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AEC - Report

The Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Adobe evaluates the financial benefits of implementing Adobe Experience Cloud, revealing a 333% ROI and a net present value of $41.5 million over three years for a composite organization. Key findings highlight significant improvements in employee productivity, marketing efficiency, and customer conversion rates, resulting in millions in cost savings and increased revenue. The study emphasizes the importance of integrated solutions in overcoming challenges faced by organizations using disparate marketing technologies.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
6 views57 pages

AEC - Report

The Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Adobe evaluates the financial benefits of implementing Adobe Experience Cloud, revealing a 333% ROI and a net present value of $41.5 million over three years for a composite organization. Key findings highlight significant improvements in employee productivity, marketing efficiency, and customer conversion rates, resulting in millions in cost savings and increased revenue. The study emphasizes the importance of integrated solutions in overcoming challenges faced by organizations using disparate marketing technologies.

Uploaded by

asycse
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 57

The Total Economic Impact™ Of Adobe

Experience Cloud
Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Adobe Experience Cloud

A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study


Commissioned By Adobe, June 2024
Table Of Contents
Executive Summary 3

The Adobe Experience Cloud Customer Journey 13

Analysis Of Benefits 18

Employee Productivity on Customer Experience Projects 18

Customer Experience Performance Analysis Efficiency 22

Developer Productivity On Customer Experience Projects 25

Efficiency In Advertising, Marketing, And Technology Costs 28

Profit From Additional Digital Customer Conversions 31

Higher Digital Profit Generation 34

Profit From Improved Digital Customer Retention 36

Profit From Additional Offline Conversions 39

Analysis Of Costs 45

Financial Summary 51

Consulting Team:

Corey McNair

Carmen Serradilla Ortiz

ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING

Forrester provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders deliver key
outcomes. Fueled by our customer-obsessed research, Forrester’s seasoned consultants partner with
leaders to execute their specific priorities using a unique engagement model that ensures lasting impact. For
more information, visit forrester.com/consulting.

© Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is
based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change.
Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester
Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 2


Executive Summary

B2B and B2C marketers are often operating in a DIY or best-of-breed technology
approach, which creates silos across customer data, insights, marketing
planning, and marketing execution. 1 These challenges can lead to downstream
difficulties in engaging customers and thus limiting potential revenue growth.
Adobe Experience Cloud can address these challenges with its end-to-end suite
of applications built for supporting personalized customer experiences.

Adobe Experience Cloud is comprised of a suite of applications that support each


step of creating the customer experience, including:

• Adobe Advertising

• Adobe Analytics

• Adobe Audience Manager

• Adobe Campaign

• Adobe Commerce

• Adobe Customer Journey Analytics

• Adobe Experience Manager Assets

• Adobe Experience Manager Forms

• Adobe Experience Manager Sites

• Adobe Experience Platform


• Adobe Journey Optimizer

• Adobe Marketo Engage

• Adobe Mix Modeler

• Adobe Product Analytics

• Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (CDP)

• Adobe Target

• Adobe Workfront

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 3


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Return on investment (ROI) Net present value (NPV)

333% $41.5M
Adobe commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI)
study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by
deploying applications from Adobe Experience Cloud.2 The purpose of this study is to
provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of
Experience Cloud on their organizations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment,
Forrester interviewed representatives at four organizations and surveyed 116
employees using Adobe Experience Cloud at their organization. For the purposes of this
study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into
a single composite organization that is a global, industry-agnostic, enterprise-sized
company with $5 billion in annual revenue and 15,000 employees.

Interviewees and survey respondents said that prior to using Adobe Experience Cloud,
their organizations had several analytic, marketing technology (martech), and project
management tools in place. Interviewees’ organizations also had some solutions built
in-house to support performance analysis and content production. However, the variety
in technologies used meant every tool did not fully integrate with each other. Teams
using these tools frequently faced customer data incorrectly flowing through systems,
either going missing, arriving at the wrong destination, or not exporting at all.

As a result, analysts at the interviewees’ organizations struggled to conduct deep


analysis on campaign performance and create granular customer segments. In turn,
marketers had difficulties personalizing customer experiences and ensuring customers
received relevant messaging. Interviewees noted that project managers working to fix
these issues regularly endured new and reoccurring technical errors, which led to
campaign delays. Interviewees recognized these challenges were creating poor
customer experiences and placing business opportunities at risk.

After investing in Adobe Experience Cloud, the interviewees were able to align data
flows to create accurate customer profiles and segments. Marketers then built more

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 4


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

engaging customer journeys with relevant notifications and content that could be
updated in real time. Creation and management of these projects became streamlined
and resulted in time savings across teams. Interviewees also saw increased business
performance (e.g., higher conversions, increased consumer spending) around
campaigns supported by Adobe Experience Cloud.

“Which of the following benefits has your team experienced as a result of your
investment in Adobe Experience Cloud solutions?”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Note: Showing top seven responses
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 5


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

KEY FINDINGS

Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits


for the composite organization include the following:

• Analysts are 30% faster at creating personalized digital customer


experiences. Marketers at the composite organization save time with Adobe
Experience Manager’s templates and assets enabling self-service to create end-
to-end web experiences. Adobe Audience Manager and/or Real-Time CDP
streamlines targeting messaging to specific audiences within experiences
created with Adobe Campaign or Journey Optimizer. Adobe Workfront ensures
project managers have full visibility over the status of projects, mitigating time
spent on back-and-forth check-ins on progress. The composite organization
recognizes over $6.5 million of value in productivity time savings over three
years.

Increase in speed when iterating and revising in-flight digital customer


experiences

45%

• Analysts are 40% more efficient at analyzing marketing campaigns and


content. Alongside Adobe Analytics, the composite organization uses Customer
Journey Analytics and Real-Time CDP to better understand marketing
performance drivers like engagement across specific audiences and channel
attribution. These tools help analysts avoid manual work that would have been
required to uncover similar insights. Adobe Target helps analysts quickly run A/B
tests and determine which experiences perform better with audiences. The
composite organization saves over 16,600 hours in time spent on analysis by
Year 3 when using these tools.

• Developers spend 20% less time supporting digital experience creation. At


the composite organization, marketers send developer and IT support fewer

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 6


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

requests as a result of increased self-service driven by Adobe Experience


Manager’s low-code templates and content fragment reuse. Developer and IT
recoup over 1,600 hours in bandwidth to reallocate toward more of their day-to-
day tasks.

• Ad spending at the organization is more efficient by 20%. With analytics


tools providing deeper insights on campaign performance and tools to better
target customers, marketers are more informed on when and where to allocate
ad spending. Every dollar spent by the composite organization is stretched
further to ensure relevant advertising reaches customers and spend doesn’t go to
waste. By Year 3, the composite organization decreases its spending by $5
million.

• Millions in costs toward legacy solutions are avoided. Prior to Adobe


Experience Cloud, each of the solutions from the composite organization’s
approach incurred maintenance and service fees. By Year 3, the composite
organization avoids $1 million in annual fees by offloading those solutions in
favor of the end-to-end Adobe Experience Cloud suite.

• Digital customer conversions grows by 15%. Adobe Experience Cloud


enables the composite organization to create more relevant, personalized
content to engage customers. The size of website visitors grows as well as the
number of customers making purchases, generating $300 million in revenue by
Year 3.

• Digital customer retention improves by 6%. Marketers personalizing


messaging and fine-tuning ad spend practices results in customers receiving less
repetitive experiences making them more favorable toward the organization and
easier to retain. Greater retention of customers produces nearly $55 million in
additional revenue by Year 3.

• Profit per digital conversion climbs by 5%. More contextually relevant


messaging from the composite organization makes customers feel more
compelled to purchase higher-ticket items or take advantage of promotions. At
the composite organization, greater spending per conversion results in $276
million in additional revenue by Year 3.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 7


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• Offline customer conversions grow by 2%. The composite organization ties


together online and offline engagement data into robust customer profiles
(through Real-Time CDP) to create highly personalized digital messaging using
Journey Optimizer and drive in-person business, which it compare against digital
performance with Customer Journey Analytics. These capabilities drive $12
million in annual revenue by Year 3.

