The Total Economic Impact™ Of Adobe SaaS Solutions With Microsoft Cloud

Time Savings From Integration Of Adobe SAAS Solutions With Microsoft

• Evidence and data.

  Interviewees and survey respondents said Microsoft’s native connectors for Adobe solutions helped their organizations’ IT teams circumvent hours of work when deploying Adobe solutions on Microsoft Cloud for it to host them. Workers avoided needing to build APIs or connectors to integrate solutions like they previously did to establish data sharing and workflows with prior point solutions because of Microsoft’s support for Adobe solutions.

  Beyond building out integration support, Adobe solutions running on Microsoft Azure mitigated time spent reviewing and adjusting configurations, including basic networking around firewall and network IP addresses to security server protection. Although migrating data from storage silos to the cloud still required effort from IT teams, the chief digital and information technology officer at the biopharmaceutical organization shared that their company got Adobe software up and running on Microsoft Azure within a matter of hours.

  The vice president of IT, application engineering, and data analytics at a digital media company noted that without their organization’s E3 license Microsoft 365, the company would have worked with up to 10 different security vendors to achieve the same level of protection. Specifically, this approach would have required configurations across each security solution, the use of different engineers with different skill sets, and time from them to set up the configurations. Between Adobe and Microsoft, only one team was responsible for integrations per region, and it ensured deployment of Adobe solutions onto Microsoft Cloud services was consistent.

• Modeling and assumptions.

  For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

  • 10 full-time employees are tasked with deploying Adobe solutions on Microsoft Azure. Previously, these employees would allocate 30% of their time (12 hours per week) during 26 weeks to configure ad hoc point solutions to integrate correctly with the composite’s on-prem or cloud platforms.
  • Because of the native connectors between Adobe and Microsoft, integration of Adobe tools takes 90% less time than the composite’s previous approach to integrating similar tools.
  • The average hourly rate for an employee supporting deployment is $57.

• Risks.

  Differences in organizations that may impact the benefit results include:

  • The number of solutions deployed before adopting Adobe and whether Microsoft solutions were already deployed.
  • The size of the team dedicated to deployment, the amount of time they dedicate to deployment, and the team members’ hourly rates.

• 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 $131,000.

Increased Productivity Of IT/Security Teams

• Evidence and data.

  IT and security teams at interviewee’s organizations continued to experience productivity enhancements in the day-to-day maintenance and management of solutions. Integrations between Adobe and Microsoft solutions were reliable and ensured Adobe Journey Optimizer, Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, and Adobe Real- Time CDP received data in real time without errors.

  Decision-makers said their organizations eliminated broken data and workflows that appeared too frequently with previous custom-configuration approaches. IT teams reallocated time spent reworking and conducting maintenance on prior configurations toward identifying opportunities to bring in third-party data to Adobe data platforms to enrich first-party data for more complete customer profiles.

  The consolidation of data sources under one suite further supported shifting time spent from technology toward data enhancement, and the organizations removed work related to compiling information across silos for upload to customer management platforms and data management platforms. The organizations rarely lost or accidentally overwrote data, which helped IT teams reduce recovery work. As a whole,decision-makers said combining Microsoft Azure with Adobe’s data platforms made for stronger foundations upon which their organizations could dependably draw insights.

  This data foundation also helped security teams avoid time spent monitoring various security solutions that supported the security of data stored within on- prem servers. These time savings multiplied based on the number of security solutions the organizations leveraged to support prior ad hoc point solutions.

  Through the Adobe and Microsoft integration, interviewees said security teams gained greater control over data access. Teams set consistent parameters for data sharing and ensured teams had access to only the data that they needed, which minimized risk of data exposure and the fallout of work that can come from that.

  IT teams gained more control and visibility of employee access to Adobe solutions through Microsoft Azure, ensuring users had the most up-to- date applications. The organizations also recognized incremental time savings by providing access to Adobe solutions through Azure Active Directory, and they added devices with access to their directories for single sign-on services. This eliminated time required to distribute licenses to individual users.

  These efficiencies added up for IT teams. Ninety percent of survey respondents said integrating Adobe’s Experience Cloud solutions with Microsoft reduced the amount of technical work for their organizations’ developers or engineers. Among respondents whose organizations saw a reduction, 16.2% said their company reduced technical work each month after integration.

• Modeling and assumptions.

