Situation
A growing global services company asked Ryse Technologies to review its Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management (D365 F&SCM) licensing. The client’s licenses had been purchased years earlier through a different reseller and the D365 licenses had never been reevaluated as the workforce evolved. The result was a tangle of misaligned license types, creeping noncompliance risk—and a monthly Microsoft bill approaching US $73 000.
Challenges
- Incorrect license assignments. Virtually every user was provisioned with a full Operations license, whether they needed it or not.
- Zero audit history. No formal reconciliation had been performed between Microsoft Entra ID and D365’s user table.
- Escalating spend. Forecasts showed licensing costs would top US $875 000 per year if left unchecked.
- Zero discount off MSRP from license provider
Our Approach
UserRoster Rationalization
We exported user lists from both Entra ID and D365, performed a fuzzy UPN/employeeID match, and worked from a delta report. Within 48 hours the client confirmed that hundreds of license consuming accounts belonged to people no longer employed. Disabling those “ghost” users trimmed tens of thousands of dollars per month and closed a latent security gap before deeper work began.
Role-Based Usage Profiling
Telemetry from Usage Insights plus targeted interviews revealed that the vast majority of staff touched only Timesheet and Expense menus. The previous partner had granted everyone the Project Manager security role “just in case,” forcing a full license. We rebuilt a lean security structure and moved those employees to the Team Member SKU (US $8 instead of US $180 per user), simultaneously reducing segregationofduties exposure.
Strategic Base and Attach Mix
Microsoft requires a 20license minimum for each base application (Finance, Supply Chain, Project Operations). The client was paying for 60 full licenses—20 of each—even though no app had 20 genuine power users. We modeled alternative mixes and proved it cheaper to:
- Retain Finance as the sole base app (25 users).
- Convert Supply Chain and Project Operations users to Attach licenses (65 % discount).
- Park occasional approvers on Team Member licenses.
The final footprint: 25 Finance bases, 32 attaches, 310 team members.
Results
Impact
The engagement freed nearly US $0.8 million per year that the client can now invest in innovation and headcount, while tightening security and giving IT a scalable license framework for future growth.
Why It Matters
License optimization is more than a cost cutting exercise—it protects against compliance penalties and overprivileged access. Although not passively enforced, Microsoft has the right to audit D365 license usage at any time they choose and being found out of compliance can be ruinous. Ryse Technologies combines deep D365 expertise with harddata analysis to deliver rapid, measurable ROI.