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the interviewees’ organizations
but are not quantified for this study include:

• Offline revenue generation. Through the three Adobe applications,


interviewees’ organizations stitched together offline and online data to deepen
customer insights and create richer customer experiences across all channels.
Location data helped marketers tailor notifications to regional or local audiences
more accurately, driving in-store foot traffic. Meanwhile, the real-time speed with
which data was collected helped the interviewees’ organizations retarget faster,
including follow-up phone calls with customers to close deals.

• Call center savings. Interviewees delivered insights directly to call center


operators during customer support calls, reducing the time it took operators to
sufficiently answer customer questions and reducing call times.

• Seamless Adobe connectivity and centralization of work. Interviewees noted


that the common workflows of the Adobe applications eliminated technical gaps
that could create headaches for employees. Data was correctly pulled through
the applications and mitigated the occurrence of lengthy back-and-forth
conversations between IT and marketing to address issues. Meanwhile, moving
data between Adobe applications without transferring outside of the ecosystem
eased concerns around data security.

• Improved employee work experience. Interviewees appreciated having


Adobe’s end-to-end customer journey tools to support their day-to-day work.
Managers supervised projects to ensure employees received support so they did
not feel overwhelmed with work and ensured projects met deadlines.

Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:

• Adobe Experience Cloud software costs. The composite organization pays an


annual cost based on the number and types of Adobe solutions used, the number

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 8


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

of employees using the solutions, and/or or the scale at which they leverage the
solutions.

• Ongoing professional and managed service costs. The composite allocates


costs to professional service firms to support implementation and ongoing
management of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.

• Premium costs of new hires. The composite organization adds new hires that
have previous expertise with leveraging solutions from Experience Cloud. It pays
a premium for employees with this expertise.

• Training costs. Power users of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions take upwards
of a week each year to familiarize themselves with new Adobe products or stay
current with changes made to existing products. Casual self-service users spend
a couple of days taking training courses and educating themselves about the
Adobe solution they use.

The financial analysis which is based on the interviews and survey found that a
composite organization experiences benefits of $53.9 million over three years versus
costs of $12.4 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $41.5 million and an
ROI of 333%.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 9


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“On a scale of 1 to 5, how much do you agree with the following statements
regarding Adobe Experience Cloud’s impact on your organization?”

(Showing “Agree” and “Completely agree”)

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

Total additional profit from Adobe Experience Cloud use

$43.8 million

“At Adobe Summit, we saw the significant investment Adobe


was making and the benefit of native integration capabilities.
It’s ultimately what tipped the scales and pushed us from a
best-in-breed strategy to a one solution to rule them all
strategy.”

HEAD OF MARTECH PLATFORMS, FINANCIAL SERVICES

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 10


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Return on investment Net present value


(ROI): Benefits PV: (NPV): Payback:

333% $53.9M $41.5M <6 months

Benefits (Three-Year)

Employee productivity on customer experience projects $6.5M

Customer experience performance analysis efficiency $1.2M

Developer productivity on customer experience projects $218.7K

Efficiency in advertising, marketing, and technology costs $10.5M

Profit from additonal digital customer conversions $19.6M

Higher digital profit generation with Adobe Experience


Cloud
$12.7M

Profit from improved digital customer retention $2.4M

Profit from additional offline conversions with Adobe


Experience Cloud
$701.1K

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 11


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

TEI FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY

From the information provided in the Due Diligence


interviews and survey, Forrester Interviewed Adobe stakeholders and
constructed a Total Economic Impact™ Forrester analysts to gather data
relative to Adobe Experience Cloud.
framework for those organizations
considering an investment in Adobe Interviews And Survey
Interviewed representatives at four
Experience Cloud.
organizations and surveyed 116
The objective of the framework is to respondents at organizations using
Adobe Experience Cloud to obtain
identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and
data about costs, benefits, and risks.
risk factors that affect the investment
decision. Forrester took a multistep Composite Organization
Designed a composite organization
approach to evaluate the impact that
based on characteristics of the
Adobe Experience Cloud can have on interviewees’ and survey respondents’
an organization. organizations.

Financial Model Framework


Constructed a financial model
representative of the interviews and
DISCLOSURES survey using the TEI methodology and
Readers should be aware of the following:
risk-adjusted the financial model
This study is commissioned by Adobe and delivered by based on issues and concerns of the
Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a
competitive analysis. interviewees and survey respondents.
Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI Case Study
that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly
Employed four fundamental elements
advises that readers use their own estimates within the
framework provided in the study to determine the of TEI in modeling the investment
appropriateness of an investment in Adobe Experience impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and
Cloud.
risks. Given the increasing
Adobe reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but sophistication of ROI analyses related
Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its
findings and does not accept changes to the study that
to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI
contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of methodology provides a complete
the study. picture of the total economic impact of
Adobe provided the customer names for the interviews but purchase decisions. Please see
did not participate in the interviews. Appendix A for additional information
Forrester fielded the double-blind survey using a third- on the TEI methodology.
party survey partner.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 12


CUSTOMER JOURNEY

The Adobe Experience Cloud Customer Journey


Drivers leading to the Adobe Experience Cloud investment

KEY CHALLENGES

Forrester interviewed representatives at four organizations and surveyed 116


respondents with experience using Adobe Experience Cloud at their organizations. For
more details on these individuals and the organizations they represent, see Appendix
B.

Prior to Adobe Experience Cloud, interviewees and survey respondents said their
organizations leveraged several best-of-breed solutions to oversee end-to-end
customer experiences, including analysis, content creation and orchestration, project
management, and other tools. Some interviewees and survey respondents noted their
organizations had also elected to build in-house solutions to support performance
analysis and content production.

Both interviewees and survey respondents noted how their organizations struggled with
common challenges as a result of this approach, including:

• Slow and low visibility on marketing performance with customers.


Interviewees noted that data from their organizations’ various tech solutions
resided in siloes at their data centers. Collecting customer data to build audience
segments was a manual, tedious process that made for inaccurate groupings of
customers based on how long it took to complete analysis. Teams struggled to
produce granular insights with data sets either requiring formatting to be
uploaded to their analytics tools and varying levels of depth in recorded customer
data with each marketing tool.

• Poor alignment across teams in creating customer experiences.


Interviewees had several teams individually assigned to marketing tools and
brought in agency support for analytics tools. There was very little day-to-day
collaboration beyond a handful of managers overseeing cross-team initiatives.
Customers frequently received similar messaging across channels or after they

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 13


CUSTOMER JOURNEY

had already converted or engaged with marketing material, creating negative


customer experiences. Marketers were unable to scale upon positive
experiences because they lacked coordination to create a customer journey
where channels and messages worked together to create a unified experience.

• Lack of relevancy of customer experiences. Marketing teams struggled to


personalize customer experiences and target messaging based on slow
incoming performance and customer engagement data. As a result, the
interviewees and survey respondents’ organizations missed opportunities to send
relevant messaging to leads who were likely to convert or spend more on their
business. The head of martech platforms from a financial services organization
cited issues with a lack of unification between platforms and poor data availability
for marketers’ self-service needs. This prohibited them from making highly
targeted campaigns.

INVESTMENT OBJECTIVES

The interviewees and survey respondents searched for a solution that could:

• Drive customer engagement and revenue growth with personalized, more


relevant customer experiences.

• Break down data silos to create unified customer profiles with up-to-date
information.

• Support end-to-end creation and management of customer experiences.

• Streamline employee self-service of tools and accelerate project development.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 14


CUSTOMER JOURNEY

“What are some key factors that drove adoption of Adobe Experience Cloud
solutions?”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

COMPOSITE ORGANIZATION

Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester constructed a TEI framework, a


composite company, and an ROI analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected.
The composite organization is representative of the interviewees at four organizations
and the 116 respondents, and it is used to present the aggregate financial analysis in
the next section. The composite organization has the following characteristics:

Description of composite. The composite organization is a global, industry-agnostic,


enterprise-sized company with $5 billion in annual revenue and 15,000 employees.
Among total revenue, $2 billion comes from e-commerce business. Before adopting
solutions from Adobe Experience Cloud, the composite organization leaned a best-of-
breed approach toward building customer journeys. However, this approach yielded
limited insights with customer data residing in silos, solutions required regular
maintenance to correctly work together, and marketers struggled to personalize
customer experiences with relevant messaging.