  For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

  • The organization has 20 employees on its IT and security teams.
  • The share of staff members reallocated grows from 10% in Year 1 to 20% in Year 3 as the organization migrates more of its data to the Microsoft Cloud and retires individual data siloes and solutions.
  • The average fully loaded annual salary of an IT /security employee is $120,000 in Year 1, and this grows by 2% each subsequent year to account for inflation.

• Risks.

  Differences in organizations that may impact the benefit results include:

  • The size of the IT and security staff teams.
  • The team members’ average annual salaries.

• Results.

  To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $762,000.

Value Of Accelerated Data Analysis And Marketing Efforts From Integrations

• Evidence and data

  According to interviewees, the value of the combined power of Adobe solutions and Microsoft services extended beyond IT to business decision-makers and business results. Specifically, the speed that data analysts and marketers could share, review, and act on data increased significantly.

  By storing data within Microsoft Azure, the organizations’ data analysts no longer needed to sort between various data stacks or third-party data sources to cross-reference to derive insights. Rather, with a single data lake, they were able to complete analyses on broader swaths of data sets in one location. Having greater visibility over data enabled data analysts to assemble more complete customer- data profiles for more personalized marketing messaging.

  Analysts leveraged this data in real time with the support of prebuilt connectors between Adobe and Microsoft. They pulled in performance data from various use cases like Adobe Experience Manager sites directly to their companies’ data lakes in Microsoft Azure, immediately analyzed the data with Adobe Real-Time CDP and then automated adding the information to customer profiles to trigger more personalized marketing and engagement tactics. Data teams no longer needed to wait on IT teams to extract and format data to analyze because it became a seamless experience that accelerated data analysis.

  These insights extended beyond automating personalized messaging toward sharing insights across marketing teams to review their overall marketing approaches and accelerate decision- making speeds. Interviewees said through Adobe Analytics and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics connector with Power BI, data could be directly loaded into Power BI for analysts to create reports and visualizations to distribute with marketing leaders.

  Simplicity around formatting data imported to Power BI increased self-service for even marketers to assist in the work. The chief digital and information technology officer at a biopharmaceutical company estimated their organization’s marketing teams saved as much as 5 hours per week in receiving new reports to act upon. They said the speed with which data could be shared since integrating with Microsoft increased the frequency in which marketing teams ran A/B tests on content and marketing material. While not integrated with Azure, real-time reporting on the organization’s A/B tests increased marketers’ usage of Adobe Target.

• Modeling and assumptions

  For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

  • The organization has eight data analysts.
  • The analysts recognize increasing time savings from 10% in Year 1 to 15% in Year 3 as the composite migrates more data to Microsoft Azure. During that time, data sharing across teams grows and time to conduct analysis improves.
  • The fully loaded annual salary for an analyst is $115,000 in Year 1, and this grows by 2% each subsequent year to account for inflation.
  • The composite’s power users are content and marketing employees who regularly leverage Adobe solutions in their work. The organization has 50 Adobe solutions power users in Year 1, and that number increases to 90 in Year 2 and to 125 in Year 3 as it moves more operations to Adobe solutions.
  • These power users spend roughly 30% of their time working with Adobe solutions. The speed with which they complete work accelerates by 5% in Year 1 specifically due to the integration, and this speed grows to 10% by Year 3. Faster data analysis drives improved collaboration and quicker time to decision-making.
  • The average fully loaded annual salary for a content and marketing staff member is $110,000 in Year 1, and this grows by 2% each subsequent year to account for inflation.
  • Forrester applies a productivity recapture rate of 50% to the time saved among staff employees, which means that half of the time recaptured is rededicated toward more meaningful work. The rest of time saved is allocated toward breaks from work.

• Risks.

  Differences in organizations that may impact the benefit results include:

  • The size of the organization.
  • The number of data analysts and content and marketing staff.
  • Compensation for employees.

• Results.

  To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $406,000.

End-User Time Savings From Integration Of Adobe SaaS Solutions With Microsoft

• Evidence and data.

  Across interviewees’ and respondents’ organizations, individual users saw incremental time savings with Adobe Document Cloud solutions integrated into Microsoft 365 applications like Outlook, SharePoint, and Teams. Employees could open Adobe PDFs within an email or SharePoint without opening Adobe Acrobat or Reader.

  They could also collaborate on document creation in real time through Teams and receive e-signatures through its integration with Adobe Acrobat Sign. While, this led to an overall small amount of time savings, the improvement contributed to stronger employee experiences.

