Audit cost benchmarks — what claims actually cost, by vendor.

The cross-vendor view — initial claim and final settlement.

The headline metric is the gap between initial claim and final settlement. Across our 340+ engagements, the cross-vendor average is a 68% reduction. The variance is high; the worst-defended audits in our sample reduced by less than 20%, the best-defended by over 90%. The variance is driven primarily by the buyer's ELP discipline and the timing of advisor engagement.

Vendor	Median Initial Claim	Median Final Settlement	Reduction
Oracle	$8.4M	$2.3M	72%
Microsoft	$5.6M	$1.9M	66%
SAP	$11.2M	$2.8M	75%
IBM	$4.1M	$1.4M	66%
Adobe	$1.8M	$640K	64%

Caveat: these are median figures, biased toward Fortune 500 deal sizes. Smaller enterprises see lower absolute claims and similar percentage reductions. The variance within each vendor's distribution is wider than the cross-vendor variance.

Claim size scales but not linearly.

Audit claims do not scale linearly with revenue. Claim probability and size are driven more by deployment complexity, vendor concentration, and governance maturity than by revenue alone. That said, the broad pattern across our engagement base:

Annual Revenue	Audit Probability (3yr)	Median Claim	Median Settlement
$1–5B	34%	$2.1M	$680K
$5–20B	52%	$6.4M	$1.9M
$20–50B	71%	$14.3M	$4.2M
$50B+	86%	$28.7M	$8.6M

The headline pattern: above $20B revenue, audit is a 71% probability event over any three-year period. CFOs in that band should treat audit exposure as a recurring operating risk, not an occasional event. The same deployment discipline that drives ongoing license cost reduction also shrinks the entitlement gap an auditor can monetise, so the two programmes pay for each other.

Industry context matters more than headcount.

Industry verticals carry distinctive risk profiles. Financial services and telecommunications dominate by claim size because of database-license intensity. Healthcare carries higher audit frequency because of M&A volume and regulatory-driven software complexity. Manufacturing sees the highest IBM ILMT-related findings. Retail and media show distinctive Microsoft EA exposures.

Industry	Top-Probability Vendor	Median Claim	Most Common Finding
Financial Services	Oracle	$11.2M	Database options & partitioning
Manufacturing	SAP	$8.4M	Indirect access / digital access
Healthcare	Microsoft	$3.9M	Qualified user / Azure scope
Telecommunications	Oracle	$14.6M	Soft partitioning & ULA scope
Retail	Microsoft	$2.7M	True-up underreporting
Public Sector	IBM	$5.3M	ILMT non-compliance

Why some buyers settle at 8% and others at 80%.

1. Advisor engagement timing. Buyers engaging independent advisors in the first 14 days settle 31% lower than buyers who engage later.
2. ELP discipline. Buyers with a current, defensible ELP at notice date settle 42% lower than buyers building it under audit pressure.
3. Communication discipline. Single-channel vendor communications reduce settlement by 18% versus multi-channel.
4. Settlement conversion. Buyers who convert cash claims into commercial commitment reduce headline by 50–70% in addition to direct contest reductions.