Deployment characteristics. There is not a single “correct” path to follow in the


adoption of applications from Adobe Experience Cloud, nor is there an exact timeline.
The path will vary based on company goals.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 15


CUSTOMER JOURNEY

For the composite organization, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Manager Assets,
Forms, and Sites, and Adobe Target are deployed in Year 1. The composite organization
adopts these solutions to build out its digital presence with Adobe tools, including its
website and marketing material; analyze website performance; and test out responses
to newly created content. It also begins migrating customer data over to Adobe Real-
Time Customer Data Platform to begin understanding customer behavior across online
and offline channels. Adobe Workfront is adopted to oversee work around projects
originating from Adobe tools.

In Year 2, the composite organization adopts Adobe Campaign, Adobe Audience


Manager, Adobe Customer Journey Optimizer, and Adobe Journey Analytics to begin
creating customer journeys and building audience segments and customer profiles at
which to target its messaging. By Year 3, the composite becomes more mature with
these applications to create more personalized customer journeys and better
understand which marketing approaches (e.g., channel, message type) perform best
with customers.

Forrester assumes the composite organization continues to adopt additional Adobe


Experience Cloud applications after the three-year period of analysis.

At the composite organization, 150 power users begin using Adobe Experience
Manager in Year 1 as well as incorporating insights from Analytics and Target to their
work. A portion of the users work toward building customer profiles in Real-Time CDP.
As adoption of Adobe Experience Cloud applications grows and best practices are
shared, the number of power users increases to 175 in Year 2 and 200 in Year 3.

For the analysis tools, there are 10 dedicated analysts to leveraging Adobe Analytics,
Real-Time CDP, and Target in Year 1. The number of analysts also grows to 15 in Year 2
and 20 in Year 3 as more teams adopt the tools and begin incorporating Adobe Journey
Optimizer into their workflows. Meanwhile, for technical support for Adobe projects there
are 20 developers allocating 20% of their time toward these projects.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 16


CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Key Assumptions

$5 billion in annual revenue


Industry-agnostic
15,000 employees
200+ Adobe users

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 17


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Analysis Of Benefits
Quantified benefit data as applied to the composite

Total Benefits
Present
Ref. Benefit Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Employee productivity on
Atr $1,790,100 $2,668,575 $3,580,200 $8,038,875 $6,522,655
customer experience projects
Customer experience
Btr performance analysis $245,700 $515,970 $786,240 $1,547,910 $1,240,499
efficiency
Developer productivity on
Ctr $59,904 $89,856 $119,808 $269,568 $218,733
customer experience projects
Efficiency in advertising,
Dtr marketing, and technology $3,400,000 $4,300,000 $5,120,000 $12,820,000 $10,491,360
costs
Profit from additional digital
Etr $6,400,000 $8,000,000 $9,600,000 $24,000,000 $19,642,374
customer conversions
Higher digital profit generation
Ftr $2,112,000 $5,040,000 $8,832,000 $15,984,000 $12,720,902
with Adobe Experience Cloud
Profit from improved digital
Gtr $316,416 $931,328 $1,748,992 $2,996,736 $2,371,387
customer retention
Profit from additional offline
Htr conversions with Adobe $192,000 $288,000 $384,000 $864,000 $701,067
Experience Cloud

Total benefits (risk-adjusted) $14,516,120 $21,833,729 $30,171,240 $66,521,089 $53,908,977

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROJECTS

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents spoke of accelerated


production timelines on creative projects with Adobe Experience Manager providing
templates and tools to construct dynamic webpages and engaging pieces of content.
Among survey respondents, two-thirds of Adobe Experience Cloud users (66.4%) saw a
faster end-to-end timeline of campaign creation, and over half of those respondents
(51.4%) identified recommendations on visualizations as a key feature driving
efficiencies.

Among interviewees, Experience Manager’s core component library and its taxonomy
for locating components was easy for users to learn, helping their organizations manage

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 18


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

scale. For example, the tribe architect noted their manufacturing organization manages
over 200 different websites from a single component library with Adobe, regularly
leveraging headless content fragments across web pages and apps.

Interviewees also appreciated greater visibility of pages in the authoring stage requiring
approval from managers or compliance; they were easier to find and receive sign off in
quick order. The head of martech platforms at a financial services company cited that a
planned 24-week implementation of a site with 40 to 50 pages took four weeks with
Adobe in place.

Project timelines at the interviewees’ organizations were further accelerated by


marketers being more equipped to quickly personalize content. With applications like
Adobe Audience Manager and Real-Time Customer Data Platform, marketers found it
easier to pull data sets and identify channel engagement around specific audience sets
or customers, then quickly make changes in response through Campaign or Journey
Optimizer.

The director of customer experience (CX) capabilities at a retailer said: “In the past, you
would have to build in expectations around a delay when making a big tweak to a
campaign because of the manual pull of customer data. There’s a nimbleness now in
being able to execute at scale and make changes on the fly. … It’s a key time savings to
take a campaign that was targeted around a group of people and pivot to a different
group because you don’t have to make any changes to data, the campaign iterates
[personalized messaging] based on the data source.”

Adobe Workfront tied efficiencies for marketers together by providing visibility into the
status of projects and what team members were currently working on. Less time was
wasted on back-and-forth communication between members on projects, Workfront’s
self-service functionality made it easy for marketers to broadly adopt across
organizations and quickly see time savings.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• The number of FTEs (both power users and part-time users) working with Adobe
Experience Cloud solutions increases from 150 in Year 1 to 200 in Year 3 as the
composite organization establishes and shares best practices for each tool

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 19


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

among teams in different departments or regions and as it adds more Adobe


tools each year.

• The term “first-run customer experience digital projects” refers to planning and
creating projects across either marketing or content creation teams. The FTEs
dedicate three-quarters of their time (1,560 working hours each) to these
projects. The efficiency recognized in this work climbs incrementally from 20% in
Year 1 to 30% in Year 3 as the composite organization becomes more mature
with leveraging the solutions and as more employees use them.

• Each FTE dedicates one-quarter of their time (520 working hours each) to
iterating on customer experience projects. The FTEs gain 30% efficiency working
on these projects in Year 1, which increases to 45% in Year 3. This gain is driven
by the creation of low-code templates and reusable assets to start from in Adobe
Experience Manager. As the composite organization creates and adds more
assets to its content library, it realizes more time savings.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for each employee using an Adobe
Experience Cloud solution is $60.

• Employees rededicate 50% of their time savings toward additional work, and they
use the remaining 50% to take longer lunch breaks or work fewer late nights,
which qualitatively improves the employee experience.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact the benefits include the
following:

• The types of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions the organization leverages and
the internal goals with those products could lead to more complex processes and
lower efficiency improvements.

• The number of employees who leverage Adobe Experience Cloud solutions for
customer experience projects.

• The hourly rate for employees.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $6.5 million.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 20


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

30%
Percentage efficiency on first-run digital projects with Adobe Experience Cloud
solutions

“Using your best estimate, what has been the percentage reduction in time spent
for campaign creation since your investment in Adobe Experience Cloud
solutions?”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 21


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Employee Productivity On Customer Experience Projects

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


Number of FTEs (full-time equivalent
non-IT) working on digital projects
A1 Composite 150 175 200
(e.g., content, digital assets,
marketing campaigns, etc.)
Percentage efficiency on first-run
A2 digital projects with Adobe Survey 20% 25% 30%
Experience Cloud solutions
Subtotal: Time savings on first-run A1*A2*1,560
A3 46,800 68,250 93,600
digital projects working hours
Percentage efficiency on digital
A4 project iterations with Adobe Survey 30% 40% 45%
Experience Cloud solutions
Subtotal: Time savings on digital A1*A4*520
A5 23,400 36,400 46,800
projects working hours
Fully burdened hourly rate for an
A6 TEI standard $60 $60 $60
employee

A7 Productivity recapture TEI standard 50% 50% 50%

Employee productivity on customer


At (A3+A5)*A6*A7 $2,106,000 $3,139,500 $4,212,000
experience projects

Risk adjustment ↓15%

Employee productivity on customer


Atr $1,790,100 $2,668,575 $3,580,200
experience projects (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $8,038,875 Three-year present value: $6,522,655