• Modeling and assumptions.

  For the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

  • End users are employees who make use of Adobe Document Cloud solutions through their organization’s Microsoft integrations, including accessing Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Sign through Microsoft Teams, Outlook, or SharePoint. The number of end users encompass the rest of the organization outside of the data analysts, content, IT, marketing, and security staff members already accounted for.
  • End users recognize incremental time savings of 5 minutes per week from the integration of Adobe solutions with Microsoft.
  • The average fully loaded hourly rate for an end user is $35 in Year 1, and it increases by $1 each subsequent year to account for inflation.
  • As with data and marketing analysis, users recapture 50% of their productivity and apply it to the time savings.

• Risks.

  Differences in organizations that may impact the benefit results include:

  • The size of the organization.
  • Compensation of employees.

• Results.

  To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $29,000.

Unquantified Benefits

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

• More successful marketing efforts due to increased employee self-service.

  Increased data sharing since the integrations enabled teams to iterate more quickly on marketing material and personalize content in real time to draw stronger engagement with customers. The chief information and security officer in the financial software industry said their organization has seen a 20% improvement in marketing yield since integrating Adobe Experience Cloud solutions with Microsoft Azure and Power BI.

  Specifically, the interviewee attributed the benefit to a reduction in human error around the uploading of data to the wrong customer profiles or losing performance results to data being overwritten. With data flowing correctly, they had bandwidth to focus more on the creative process and testing material to come up with more compelling content.

  Among survey respondents, 75% agreed that since integrating Adobe Experience Cloud with Microsoft Cloud, their organizations decreased the amount of time needed to create and execute digital customer experiences. Meanwhile, 57% of respondents indicated their organization saw an improvement in KPIs since integration. The biggest gain was in customer sentiment (e.g., Net Promoter Score℠) or customer loyalty at 45%.

  This result aligned with interviewees speaking to data-driven enhancements to customer experiences for greater personalization. The vice president of IT, application engineering, and data analytics at a digital media organization said: “If you have the integration, there’s strong promise to achieve better business results and turnaround time. ... We can be more agile and bring more real-time customer insight. With Power BI and Adobe data, we can visualize what type of content our customers consume [and] on what device and personalize for [them] based on that.”

• Improved security of files and data.

  Interviewees said that along with relieving security staff of some work effort since integrating Adobe and Microsoft, security teams felt their companies’ files and data were more protected. Having data stored in the Microsoft Cloud and imported directly into solutions with native connectors reduced the number of outside solutions or custom configurations with potential vulnerabilities in which data traveled around the company. While the organizations still employed other security solutions, interviewees said their organizations’ data and files specific to Adobe had not experienced any compromises. Meanwhile, two-factor authentication support and single sign-on support with Microsoft for Adobe solutions reduced the number of logins and passwords floating around at companies for access. Interviewees felt this was particularly valuable with the amount of remote work and opportunities for attack occurring today.

• Greater employee satisfaction.

  Interviewees said their organizations’ workers appreciated the time savings created by the integration of Adobe and Microsoft solutions, and they welcomed the ease of use to leverage the integrations. The integrations made use cases intuitive — from a few clicks through Power BI for pulling up Adobe Analytics and/or Adobe Customer Journey Analytics data to sharing first- and third-party data back to Adobe Campaign or Adobe Experience Cloud to build customer profiles. Interviewees said another indicator of ease of use was seeing fewer support tickets related to data requests sent to IT and, as a result, there were fewer complaints from employees around difficulties with managing data.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might integrate Adobe and Microsoft solutions and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Extended reach of marketing content produced with Adobe due to Microsoft Azure’s global footprint.

  Like Adobe solutions, Microsoft Azure offers support for content distribution networks (CDNs). The chief digital and information technology officer at a biopharmaceutical company said Azure’s global footprint and cloud storage enabled their organization to leverage Adobe solutions alongside CDNs to disburse content and marketing materials worldwide. Previously, this would have required a devoted server for transferring assets and data alongside hours of time, depending on the file size.

• Reduction in investments for service integration.

  Interviewees at the financial services and digital media organizations said their technical teams leaned on consultancies and contractors to integrate and manage configurations between their point solutions and Microsoft Cloud before adopting Adobe solutions. The organizations reduced their reliance on these consulting services with the ease of integration through Adobe and Microsoft’s native connectors. Survey respondents said their organizations decreased agency spend for technical support by an average of 15.2% since integration.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A ).