiate
Take the case to Microsoft
Negotiated price, licence mix and contract terms, backed by usage data and benchmarks from comparable global agreements, and held the position through to agreed terms.
35%
35% taken off the cost of the Microsoft Enterprise Agreements across all 80 territories, secured before the client committed to the terms.
Licences now reflect what each territory uses, so the client is no longer paying for entitlement nobody relies on.
IT and Procurement hold the usage data and benchmarks to challenge the next renewal from fact, not from Microsoft’s forecast.
Negotiating from combined scale
Microsoft prices to the size and shape of a customer, so an estate negotiated territory by territory is priced as many small buyers. The specialist built one commercial position for the whole organisation and held every local request against it. That protected the client’s combined buying power and stopped a concession in one territory being traded for a worse outcome elsewhere.
Evidence-led commercial position
Microsoft’s account team arrives with its own forecast of what the client will need. The specialist countered with the client’s measured usage, which moved the discussion from the vendor’s assumptions to the client’s facts and made it harder to price for seats nobody uses. Any procurement leader can take the principle into a renewal: measure use before discussing price.
Complete
Complete
Complete
Specialist support without a permanent hire
SmartBuyer matches organisations with experienced specialists across 250+ categories, giving budget owners access to focused software licensing and vendor negotiation expertise when the work demands it.
500+
specialists
Experienced category specialists who have audited, negotiated and renewed large enterprise software agreements inside major organisations.
250+
categories
Focused coverage across software, cloud, cybersecurity and the wider technology spend base, matched to the agreement in hand.
Flexible
engagement
Specialist cover for a single renewal or a wider programme, scoped and costed before any work begins, with no permanent hire.