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS EFFICIENCY

Evidence and data. Among survey respondents, 82.8% agreed that Adobe Experience
Cloud makes it easier for their team to analyze the success of a marketing campaign.
This was the most agreed upon statement in the survey. Over half of these respondents
(50.2%) found it easier to create a unified view of customer from multiple data sources,
and nearly 48% of respondents said it decreased time to generate reports and analysis.
Adobe Analytics was one of the most common applications from Adobe Experience
Cloud interviewees’ and survey respondents’ organizations adopted due to the level of
insight depth provided and integration flexibility with other solutions. The tribe architect
at a manufacturing company shared that they have 450 projects with tags in Adobe
Analytics’ dashboards, providing immediate access to various teams and agencies with
which they work.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 22


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Alongside Adobe Analytics, the interviewees noted their organizations were increasingly
relying on Customer Journey Analytics and Real-Time CDP for deeper insights on
campaign performance. The director of CX capabilities at a retailer said: “We’re using
Customer Journey Analytics more than I thought we would because of the attribution we
can do on campaigns. It’s a book of record for us to get quick reads on campaigns.”
This interviewee’s organization used it alongside Real-Time CDP to analyze customer
journeys and segments, extract data points, and make activation points in the customer
journey around that data to activate it in shaping personalized experiences. While the
process was more involved relative to Adobe Analytics, the tribe architect noted their
organization was able to run continued analysis and implementation of those insights at
scale.

With the addition of Adobe Target at interviewees’ organizations, there was greater
flexibility in identifying how new messages performed with customers and then adjusting
messaging based on engagement. The interviewees’ organizations started with a limited
number of personalized experiences since building variants of a customer journey could
take a lengthy amount of time to test. Adobe Target streamlined A/B testing of
personalized experiences for the interviewees’ organizations to quickly see what
engaged customers and further scale out the breadth customer journeys.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• The number of employees who oversee customer experience and marketing


analysis increases proportionally with the number of teams and departments
using Adobe Experience Cloud products. The number of performance analysts
doubled from 10 in Year 1 to 20 in Year 3.

• Percentage efficiency also increases from 25% in Year 1 to 40% in Year 3 as the
composite organization connects more systems to Adobe Analytics for data
collection.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for a performance analyst is $70.

• The composite organization sees 75% in time savings based on the assumption
that less manual work allows employees to take more breaks and not overwork
themselves.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 23


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the
following:

• The scale of data flowing into Adobe Analytics from which to draw insights.

• The number of performance analysts.

• The hourly rate for performance analysts.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.2 million.

40%
Percentage efficiency in performance analysis

“With Adobe Experience Cloud, what is the percentage reduction in time you
have seen required to create a report or analysis?”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 202

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 24


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Customer Experience Performance Analysis Efficiency

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


Number of employees overseeing
B1 Composite 10 15 20
performance analysis
Percentage efficiency in
B2 Survey 25% 35% 40%
performance analysis
Subtotal: Time savings on
B3 A6*2,080 hours*A7 5,200 10,920 16,640
performance analysis
Fully burdened hourly rate for a
B4 TEI standard $70 $70 $70
performance analyst

B5 Productivity recapture TEI standard 75% 75% 75%

Customer experience performance


Bt B3*B4*B5 $273,000 $573,300 $873,600
analysis efficiency

Risk adjustment ↓10%

Customer experience performance


Btr $245,700 $515,970 $786,240
analysis efficiency (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $1,547,910 Three-year present value: $1,240,499

DEVELOPER PRODUCTIVITY ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROJECTS

Evidence and data. Interviewees’ creative and marketing teams relied on their
organizations’ developers and IT employees to support more technically challenging
customer journey projects. Typically, these requests related to coding web pages but
recently have grown to include incorporating generative AI into personalized content.

Adobe Experience Manager’s easy-to-use, low-code templates, alongside growing


reuse of content fragments, drove self-service among marketers. Developers received
fewer requests for support, primarily around web coding, and were pulled away from
their day-to-day work less frequently. This benefit was felt broadly among survey
respondents. Over half of Adobe Experience Cloud users (53%) cited reduced
dependance on their technical team to support creative efforts as a benefit experienced
from using the solution.

The head of martech platforms at the manufacturing organization noted that if a


technical issue appeared around a webpage or fragment, it was easy for developers to
apply a fix and ensure it carried over across multiple areas that were carrying the same
coding or fragment if applicable, saving them more time. The director of martech
platforms at the financial services organization moved away from bespoke content

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 25


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

development toward content reuse with Adobe and reallocated a dedicated IT employee
in three marketing divisions as they no longer needed their support.

“Component reuse is a big key. Being able to self-service


publishing workflows and have business users preview
pages before it ever goes through an IT deployment cycle
generates efficiency savings for us. It will help us move on
from bespoke custom deployments.”

DIRECTOR OF MARTECH PLATFORMS, FINANCIAL SERVICES

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• Twenty developers support customer experience projects. The number of


developers does not grow in proportion to the number of Adobe users because
developers are not directly involved with Adobe solutions on a daily basis; they
are looped in for support when needed and they dedicate one-tenth of their time
to these projects.

• The reduction in time spent supporting development on projects starts at 10% in


Year 1 and reaches 20% in Year 3 as more employees use Adobe solutions and
the composite organization’s reusable asset library grows.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for a developer is $80.

• Forrester did not apply a productivity recapture rate to this efficiency because the
small scale of the time savings means that nearly all the saved time is
reallocated to other work.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 26


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the
following:

• The number of developers who support customer experience projects and the
amount of time each dedicates.

• The number of developers involved in projects.

• The hourly rate of developers, which may vary based on levels of seniority.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $219,000.

20%
Reduction in time spent supporting projects and development

“Using your best estimate, how much time per week do you feel developers and
engineers save? ”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 27


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Developer Productivity On Customer Experience Projects

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


Number of developers supporting
C1 Composite 20 20 20
projects and development
Reduction in time spent supporting
C2 Survey 10% 15% 20%
projects and development
Subtotal: Time spent supporting C1*C2*416
C3 832 1,248 1,664
projects and development hours
Fully burdened hourly rate for a
C4 TEI standard $80 $80 $80
developer
Developer productivity on customer
Ct C3*C4 $66,560 $99,840 $133,120
experience projects

Risk adjustment ↓10%

Developer productivity on customer


Ctr $59,904 $89,856 $119,808
experience projects (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $269,568 Three-year present value: $218,733

EFFICIENCY IN ADVERTISING, MARKETING, AND TECHNOLOGY COSTS

Evidence and data. Survey respondents and interviewees stated their organizations
reduced their spending on legacy third-party solutions, internal support costs, third-party
services, and advertising costs with Adobe Experience Cloud. Ninety percent of survey
respondents were also able to reduce costs on other solutions. Interviewees’
organizations that retired redundant point solutions avoided annual licensing or
subscriptions costs and, importantly, the IT administrative labor costs and professional
service fees for each one. These additive costs were significant because the
interviewees’ organizations previously used upwards of a dozen products. No longer
having to pay these fees to multiple vendors went a long way toward justifying their
investments in Adobe Experience Cloud. For example, the head of martech platforms at
the financial services company estimated that in the end Adobe Experience Cloud
would save their organization between $7 million and $10 million in legacy tool licensing
and support costs annually.

The same interviewee shared being able to reduce costs by bringing work previously
performed by third-party service providers, such as agencies, in-house thanks to
automations provided by Adobe Experience Cloud, saving multiple organizational units
$2 million each. Similarly, the head of martech platforms from the pharmaceutical
company noted that digital brand experiences associated with their products used to

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 28


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

take between $500,000 and $1 million to build out, but that the ability to reuse prior-built
content and templates within Adobe Experience Cloud reduced such expenses to tens
of thousands of dollars each.

Lastly, interviewees optimized their ad spend utilizing Adobe Experience Cloud. With a
better understanding of how different marketing channels and messages performed,
interviewees’ organizations shifted spend from underperforming tactics to those tactics
generating a higher return, resulting in net savings at scale. Interviewees specified that
Adobe Audience Manager identified which customers receive advertising and where the
organizations need to suppress repeat advertisements. Although the interviewees’
organizations reduced the volume and frequency of advertising to their customers, they
continued to improve their return on ad spending. Interviewees noted that Adobe
Campaign and Adobe Target, as well as Adobe Experience Platform-powered
applications, helped advertisers optimize the appropriate number of ads customers
receive, improve the cadence and sequencing of campaigns, and refine the relevancy of
messaging. The interviewees’ organizations’ efficiency in ad spending enabled them to
further stretch each dollar they spent.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• Legacy system and support costs avoided increase as the composite


organization moves more of its business operations to Adobe Experience Cloud.

