The five RISE TCO benchmarks every CIO needs.

A CIO who walks into a RISE with SAP review without benchmark numbers is at the mercy of the SAP supplied business case. The account team will frame the proposal as competitive, the SI partner will frame the migration as efficient, and the internal finance team will frame the savings as material. Without independent benchmarks, the CIO has no defensible counter. With five benchmarks on the desk, the CIO has the entire negotiation surface visible at a glance. This article documents the five RISE TCO benchmarks the firm puts on every CIO desk before the proposal review opens, why each benchmark matters, and how to source the number when the SAP account team is not the source.

Benchmark one. The FUE per band closing rate

The first benchmark is the FUE per band closing rate. The standard RISE 2026 FUE schedule carries four bands. GA at the highest rate, Advanced at a stepped down rate, Core at the operational rate, and Self Service at the entry rate. The headline list price for each band is published. The closing rate, the rate at which deals actually sign, sits substantially below the list. Across the firm engagement base, the GA closing rate runs at fifty four to sixty three percent of list, the Advanced closing rate runs at fifty eight to sixty seven percent of list, the Core closing rate runs at sixty two to seventy two percent of list, and the Self Service closing rate runs at seventy two to eighty four percent of list.

The benchmark matters because the SAP supplied proposal will arrive with the FUE allocation priced at a position inside the closing range, with the position selected to look favourable against the headline list. A proposal that prices GA at sixty percent of list will look generous compared to list, and will sit at the lower end of the closing range, which is the position the buyer side leads should regard as the opening anchor rather than the closing rate. The benchmark gives the CIO an immediate visual on where the proposal sits inside the band, and on how much compression remains in front of the negotiation.

The benchmark is sourced from the firm engagement library, which captures the closing rate by band, by industry, by deal size, and by region for more than five hundred RISE deals. The library is updated each quarter, and the closing rate is normalised to the published list rate at the time of signature. A CIO without the library access can build a partial benchmark from industry peer conversations, but the partial benchmark will typically sit at the upper end of the actual closing range, because peer conversations skew toward the deals the peer is willing to discuss.

Benchmark two. The hyperscaler markup against open market

The second benchmark is the hyperscaler markup, measured against the open market reserved capacity rate. The RISE bundle carries the hyperscaler infrastructure as part of the subscription, at a price that is opaque to the buyer. The implied price, derived from the spread between the bundled cost and the comparable open market rate, sits at between eighteen and thirty two percent above the open market reserved capacity rate across the firm engagement base. The benchmark is the spread.

The benchmark matters because the hyperscaler line is the single largest infrastructure line in the seven year TCO, and the spread between the bundled rate and the open market rate is the largest single negotiation surface in the proposal. A proposal that carries a fifteen percent markup is at the favourable end of the range. A proposal that carries a twenty eight percent markup sits at the unfavourable end and has substantial compression headroom. The benchmark gives the CIO an immediate read on the position of the markup, and on the negotiation work that the hyperscaler line will require.

The benchmark is sourced from the open hyperscaler price lists, with a three year and a five year reserved tier captured separately. AWS, Azure, and GCP all publish reserved capacity pricing that maps to the typical SAP workload size. The buyer side leads request a hyperscaler agnostic RISE quote from SAP, with the infrastructure component priced separately from the subscription, and compare the SAP quoted infrastructure price to the open market reserved capacity rate. The spread is the markup. The negotiation work targets the spread directly.

Benchmark three. The BTP overage rate

The third benchmark is the BTP overage rate, measured as a multiple of the in contract credit rate. The RISE bundle carries a BTP credit allocation sized against the maximum credible roadmap, with the in contract credit rate priced at a defined level. The overage rate, the rate at which credits beyond the allocation are billed, is priced at a multiple of the in contract rate. Across the firm engagement base, the standard SAP template prices the overage at between two point two and three point five times the in contract rate. The negotiated overage rate at closing sits between one point two and one point eight times the in contract rate.

The benchmark matters because the BTP overage rate dictates the long run cost of integration build out beyond the funded portfolio. A buyer with an aggressive integration roadmap will exceed the bundled credit allocation in years two or three, with the overage running at the contracted multiple of the in contract rate. A multiple of three point five carries a structural cost premium across the term that the buyer cannot easily renegotiate without reopening the RISE contract. A multiple of one point two contains the cost premium within reasonable bounds and preserves the buyer ability to scale the integration work without surprise.

The benchmark is sourced from the closing contract language across the firm engagement base, normalised to the in contract credit rate at the time of signature. The benchmark is also dependent on the size of the bundled credit allocation. A larger bundled allocation typically carries a higher overage multiple, because the SAP account team is using the bundled allocation to anchor the in contract rate at the in scope level. The buyer side discipline is to reduce the bundled allocation to the funded portfolio and to bring the overage multiple down separately, rather than accepting a larger bundle with a higher overage rate.

