An industrial group operating across more than thirty countries was budgeting in euros while paying Microsoft in dollars, with every exchange swing landing on the technology line. The renewal closed with a fixed currency basis, local invoicing, and price protection across the full term. This is how the foreign exchange exposure was negotiated out of the contract.
A multinational manufacturer with operating companies across Europe, the Americas, and Asia, consolidating in euros but holding a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement priced and invoiced in US dollars. The renewal proposal carried the standard uplift, but the larger exposure sat outside the line items entirely: a currency basis that had quietly added millions to the prior term as the dollar strengthened. The practice was engaged to renegotiate both the price and the structure.
The group ran a federated technology estate. Each operating company managed its own deployment, but the Microsoft commercial relationship was consolidated at the parent level through a single Enterprise Agreement denominated in US dollars. Group finance planned and reported in euros. That mismatch had been treated as an accounting footnote for years, until two consecutive renewal terms coincided with a strengthening dollar and the technology line came in materially over plan both times. The overrun had nothing to do with usage and everything to do with the exchange basis written into the contract.
The renewal proposal compounded the problem. It carried the familiar uplift on the prior commitment, a fully renewed productivity footprint, and an Azure consumption commitment sized to an aggressive growth projection. None of those line items acknowledged the currency exposure, because from the account team's perspective the dollar denomination was simply how the paper had always been written. For the group treasurer, it was an unhedged multi year liability sitting inside a software contract, invisible to the people who normally managed currency risk.
The internal team had the usage data to challenge the line items but no framework for the currency question. Treasury understood hedging but had never been told the Microsoft contract carried foreign exchange risk at all. The exposure fell into the gap between procurement and treasury, which is precisely where it had survived two renewals undisturbed.
The engagement ran on two tracks at once. The first was the conventional rebuild: reconstructing actual consumption across the operating companies, rationalizing a productivity footprint that had been renewed at full count regardless of adoption, and resizing the Azure commitment to the real trajectory rather than the projection. That work alone reset the baseline and exposed the uplift to scrutiny it had not previously faced.
The second track addressed the structure. The practice brought treasury into the negotiation as a principal rather than an afterthought, and put three structural levers on the table: a fixed exchange basis locking the conversion rate for the term, local currency invoicing through the regional entities to align cost with the books where the spend was reported, and price protection that capped uplift on any mid term true up. Each lever was supported by peer precedent from comparable multinational agreements, so none of them could be dismissed as a one off concession the account team had no authority to grant.
Framing the currency basis as a negotiable term rather than a fixed feature of the paper was the decisive move. Once treasury and procurement spoke with one voice, the exposure stopped being an accounting footnote and became a line the group would not sign without addressing. A currency risk nobody owns survives every renewal. A currency risk treasury owns gets priced.
The renewal closed at $71.4M against the $96M opening quote, a reduction of roughly a quarter delivered inside fourteen weeks. The price savings came from the conventional rebuild: a productivity footprint aligned to genuine adoption, an Azure commitment resized to real consumption, and a peer benchmark that reset the pricing baseline so the uplift collapsed under examination. Those moves alone would have made the engagement worthwhile.
The structural outcome mattered as much as the price. The agreement locked a fixed exchange basis for the term, moved invoicing into local currency through the regional entities, and capped uplift on any mid term adjustment. For the first time the group treasurer could model the Microsoft liability with the same confidence as any other multi year dollar exposure, because the variable that had blown two prior budgets was now fixed in the contract rather than left to the market. The group entered its next term with a predictable cost, an aligned procurement and treasury function, and a structure it could carry forward rather than relitigate.
The engagement reflects the firm's broader record across Microsoft contracts: more than $420M in cumulative client savings, over 340 engagements delivered, and an average 79 percent reduction in audit financial exposure, built on 20+ years of combined practice depth across the Microsoft estate. The figures above are verifiable on a reference call arranged through the practice.
The practice supports multinational groups on rebuilding Microsoft renewals from consumption data and negotiating the currency basis, invoicing structure, and price protection alongside the price. Two analyst calls, no pitch, and an honest read on where the leverage sits.