• The composite organization identifies that it has $25 million in digital ad spend
that can be optimized and that ads delivered repeatedly to the same audience
have little-to-no impact. After leveraging Adobe Experience Cloud, advertisers
become more efficient with ad spending. By identifying common areas where it
could tighten advertising practices, the composite organization increases its
advertising spend efficiency by 15% in Year 1. This efficiency increases
incrementally to 17.5% in Year 2 and 20% in Year 3 as the composite
organization further refines its approach to advertising.

• After seeing positive results in marketing efforts with Adobe Experience Cloud in
Year 1 and with increased self-service on campaign creation, the composite
organization reduces its agency spend by $250,000 in Year 2 and $400,000 in
Year 3.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 29


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the
following:

• The size of the organization.

• The organization’s budget for advertising, marketing, and technology.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $10.5 million.

20%
Percentage efficiency in ad spending with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions

Efficiency In Advertising, Marketing, And Technology Costs

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


Annual avoided costs from offloaded
D1 legacy solutions (e.g., legacy system Interviews $500,000 $750,000 $1,000,000
and support costs)
Annual ad spending that can be
D2 Composite $25,000,000 $25,000,000 $25,000,000
optimized
Percentage efficiency in ad spending
D3 with Adobe Experience Cloud Interviews 15.0% 17.5% 20.0%
solutions

D4 Value of efficiency with ad spending D2*D3 $3,750,000 $4,375,000 $5,000,000

D5 Annual avoided agency spend Interviews $0 $250,000 $400,000

Efficiency in advertising, marketing,


Dt D1+D4+D5 $4,250,000 $5,375,000 $6,400,000
and technology costs

Risk adjustment ↓20%

Efficiency in advertising, marketing,


Dtr $3,400,000 $4,300,000 $5,120,000
and technology costs (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $12,820,000 Three-year present value: $10,491,360

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 30


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

PROFIT FROM ADDITIONAL DIGITAL CUSTOMER CONVERSIONS

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents agreed that leveraging
Adobe Experience Cloud increased the number of conversions happening across digital
channels. Almost 92% of survey respondents saw digital conversions increase with
Adobe Experience Cloud. Improvements started with performance analysis in Adobe
Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics and leveraging Adobe Target for A/B tests on
new content or marketing materials. Interviewees organizations’ then used Adobe
Campaign to construct entire customer journeys and further personalized with Customer
Journey Optimizer. Experience builders and marketers then easily filtered out
touchpoints that proved to be ineffective. Similarly, the interviewees’ organizations easily
carried over assets that were effective in previous customer experiences to new
journeys through Adobe Experience Manager.

Interviewees said their organizations curated customer experiences around specific


audience segments through Adobe Audience Manager and customer types through
Real-Time CDP, ensuring greater messaging relevancy. Industry-specific products like
Adobe Commerce (for retail) and Marketo Engage (for B2B) helped the interviewees’
organizations further target and personalize messaging to push toward conversions.
Thanks to this, the tribe architect from the manufacturing company shared those digital
sales tripled from Year 1 to Year 2, and they were expected to triple again by Year 3.

The head of martech platforms from a financial services firm attributed additional digital
conversions to Adobe Experience Cloud enabling marketers to identify audiences they
had not previously been able to engage and to do so without needing to leverage their
data professional counterparts or IT partners. They said: “Early on, the marketing team
identified an audience of 10,000 to 30,000 people that we hadn’t been able to connect
with previously. Through this engagement, we got over 1,000 qualified leads that we
could talk to from a sales point of view that we’d never even unlocked before.”

The director of CX capabilities from a retailer noted that engagement itself was driven
by the ability to achieve clear-cut insights via Adobe Experience Cloud. They shared:
“We were able to see how far out from different life events customers were engaging
with related content and then meet them at those moments. Thanks to this, we
consistently saw lifts of between 20% and 27% in campaigns versus controls.”

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 31


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• The size of the digital audience reached is based on the number of individuals
who have visited the company site or engaged with any of the composite
organization’s organic or paid media in the past 12 months. That number is 1
billion people. The size of the audience grows by between 1% and 2% each year
as the composite organization becomes more efficient and effective with its
marketing and customer journey creation efforts.

• The blended conversion rate before using Adobe Experience Cloud (which
reflects the industries considered in this analysis) is 2% across all three years.

• Improvement in conversions is driven by employees optimizing customer


experiences with Adobe Experience Cloud and becoming more mature with its
solutions and by the composite organization adding more products over time.
Conversion rate growth accelerates in Year 1 to hit 2.2%, and this 0.2% gain over
the prior rates leads to 2 million additional conversions. By Year 3, the conversion
rate reaches 2.3% — or a 0.3% gain over what previously would have been
generated — resulting in 3 million more conversions.

• The assumed average order value (AOV) or value of customer conversion


(nonpurchase-specific) is $100 based on the size of the composite organization
and number of customers.

• The attribution rate to Adobe Experience Cloud of 40% is based on Forrester’s


research-based understanding of how people, processes, and technology
collaborate to drive conversions. While contributions from Adobe Experience
Cloud are strong, Forrester’s assumption takes into consideration credit given to
creative teams, production work, market factors, and interest in the product itself.

• The 10% profit margin is blended and based on the industries considered for the
analysis.

Risks. Differences in organizations that may impact the benefits include the following:

• The size of the digital audience the organization reaches annually, goals in
conversions (e.g., customer web page visits, subscriptions, purchases), prior
conversion rates, and the value of a conversion.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 32


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

• The types of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions leveraged early on during


adoption and the organization’s overall goals with the solution.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $19.6 million.

15%
Improvement in conversions with Adobe Experience Cloud

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 33


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Profit From Additional Digital Customer Conversions

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


E1 Number of visits to websites Composite 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000

E2 Growth in visits Interviews 1.0% 1.5% 2.0%

Subtotal: Additional visits with


E3 Composite 10,000,000 15,000,000 20,000,000
Adobe Experience Cloud annually
Conversion rate (blended) before
E4 Composite 2.0% 2.0% 2.0%
Adobe Experience Cloud
Average order value/customer
E5 Composite $100 $100 $100
conversion value
Subtotal: Value of additional
E6 E3*E4*E5 $20,000,000 $30,000,000 $40,000,000
audience reach
Improvement in conversions with
E7 Interviews 10.0% 12.5% 15.0%
Adobe Experience Cloud
Conversion rate (blended) with
E8 E2+(E2*E3) 2.20% 2.25% 2.30%
Adobe Experience Cloud

E9 Additional converted audience E1*(E4-E2) 2,000,000 2,500,000 3,000,000

Subtotal: Value of additional


E10 E5*E9 $200,000,000 $250,000,000 $300,000,000
conversions
Attribution to Adobe Experience
E11 TEI standard 40.0% 40.0% 40.0%
Cloud

E12 Profit margin TEI standard 10.0% 10.0% 10.0%

Profit from additional digital


Et E10*E11*E12 $8,000,000 $10,000,000 $12,000,000
customer conversions

Risk adjustment ↓20%

Profit from additional digital


Etr $6,400,000 $8,000,000 $9,600,000
customer conversions (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $24,000,000 Three-year present value: $19,642,374

HIGHER DIGITAL PROFIT GENERATION

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents also noted Adobe
Experience Cloud improved their organizations’ average order value, increasing
revenues from conversions that were already likely to happen or were not due to lift
from the platform. For example, the highest number of survey respondents pointed to
Adobe Experience Cloud’s influence on average order value/average deal
size/customer value to be ‘very impactful toward revenue growth.

With Adobe Experience Cloud, interviewees noted their customers were so encouraged
by their positive customer journeys that they were compelled to make multiple

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 34


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

purchases, return for more services, or make transactions that carried premium value.
For example, the director of CX capabilities from the retailer shared: “We could also do
detailed cuts on our campaigns to extract nuanced learnings, comparing performance
16 days back to 30 days back to six months back. This helped us launch a campaign
with 5% higher average order value than the control.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• The number of customers is based on the conversion rate of the digital audience
after using Adobe Experience Cloud.