Benchmark four. The support coverage scope ratio

The fourth benchmark is the support coverage scope ratio, measured as the percentage of in scope work against the total support work the buyer expects to consume. The RISE bundle carries a defined support coverage, with named in scope work types, response times, and resolution targets. The out of scope work is billed at the prevailing professional services rate, which is structurally above the bundled support rate. Across the firm engagement base, the bundled support coverage on the standard RISE template covers between sixty two and seventy four percent of the total support work the buyer actually consumes.

The benchmark matters because the support coverage scope ratio dictates the bill that arrives in years two through seven for the work the buyer expected to be inside the bundle. A coverage ratio of sixty two percent means that thirty eight percent of the work that the buyer expects from SAP support will be billed at the professional services rate. A coverage ratio of seventy four percent contains the out of scope billing within bounds. The benchmark is the ratio, and the negotiation work targets the in scope scope definition, with the goal of moving the ratio toward the upper end of the range or higher.

The benchmark is sourced from the support work tickets across the firm post signature engagement base, with each ticket categorised against the contracted in scope definition. The pattern across the engagement base shows the same work categories appearing out of scope across deals, including data extract work, performance tuning beyond the contracted baseline, custom integration support, and complex incident root cause analysis. The negotiation work targets these specific categories, with the goal of moving each one into scope or capping the per ticket out of scope cost.

Benchmark five. The exit cost as a percentage of total contract value

The fifth benchmark is the exit cost, measured as a percentage of the total contract value, at the year three checkpoint. The RISE contract carries an exit cost structure that combines the contractual termination penalty, the transition assistance cost, the data extraction cost, and the parallel run cost of standing up the replacement environment. Across the firm engagement base, the year three exit cost on the standard RISE template runs between fifteen and twenty eight percent of the total contract value.

The benchmark matters because the exit cost dictates the leverage the buyer carries into the mid term renegotiation. A year three exit cost of fifteen percent of contract value is a usable negotiation lever. A year three exit cost of twenty eight percent of contract value is a structural lock that removes the mid term renegotiation as a credible option. The benchmark gives the CIO an immediate read on whether the proposed contract preserves mid term optionality or surrenders it at signature.

The benchmark is sourced from the proposed contract language, with a present value calculation that captures the optional cost of leaving the contract at year three. The four components are the early termination penalty, calculated against the remaining contract value with the standard recovery rate applied, the transition assistance cost, calculated against the contracted SAP resources at the post termination rate, the data extraction cost, calculated against the contracted extraction obligations, and the parallel run cost, calculated against the replacement environment for the contracted handover period. The negotiation work targets each of the four components separately, with the goal of moving the year three exit cost below the twenty percent threshold.

Reading the five benchmarks together

The five benchmarks together produce a single page diagnostic of where the RISE proposal sits against the firm engagement base. The FUE closing rate by band tells the CIO whether the headline price is in the favourable or unfavourable end of the band. The hyperscaler markup tells the CIO how much compression sits inside the infrastructure line. The BTP overage rate tells the CIO how the integration cost will scale in years two through seven. The support coverage scope ratio tells the CIO how the operating cost will scale in years two through seven. The exit cost at year three tells the CIO whether the mid term renegotiation is a credible lever.

The diagnostic is read in combination, not in isolation. A proposal with strong FUE pricing and weak hyperscaler markup is a proposal that has front loaded the discount on the visible line and back loaded the recovery on the opaque line. A proposal with strong hyperscaler pricing and weak support coverage is a proposal that has discounted the infrastructure and rebased the operating cost on the out of scope billing. The five benchmarks together expose the structure of the proposal, and the structure decides the negotiation sequence. The benchmark with the largest gap against the firm closing range is the benchmark the negotiation targets first.

Five numbers on the desk before the proposal review opens

The CIO who walks into a RISE proposal review with these five benchmarks on the desk has the entire negotiation surface visible at a glance. The proposal can be measured against the firm engagement range on each benchmark, the largest gap can be identified, the negotiation sequence can be set, and the contract surfaces that close each gap can be named. The benchmarks are the diagnostic. The proposal is the case study against the diagnostic.

Across the firm engagement base, the discipline of placing the five benchmarks on the CIO desk before the review opens has consistently produced a final negotiated value that sits between twenty two and forty one percent below the SAP first proposal. The discipline is not a substitute for the full seven year TCO model. It is the entry diagnostic that frames the conversation, and the framing decides whether the negotiation runs against the SAP supplied narrative or against the independent benchmark surface. The benchmark surface is the surface the buyer side leads have to walk into the room with.