Halving Costs and Strengthening Access Control to Enable Endeavour Energy’s RISE Migration
Endeavour Energy is a major electricity distribution network operator in New South Wales, supplying safe and reliable power to more than 2.7 million people. Alongside its core operations, Endeavour Energy supports renewable and distributed energy technologies, including rooftop solar, batteries, and smart meters.
The discovery phase gave us confidence. We could clearly see how people needed to work, what access was genuinely required, and the impact of our decisions before committing to RISE."
— Karen Pascoe, Manager Technology Operations, Endeavour Energy
Challenge
Following a successful S/4HANA implementation, Endeavour Energy saw RISE with SAP as a logical next step to take advantage of cloud innovation, platform enhancements, and sustainability capabilities. From a strategic perspective, the decision was logical; however, it presented certain challenges.
The prospective RISE migration posed several key challenges:
RISE license costs driven by misaligned legacy access provisions In SAP ERP Cloud Private (RISE), assigned access directly determines license cost under SAP’s Full Use Equivalent (FUE) model. Over time, access decisions and legacy roles tailored to individual needs accumulated across the organisation. This created an opportunity for standardization of Business roles based on job functions, optimization of access rights, and a significant reduction in projected licensing costs for Endeavour Energy.
Security and compliance concerns in the cloud As a critical infrastructure provider, Endeavour Energy needed confidence that access governance, data protection, and segregation of duties (SoD) would remain tightly controlled in a cloud environment.
A highly integrated SAP landscape With more than 130 connected systems, the SAP environment added complexity across integration, testing, and stakeholder coordination.
Change fatigue after a major SAP S/4HANA program Following a recent, successful S/4HANA implementation, there was limited appetite for further change without clear commercial certainty.
Solution
Endeavour Energy engaged Turnkey Consulting to reduce uncertainty, strengthen access governance, and reassess the commercial viability of RISE before committing to migration.
Using its accelerated, data-driven RISE License Review and Remediation methodology, Turnkey provided Endeavour Energy with evidence-based insight into licensing exposure and a realistic license target state to achieve during migration. This work revealed access overprovisioning and enabled a fundamental redesign of Endeavour’s SAP access model.
Turnkey then rapidly reframed access around business roles aligned to positions rather than individuals, embedding best-practice security and governance controls to support Endeavour Energy’s compliance obligations along the way.
Close collaboration between business, IT, security teams, and SAP ensured risks were identified early and ownership was retained internally, building confidence in the move to RISE and ongoing access management post–go-live.
“
Without this level of insight from Turnkey, the business case would not have worked. It gave us the confidence to move forward.”
— Julie Cox, SAP Delivery Manager, Endeavour Energy
Results
The redesigned access model lowered costs and restored confidence in Endeavour Energy's RISE migration, shifting the business case from “doesn’t stack up” to “commercially viable with confidence.”
A 45% reduction in business roles delivered a clearer, more consistent access structure. Removing redundant access reduced administrative complexity, improved security, and strengthened segregation of duties and audit readiness.
Additionally, FUE requirements dropped by around 60%, materially reducing license costs and enabling the migration to proceed with commercial certainty.
With roles rationalized and access aligned to real job needs, Endeavour Energy could move forward knowing that future FUE obligations would be met through sustainable role design, not ongoing manual remediation.
Benefits
Commercial certainty before migration: FUE exposure was understood and addressed upfront, not discovered later.
Lower licensing costs: Reducing required FUE’s from ~860 to ~340 reframed the RISE investment. ● Future-proof SAP environment: A cleaner access model supports future innovation in areas such as sustainability reporting and carbon accounting.
Stronger security by design: Security and segregation of duties controls are built into the role design, supporting long-term compliance.
Operational efficiency: Simplified roles support long-term internal ownership without ongoing reliance on external remediation
Improved productivity: Faster, cleaner access aligned to real jobs, ensuring employees have what they need, when they need it.