• The revenue per conversion grows from 3% in Year 1 to 5% in Year 3 as the


composite organization continues to optimize customer journeys and improve
customers’ favorability toward spending more.

• In Year 1, each of the composite organization’s 22 million customers spend $3


more than they previously would have, equating to $66 million in additional value.
Additional spend per customer climbs to $7 in Year 2 and to $12 in Year 3.

• Assumptions about attribution and profit margin are the same as Benefit E.

Risks. Differences in organizations that may impact the benefits include the following:

• The number of customers who make a purchase annually.

• The organization’s average order or conversion value.

• The organization’s ability to increase the value of each conversion.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $12.7 million.

5%
Percentage gain in revenue per conversion

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 35


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Higher Digital Profit Generation

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


F1 Number of digital customers E1*E8 22,000,000 22,500,000 23,000,000

Average order value/customer


F2 conversion value before Adobe Composite $100 $100 $100
Experience Cloud
Percentage gain in revenue per
F3 Survey 3% 4% 5%
conversion
Average order value/customer Y1: F2+(F2*F3)
F4 conversion value with Adobe Y2 and Y3: $103 $107 $112
Experience Cloud (F3*F4PY)+F4PY
Subtotal: Additional value
F5 generated with Adobe Experience F1*(F4-F2) $66,000,000 $157,500,000 $276,000,000
Cloud
Attribution to Adobe Experience
F6 TEI standard 40% 40% 40%
Cloud

F7 Profit margin TEI standard 10% 10% 10%

Ft Higher digital profit generation F5*F6*F7 $2,640,000 $6,300,000 $11,040,000

Risk adjustment ↓20%

Higher digital profit generation (risk-


Ftr $2,112,000 $5,040,000 $8,832,000
adjusted)

Three-year total: $15,984,000 Three-year present value: $12,720,902

PROFIT FROM IMPROVED DIGITAL CUSTOMER RETENTION

Evidence and data. According to interviewees and survey respondents, the impact of
optimizing customer experiences with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions extended
beyond driving conversions and greater profit generation; it also helped their
organizations mitigate customer attrition. Teams managed customer exposure to
content by analyzing the success of their responses to messaging and segmenting
audiences based on which customers already interacted with touchpoints. Nearly 19%
of survey respondents found that Adobe Experience Cloud’s influence on improving
retention rate was very impactful.

Previously, interviewees stated that more customers would unsubscribe from emails or
become less likely to make a purchase because of repetitive experiences. With Adobe
Experience Cloud, marketing teams slowly reversed that effect and recovered lost
business. Even with fewer messages delivered, the interviewees’ organizations still

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 36


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

grew their business because of the relevance and effectiveness of their constructed
customer journeys.

6%
Improved retention with Adobe Experience Cloud

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• In Year 1, there are 16 million returning customers. After factoring in churn and
the number of newly added customers from the previous year, there are 17.6
million returning customers in Year 2 and 18 million in Year 3. Forrester did not
factor in the additional customers retained after using Adobe for the following
year’s returning customer base to avoid double-counting their value.

• Before moving on from point solutions, the composite organization’s attrition rate
was marginally improving because decision-makers recognized there was an
issue with over-messaging to customers, but they did not have the ability to
improve on it.

• With Adobe Experience Cloud, retention improves by 3% in Year 1 to recapture


customers who were mostly on the fence about the composite organization.
Retention improves by 6% in Year 3 as the composite organization continues to
optimize its approach to customers.

• Each retained customer goes on to make purchases in successive years at a


higher AOV rate. The retained customers in Year 1 are converted in Year 2 and
Year 3, while retained customers in Year 2 are converted in Year 3 and generate
$112 in value each. Additional customers retained in Year 3 generate value that
falls outside the parameters of the analysis.

• Assumptions about attribution and profit margin are the same as Benefit E.

Risks. Differences in organizations that may impact the benefits include the following:

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 37


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

• The number of customers who make a purchase annually.

• The lifetime value of customers.

• The likelihood of customer churn.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) $2.4 million.

Profit From Improved Digital Customer Retention

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


G1 Attrition rate Composite 20% 20% 20%

Number of returning digital Y1: (E1*E4)-


customers each year with previous (E1*E4*G1)
G2 attrition rate (excluding already Y2 and Y3: 16,000,000 17,600,000 18,000,000
retained customers listed in G4; (E1*E8PY)-
rounded) (E1*E8PY*G1)
Improvement with Adobe Experience
G3 Interviews 3% 5% 6%
Cloud
Number of additionally retained
G4 G1*G2*G3+G4PY 96,000 272,000 488,000
digital customers (cumulative)
Incremental annual revenue of
G5 F4 $103 $107 $112
retained customers
Subtotal: Revenue from retained
G6 G4*G5 $9,888,000 $29,104,000 $54,656,000
customers
Attribution to Adobe Experience
G7 TEI standard 40% 40% 40%
Cloud

G8 Profit margin TEI standard 10% 10% 10%

Profit from improved digital customer


Gt G6*G7*G8 $395,520 $1,164,160 $2,186,240
retention

Risk adjustment ↓20%

Profit from improved digital customer


Gtr $316,416 $931,328 $1,748,992
retention (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $2,996,736 Three-year present value: $2,371,387

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 38


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

PROFIT FROM ADDITIONAL OFFLINE CONVERSIONS

Evidence and data. Beyond improved online revenue generation, interviewees whose
organizations have physical business and storefronts saw offline revenue gains as well.
Users built upon the experiences created in Adobe Campaign and targeted with
solutions powered by Adobe Experience Platform, tying together online and offline
engagement data into robust customer profiles through Real-Time CDP to create highly
personalized digital messaging using Journey Optimizer and drive in-person business,
which they could compare against digital performance with Customer Journey Analytics.
Over 30% of respondents selected unifying customer data across channels (including
digital and offline) as a key factor that drove the adoption of Adobe Experience Cloud.

The director of CX capabilities at a retailer identified high-impact segments of business


that regularly engaged with emails and shared this information with local in-store
salespeople to reach out to those customers with more personalized templates. The
interviewee noted that with Real-Time CDP, it had become easier to identify customers
based on past purchases and engagement. They were just starting to use Journey
Optimizer for experience orchestration to further personalize engagement with these
customers but were already using Customer Journey Analytics often. The interviewee
said: “We’re using Customer Journey Analytics more than I thought we would for
attribution of particular campaigns. It acts as a book of record to get a quick read on
campaigns. If we had the foresight, we would have used more Journey Optimizer
capabilities earlier to get a read on those campaigns with Customer Journey Analytics.”

The interviewees at a financial services organization noted they plan to roll out the Real-
Time CDP within the year based on the level of segmentation they could achieve from
tests with the application. One of the early metrics they identified was an audience of
thousands that were qualified leads but fell into a customer gap that was overlooked
sales and hadn’t been targeted with a customer experience. The director of martech
platforms said, “With the CDP, it puts more power in the hands of people that are
closest to trying to reach their core customer group and then taking action to more
efficiently engage them than they’ve had the ability to in the past.” The interviewee
singled out the application as potentially being the most valuable player from the Adobe
stack in driving offline performance in their future plans.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 39


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• Offline accounts for $3 billion in revenue each year and 20% is impacted by
transactions made originating from digital interactions.

• With the personalization capabilities of Adobe driving offline business, the


customer conversion rate improves by 1% in Year 1 and grows to 2% by Year 3.

• To account for people and processes influencing conversions, 40% of the value
is attributed to Adobe.

• The global profit margin for offline revenue is 10%.

Risks. Differences in organizations that may impact the benefit results include the
following:

• The scale of offline business contributing to total revenue.

• Investment and maturity with Adobe Real-Time CDP, Journey Optimizer,


Customer Journey Analytics.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $701,000.

