Contributing Expert

Fredrik Filipsson

Founder & Principal Negotiation Advisor · Dubai, UAE

LinkedIn Profile → Work with Fredrik →

20+

Years Experience

500+

Engagements Led

Vendors Covered

$1B+

Client Savings

About Fredrik

Fredrik Filipsson is one of the most experienced IT contract negotiation advisors in Europe and the Middle East, with over 20 years of hands-on expertise negotiating enterprise software agreements with Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce, Workday, and IBM.

Based in Dubai, Fredrik has founded several large negotiation consulting firms and has led hundreds of high-stakes engagements for Fortune 500 companies, FTSE 100 organisations, and major public-sector entities across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas. His work spans ELA and ULA negotiations, SAP S/4HANA migrations, Microsoft Enterprise Agreement renewals, Salesforce multi-cloud consolidations, and complex multi-vendor portfolio optimisations.

Fredrik's negotiation philosophy is built on three principles: understand the vendor's commercial model in depth before entering any negotiation; build a credible BATNA before the renewal window opens; and never negotiate without real market benchmark data. These principles have consistently delivered savings of 25–45% versus vendor initial positions across hundreds of engagements.

Areas of Expertise

Oracle

ELA, ULA, Java SE, Database, OCI, Audit Defence

Microsoft

EA, M365, Azure MACC, Copilot, NCE

Salesforce

Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Data Cloud, CPQ, ELA

SAP

S/4HANA, RISE, Named Users, Indirect Access

Workday

HCM, Finance, Renewal Strategy

IBM

Passport Advantage, ILMT, Sub-capacity

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How Fredrik researches and writes

Fredrik's rankings and guides are built from three inputs, in fixed order. First, primary contract data: anonymised order forms, renewal quotes and audit settlements shared by enterprise procurement teams — currently a corpus spanning several hundred negotiations across Oracle, Microsoft, SAP and the major SaaS vendors. Second, practitioner interviews: for every firm reviewed on this site, he speaks with former clients where possible and checks claimed outcomes against what the paperwork actually shows. Third, the vendors' own published price lists, licensing guides and audit methodologies, read the way an auditor reads them — because that is how he was trained to read them.

Before founding his advisory practice, Fredrik spent two decades inside the licensing machine: he ran Oracle license audits, built compliance positions for enterprise deals, and later sat on the customer side unwinding the same audit tactics he had once executed. That double perspective — knowing precisely which findings in an LMS report are load-bearing and which are negotiating theatre — is the basis of the audit-defence and ULA content on this site. He has advised on more than $1B in cumulative contract value, with documented client savings ranging from 20% to 60% of proposed renewal cost.

Editorial independence: Fredrik holds no equity in, and accepts no referral fees from, any firm ranked on this site, including the firms rated highest. Rankings weight verified client outcomes, negotiation-specific expertise, benchmark data quality and independence from vendor influence — the full scoring model is published on the methodology page. Corrections and firm-submitted evidence are reviewed monthly; disputed claims are removed rather than argued.

Current coverage focus for 2026: Oracle Java SE repricing fallout, ULA certification strategy ahead of fiscal-year-end renewals, Microsoft Copilot bundling economics, and the audit patterns emerging as vendors tie AI adoption to compliance reviews. Fredrik reviews and re-benchmarks his cornerstone guides quarterly; each shows its last-reviewed date.