How Hochschule Düsseldorf streamlined Microsoft licensing procurement with Acad Procure

Overcoming the complexity of higher education licensing

For universities, Microsoft licensing is rarely a straightforward exercise. Multiple departments, distributed budgets, complex approval processes, and highly individual Microsoft education agreements can turn even a single license request into a lengthy administrative task.

At Hochschule Düsseldorf (HSD) these procurement workloads had become too much of a distraction. As one of the largest universities of applied sciences in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, HSD serves more than 11,000 students across seven faculties and relies heavily on Microsoft technologies to support teaching, research, and administration.

When its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement came up for renewal, HSD put out a public tender that tied the new three-year contract to the development of a dedicated procurement platform designed specifically for Microsoft education licensing.

“SoftwareOne held the previous contract,” says Henning Mohren, CIO of Hochschule Düsseldorf, “and we were satisfied with that, because compared with our previous [Microsoft] reseller, SoftwareOne was an improvement.”

In 2024, SoftwareOne secured a new three-year mandate based on its quality, pricing, and HSD’s confidence in its ability to deliver a Microsoft procurement platform that met the university’s requirements.

Turning a complex process into a manageable one

Moritz Löbmann, Team Lead and Cloud Solution Architect at HSD, was in charge of the project.

“We badly needed this platform,” he explains, “because our process for ordering software was cumbersome and time-consuming.

“If we wanted to order a new license, we had to contact SoftwareOne by email to get a quote. They had to create the quote and send it back to us. We then had to forward it to the user who had requested the license, and they then had to start the ordering process. It was very complicated and had a lot of moving parts.”

The university manages a substantial Microsoft environment, including annual enterprise licensing agreements and a continuous stream of additional software requests from faculty and staff. While the number of ad hoc requests – typically between 50 and 100 per academic year – may not seem particularly large, each request required significant administrative input.

“The process was also too prone to error,” Löbmann adds, “and was difficult to track.”

In early 2025, Löbmann and his colleague Dr Yannick Schmitz, IT Compliance Manager at HSD, sat down with SoftwareOne to provide practical input into how the platform specifications set out in the public tender should function in a real-world university environment.

“We had asked whether there would be a possibility to create the quotes ourselves via a portal,” Löbmann says. “That would remove at least one major step from the process.”

Another important requirement was the ability to manage multiple Microsoft enterprise agreements and product catalogs, each with different pricing structures, contract durations, and entitlements. This would help ensure that requests were routed correctly and processed under the appropriate contract.

“SoftwareOne incorporated all our specifications into the platform – Acad Procure,” says Löbmann.

HSD began using Acad Procure in late 2025 and quickly transitioned to using the platform as its primary procurement mechanism.

“We are now exclusively using the portal to generate quotes,” says Löbmann.

The difference was immediate.

Previously, IT staff had to manually compile requests, create email chains, track responses, and map quotes back to individual users and departments. During busy periods, particularly around annual license renewals and the start of the academic year, multiple requests would arrive simultaneously, increasing the risk of confusion and delays.

“The errors mostly happened because there were so many moving parts,” Löbmann explains. “We had to filter requests, create individual emails or large emails with multiple requests for quotes from SoftwareOne, and then map everything back to the users who requested them.”

Acad Procure significantly simplified this workflow.

“It streamlined the whole process because we no longer have to create emails, format tables with SKUs, and manually track everything.”

The platform also introduced a new level of transparency.

“If I’m working on a request and my colleague Yannick [Schmitz] is working on another one, we can both see what has already been submitted,” Löbmann says. “We can see the status of a quote, whether it has been delivered, submitted, or completed. It’s very helpful in tracking the process.”