2%
Improvement in offline transactions among customers interacting with digital
touchpoints

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 40


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Profit From Additional Offline Conversions

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


H1 Annual offline revenue Composite $3,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000 $3,000,000,000

Percentage of revenue impacted by


H2 Composite 20.0% 20.0% 20.0%
digital interactions
Improvement in offline transactions
H3 Survey 1.0% 1.5% 2.0%
with Adobe Experience Cloud
Subtotal: Additional offline
H4 revenue with Adobe Experience H1*(H4-H3) $6,000,000 $9,000,000 $12,000,000
Cloud
Attribution to Adobe Experience
H5 TEI standard 40.0% 40.0% 40.0%
Cloud

H6 Profit margin TEI standard 10.0% 10.0% 10.0%

Profit from additional offline


Ht H4*H5*H6 $240,000 $360,000 $480,000
conversions

Risk adjustment ↓20%

Profit from additional offline


Htr $192,000 $288,000 $384,000
conversions (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $864,000 Three-year present value: $701,067

“We’ve started to identify high-impact customer segments


where we can reach out with localized offerings for
consultations on product offerings. We’re creating templates
for that segment, and we’ll do some offline analysis around
that.”

DIRECTOR OF CX CAPABILITIES, RETAIL

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 41


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

UNQUANTIFIED BENEFITS

Interviewees and survey respondents mentioned the following additional benefits that
their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Offline revenue generation. Offline revenue has a greater impact on


organizations than suggested in the quantified benefits. Interviewees and survey
respondents shared enough to quantify the improvement in conversions with
offline business; however, they couldn’t fully define improvement in order value
and customer retention. Those benefits were felt with at least 30% of survey
respondents seeing increased offline revenue generation at their organization. As
organizations grow in maturity with those use cases for Adobe applications that
support offline experiences, the benefit of offline revenue generation will continue
to grow and become more defined. The head of martech platforms at the
pharmaceutical organization shared: “We have been successful in using all the
tools that we have built using Adobe Experience Cloud for customers with the
healthcare provider experience. They are content rich with assets frequently
reused through AEM [Adobe Experience Manager]. In 2024, we’re planning to
create more content and load it to a digital tablet they can interact with during
health visits, providing information about our products.”

• Call center savings. Adobe Experience Cloud automations also had an


unquantifiable but positive impact on call center operations. For example, the
director of CX capabilities at a retailer noted that they planned to deliver personal
customer insights, such as order status, directly to call center operators
immediately after answering a call, as that is one of the most frequent reasons
customers call into the contact center. This erases the need for associates to ask
for customer information, search for and find the customer’s profile, and then find
their order status in that profile all before answering that common and simple
question.

• Seamless Adobe connectivity and centralization of work. A key factor for


interviewees in choosing Adobe Experience Cloud to be their foundational
customer data platform was that it helped bring customer data and associated
operations into a centralized place. This approach eliminated gaps that
previously created headaches for employees, with data being pulled through to
platforms incorrectly or lengthy wait times for engineers and IT to deliver

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 42


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

customer data that would shape and deliver marketing messaging. Rather than
spending time on maintenance, IT and marketing users became better aligned to
effectively use the applications.

• Improved employee experience work experience. Interviewees appreciated


having Adobe’s end-to-end customer journey tools as it empowered their
employees to create more engaging experiences. Employees experienced fewer
frustrations; for example, they were able to better target customer segments, so
they didn’t overlap with colleagues messaging potentially matching customers.
Collaboration increased between teams sharing asset fragments to build
experiences, reducing the workload stress for employees. Meanwhile, managers
leaned on Workfront to better supervise projects and ensure employees had a
manageable workload, helping employees meet project deadlines.

FLEXIBILITY

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which
a customer might implement Experience Cloud applications and later realize additional
uses and business opportunities, including:

• Scalability of Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem. Adobe continues to add


products under the Adobe Experience Cloud umbrella that amplify the value of
other solutions in the ecosystem. Interviewees said their organizations are just
beginning to realize value from relatively newer products, including:

o Adobe Commerce. Powered by Magento Commerce, Adobe Commerce


enables businesses to build out their B2B and/or B2C commerce
platforms. Key use cases include managing commerce sites and
marketplaces, selling products through to other marketplaces, and
managing inventory from orders to shipping and fulfillment. Adobe
Commerce Cloud streamlines enterprise resource planning (ERP) and
customer relationship management (CRM) integration, and — like other
Adobe products — integrates with the rest of Adobe Experience Cloud to
better understand customers and further build out personalized
experiences.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 43


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

o Adobe Experience Platform. The Adobe Experience Platform is a more


recent product within Adobe Experience Cloud that powers Adobe Real-
Time Customer Data Platform, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, and
Adobe Journey Optimizer. Its applications provide users with real-time
customer profiles, advanced data analysis through machine learning and
AI, accelerated experience delivery, and greater data governance. For the
Total Economic Impact of benefits of Adobe Experience Platform
applications, please see this study.

o Adobe Marketo Engage. Marketo Engage helps B2B marketers to


enhance their approach to lead nurturing, account-based marketing, and
personalization of messaging to potential customers. Similar to Adobe
Commerce, it integrates with the rest of Adobe Experience Cloud and
streamlines the creation of B2B customer experiences.

o Adobe Workfront. Workfront helps businesses oversee their allocation of


resources, create budgets, prioritize action items, and ensure their
customer experience projects stay on track. The head of martech at the
financial services company said: “Marketo and Workfront are welcome
additions to the Adobe stack. We were very onboard with those
companies before Adobe acquired them and now, they happen to fold into
the stack which makes operations more efficient for us.”

• Greater access and speed to using customer data. The Adobe applications’
ability to incorporate a large amount of data from across channels, including
offline, helped marketers understand their customers and orchestrate
multichannel campaigns better. Interviewees shared that they used Adobe’s AI
models to create propensity scores for individual customers, predicting the
likelihood they would purchase products and then market to those customers
accordingly. The speed with which the interviewees’ organizations could apply
large sets of customer data enabled them to run and monitor hundreds of
messaging use cases. Altogether, scalable usage of data has enabled the
interviewees’ organizations to build and continue to improve upon customer
experiences.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project


(described in more detail in Appendix A).

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 44


ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Analysis Of Costs
Quantified cost data as applied to the composite

Total Costs
Present
Ref. Cost Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Adobe software
Itr $0 $2,200,000 $2,200,000 $2,200,000 $6,600,000 $5,471,074
costs
Ongoing
professional and
Jtr $2,750,000 $1,100,000 $1,100,000 $1,100,000 $6,050,000 $5,485,537
managed services
costs
Premium cost of
Ktr $0 $68,640 $137,280 $205,920 $411,840 $330,565
new hires

Ltr Training costs $0 $316,800 $475,200 $633,600 $1,425,600 $1,156,760

Total costs (risk-


$2,750,000 $3,685,440 $3,912,480 $4,139,520 $14,487,440 $12,443,936
adjusted)

ADOBE SOFTWARE COSTS

Evidence and data. Interviewees said their organizations paid a software fee based on
the number of Adobe solutions leveraged and the scale to which the number of
employees leveraged them. The exact amount the organizations paid for Adobe fees
and associated costs varied.

Modeling and assumptions. Assumed costs for the composite organization are based
on the following:

• The number of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions the composite organization


leverages each year.

• The number of active customers in the database and the number of channels
through which the composite organization runs campaigns.

• Annual contractual commitments to usage, which are based on the number of


employees who access the solutions.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 45


ANALYSIS OF COSTS

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $5.5 million.

Adobe Software Costs


Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
I1 Adobe software costs Composite $0 $2,000,000 $2,000,000 $2,000,000

It Adobe software costs I1 $0 $2,000,000 $2,000,000 $2,000,000

Risk adjustment ↑10%

Itr Adobe software costs (risk-adjusted) $0 $2,200,000 $2,200,000 $2,200,000

Three-year total: $6,600,000 Three-year present value: $5,471,074

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 46


ANALYSIS OF COSTS

ONGOING PROFESSIONAL AND MANAGED SERVICES COSTS

Evidence and data. Several interviewees said their organizations leveraged Adobe
Professional Services or an Adobe partner to assist with proofs of concepts and full
implementation of the Adobe Experience Cloud stack. Pilot programs and proofs of
concepts took several months to complete, and they required time from internal
resources across IT, marketing, and lines of business.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• The composite organization’s initial pilot and proof-of-concept efforts (alongside


integrating two Adobe solutions) in Year 1 lead to a heavier financial lift than in
later years. The costs total $2.5 million in Year 1.

