AEC - Report
AEC - Report
Experience Cloud
Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Adobe Experience Cloud
Analysis Of Benefits 18
Analysis Of Costs 45
Financial Summary 51
Consulting Team:
Corey McNair
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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 Advertising
• Adobe Analytics
• Adobe Campaign
• Adobe Commerce
• Adobe Target
• Adobe Workfront
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.
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
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
KEY FINDINGS
45%
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the interviewees’ organizations
but are not quantified for this study include:
of employees using the solutions, and/or or the scale at which they leverage the
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%.
“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?”
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
$43.8 million
Benefits (Three-Year)
KEY CHALLENGES
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:
INVESTMENT OBJECTIVES
The interviewees and survey respondents searched for a solution that could:
• Break down data silos to create unified customer profiles with up-to-date
information.
“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
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.
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.
Key Assumptions
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
Among interviewees, Experience Manager’s core component library and its taxonomy
for locating components was easy for users to learn, helping their organizations manage
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.
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
• 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.
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.
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
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.
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:
• 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.
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.
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
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.
development toward content reuse with Adobe and reallocated a dedicated IT employee
in three marketing divisions as they no longer needed their support.
Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the
following:
• 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.
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 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
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
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:
• 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.
Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the
following:
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
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.
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.”
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.
• 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.
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
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
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.
• Assumptions about attribution and profit margin are the same as Benefit E.
Risks. Differences in organizations that may impact the benefits include the following:
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
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
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.
• Assumptions about attribution and profit margin are the same as Benefit E.
Risks. Differences in organizations that may impact the benefits include the following:
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.
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 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.
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.
• To account for people and processes influencing conversions, 40% of the value
is attributed to Adobe.
Risks. Differences in organizations that may impact the benefit results include the
following:
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
UNQUANTIFIED BENEFITS
Interviewees and survey respondents mentioned the following additional benefits that
their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:
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.
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:
• 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.
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
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 active customers in the database and the number of channels
through which the composite organization runs campaigns.
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.
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:
• 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.
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 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.
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.
• Self-service employee training occurs only once, and they learn the basic
functions they’ll use.
• 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.
Training Costs
Financial Summary
Consolidated Three-Year, Risk-Adjusted Metrics
ROI 333%
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.”
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.
Interviews
Annual
Role Industry Region
Revenue
Head of martech platforms
Financial services HQ in North America $10+ billion
Director of martech platforms
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
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
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.