• Costs for ongoing services are tied to the composite organization’s integration of
Adobe platforms with more of its systems and pilot programs and because it
adds more solutions from Adobe Experience Cloud to its tech stack.

• With Adobe Experience Cloud and based on the scale of operations, the cost of
ongoing professional and managed services is $1 million annually.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $5.5 million.

Ongoing Professional And Managed Services Costs


Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Ongoing professional and managed
J1 Composite $2,500,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000
services costs
Ongoing professional and managed
Jt J1 $2,500,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000 $1,000,000
services costs

Risk adjustment ↑10%

Ongoing professional and managed


Jtr $2,750,000 $1,100,000 $1,100,000 $1,100,000
services costs (risk-adjusted)

Three-year total: $6,050,000 Three-year present value: $5,485,537

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 47


ANALYSIS OF COSTS

PREMIUM COST OF NEW HIRES

Evidence and data. To effectively leverage Adobe Experience Cloud solutions,


interviewees said their organizations sought new hires with previous experience using
these products. Hiring new employees would have occurred organically with or without
Adobe Experience Cloud, but the requirement for employees possessing prior Adobe
solution knowledge meant organizations spent a small premium on new hires.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• The composite organization spends 10% more for employees with expertise in
Adobe solutions.

• The number of employees hired annually grows proportionally with expanded


usage of Adobe Experience Cloud across the organization.

• The fully burdened annual salary for each of these employees is $124,800.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $331,000.

Premium Cost Of New Hires

Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


Number of employees hired annually
K1 where Adobe Experience Cloud Composite 0 5 10 15
experience is required
Fully burdened annual salary for an
K2 TEI standard $0 $124,800 $124,800 $124,800
employee
Additional cost of employees with
K3 Interviews 0% 10% 10% 10%
Adobe solution expertise

Kt Premium cost of new hires K1*K2*K3 $0 $62,400 $124,800 $187,200

Risk adjustment ↑10%

Premium cost of new hires (risk-


Ktr $0 $68,640 $137,280 $205,920
adjusted)

Three-year total: $411,840 Three-year present value: $330,565

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 48


ANALYSIS OF COSTS

TRAINING COSTS

Evidence and data. Interviewees said employees spent a small amount of time
learning to use the Adobe Experience Cloud solutions they leverage. Adobe Experience
Cloud users are split into two types: power users who leverage them daily and self-
service users who access one solution weekly, monthly, or infrequently.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:

• In Year 1, the composite organization has 100 power users who take time to
learn about the Adobe solutions over four days.

• The number of power users grows to 150 in Year 2 and 200 in Year 3.

• Each year, new power users take the equivalent of four days to learn the
solutions while senior power users take time to learn newly added features and
Adobe products that are later added to the composite organization’s tech stack.

• In Year 1, the composite organization has 50 self-service users who occasionally


leverage Adobe solutions and require only a couple days to familiarize
themselves with the functions they need to use.

• Self-service employee training occurs only once, and they learn the basic
functions they’ll use.

• In Year 2, the composite organization trains 75 new self-service users, and it


expands adoption of Adobe solutions across the organization.

• The composite organization trains 100 self-service users in Year 3.

• By the end of the three-year period of analysis, the organization has 225 self-
service users of Adobe solutions.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%,
yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.2 million.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 49


ANALYSIS OF COSTS

Training Costs

Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3


Number of annual Adobe power
L1 Composite 0 100 150 200
users
Training hours per year for power
L2 Interviews 0 40 40 40
users
Number of self-service users added
L3 Composite 0 50 75 100
per year
Training hours per year for self-
L4 Interviews 0 16 16 16
service users
Fully burdened hourly rate for an
L5 TEI standard $0 $60 $60 $60
employee
(L1*L2*L5)+(L3*
Lt Training costs $0 $288,000 $432,000 $576,000
L4*L5)

Risk adjustment ↑10%

Ltr Training costs (risk-adjusted) $0 $316,800 $475,200 $633,600

Three-year total: $1,425,600 Three-year present value: $1,156,760

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 50


ANALYSIS OF COSTS

Financial Summary
Consolidated Three-Year, Risk-Adjusted Metrics

The financial results


Cash Flow Chart (Risk-Adjusted)
calculated in the Benefits and
Total costs Total benefits Cumulative net benefits Costs sections can be used
$60.0 M to determine the ROI, NPV,
Cash
flows

and payback period for the


$50.0 M
composite organization’s
$40.0 M investment. Forrester
assumes a yearly discount
$30.0 M
rate of 10% for this analysis.
$20.0 M
These risk-adjusted ROI,
$10.0 M NPV, and payback period
values are determined by
applying risk-adjustment
-$10.0 M factors to the unadjusted
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
results in each Benefit and
Cost section.

Cash Flow Analysis (Risk-Adjusted)


Present
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Total costs ($2,750,000) ($3,685,440) ($3,912,480) ($4,139,520) ($14,487,440) ($12,443,936)

Total benefits $0 $14,516,120 $21,833,729 $30,171,240 $66,521,089 $53,908,977

Net benefits ($2,750,000) $10,830,680 $17,921,249 $26,031,720 $52,033,649 $41,465,041

ROI 333%

Payback <6 months

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 51


APPENDIX A: TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT

Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that


enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in
communicating the value proposition of their products and services to clients. The TEI
methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of IT
initiatives to both senior management and other key business stakeholders.

Total Economic Impact Approach


Benefits represent the value delivered to the business by the product. The TEI
methodology places equal weight on the measure of benefits and the measure of costs,
allowing for a full examination of the effect of the technology on the entire organization.

Costs consider all expenses necessary to deliver the proposed value, or benefits, of the
product. The cost category within TEI captures incremental costs over the existing
environment for ongoing costs associated with the solution.

Flexibility represents the strategic value that can be obtained for some future additional
investment building on top of the initial investment already made. Having the ability to
capture that benefit has a PV that can be estimated.

Risks measure the uncertainty of benefit and cost estimates given: 1) the likelihood that
estimates will meet original projections and 2) the likelihood that estimates will be
tracked over time. TEI risk factors are based on “triangular distribution.”

PRESENT VALUE (PV)


The present or current value of (discounted) cost and benefit estimates given at an interest
rate (the discount rate). The PV of costs and benefits feed into the total NPV of cash flows.

NET PRESENT VALUE (NPV)


The present or current value of (discounted) future net cash flows given an interest rate (the
discount rate). A positive project NPV normally indicates that the investment should be made
unless other projects have higher NPVs.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)


A project’s expected return in percentage terms. ROI is calculated by dividing net benefits
(benefits less costs) by costs.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 52


DISCOUNT RATE
The interest rate used in cash flow analysis to take into account the time value of money.
Organizations typically use discount rates between 8% and 16%.

PAYBACK PERIOD
The breakeven point for an investment. This is the point in time at which net benefits
(benefits minus costs) equal initial investment or cost.

The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time 0” or at the beginning of
Year 1 that are not discounted. All other cash flows are discounted using the discount
rate at the end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total cost and benefit
estimate. NPV calculations in the summary tables are the sum of the initial investment
and the discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value calculations of the
Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow tables may not exactly add up, as some
rounding may occur.

APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW AND SURVEY DEMOGRAPHICS

Interviews
Annual
Role Industry Region
Revenue
Head of martech platforms
Financial services HQ in North America $10+ billion
Director of martech platforms

HQ in North America; global


Tribe architect Manufacturing $5+ billion
operations

HQ in North America; global


Head of martech platforms Pharmaceutical $50+ billion
operations

Director of customer HQ in North America; global


Retail $5+ billion
experience capabilities operations

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 53


Survey Demographics

“In which country are you located?”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

“Using your best estimate, how many employees work for your firm/organization
worldwide?”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 54


“Which of the following best describes your role/team within your organization?”

Base: 116 global decision-makers at organizations that use Adobe Experience Cloud
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe, May 2024

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 55


APPENDIX C: ENDNOTES

1
Source: Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2024.
2
Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that
enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in
communicating the value proposition of their products and services to clients. The TEI
methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of IT
initiatives to both senior management and other key business stakeholders.

T HE T OT AL ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ADOBE EXPERIENCE CLOUD 56

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