The Total Economic Impact™ Of Camunda For Enterprises

Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Camunda

A Forrester Total Economic Impact Study Commissioned By Camunda, February 2024

Strategic, scaled investments in process automation with Camunda can: 1) improve customer experiences, 2) increase employee productivity, 3) enhance business agility, and 4) reduce business risks. Leaders who center process orchestration within their businesses do more than increase efficiencies, they transform their organizations.

Camunda is a digital process automation (DPA) platform that helps organizations automate processes end to end. Its software coordinates automation endpoints which can be humans, robotic process automation (RPA) bots, or application programming interfaces (APIs) to internal and external systems. Camunda uses open standards such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Decision Model and Notation (DMN), and Camunda’s visual modeling and low-code solutions enable stakeholders other than professional developers (e.g., nonprofessional or citizen developers) to participate in process development and maintenance.

Camunda commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Camunda strategically and at scale.1 The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Camunda on their organizations.

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Return on investment (ROI)

408%408%

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Net present value (NPV)

$112.1M$112.1M

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed five representatives of four organizations with experience using Camunda. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that generates $25 billion in revenue and has 55 million customers and 60,000 employees.

generates $0 in revenue and has 0 customers and 0 employees. Custom results are based on these inputs and the TEI case study.

Before using Camunda, the interviewees’ organizations had limited solutions for process automation, and those solutions often used proprietary standards rather than open standards. The interviewees found that their organizations’ prior solutions could not support the scale and complexity of the processes they wanted to orchestrate, and they said that process development using the prior solutions was too slow to meet business needs.

The interviewees’ organizations invested in Camunda strategically: Instead of simply automating processes one by one, they created teams responsible for enabling decentralized process development and fostered cultures that empowered employees to leverage Camunda for all kinds of process orchestration.

Strategic investment in Camunda yielded several benefits. First, by automating processes their customers interact with regularly, the interviewees’ organizations provided better, faster customer service and improved their customers’ experiences. Second, by automating back-office processes across multiple departments and business units, the organizations increased their overall operational efficiency. Third, the organizations developed and changed processes faster with Camunda, thereby reducing development timelines and increasing business agility. And, finally, widespread process automation reduced the risk of errors and improved regulatory compliance for organizations with complex, global operations.

Key Findings

Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:

  • Increased customer satisfaction yielding $57.8 million in profits. Processes orchestrated with Camunda provide the composite organization with better customer service and have higher customer retention. As the organization orchestrates more processes with Camunda (initially orchestrating only 5% of its business processes with Camunda and then increasing this to 28% of all processes in Year 3), aggregate customer retention increases by 2%. This increase is small, but it translates into 1.27 million happier customers for the composite.

For , increased customer satisfaction might yield in profits. An increase in customer retention might translate into happier customers.

  • Improvements in operations efficiency worth $66.6 million. Process automation saves employees time, and as the composite organization orchestrates and improves more processes with Camunda, its employees save even more time. Although each employee saves only a few hours, the total time savings across the composite organization over three years equates to 5,525 full-time or equivalent (FTE) resources.

For , improvements in operations efficiency might be worth , and the total time savings over three years might equate to 0 FTEs.

20,000+ hours

Development time saved

  • Process development efficiencies worth $615,000. The composite’s business processes regularly change as its business requirements change. Processes orchestrated with Camunda take the composite organization about half as much time to change as processes implemented with other solutions. Thus, as the composite organization orchestrates more processes with Camunda, development team members increasingly save time responding to business needs and development costs fall over time as business analysts increasingly participate in process development. In total, the composite organization saves over 20,000 hours of development, but this benefit is relatively small because the business impacts of process agility  are not quantified in this study.

For , process development efficiencies might be worth , and in total, might save 0 hours of development.

  • Improvements in process quality that save $15 million. Because the composite organization is a global company in a highly regulated industry, process errors require manual work to fix and, in the worst case, can result in fines. Process automation reduces the likelihood of errors, so the composite organization avoids costs it would have otherwise incurred.

For , improvements in process quality might save .

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

  • Improved collaboration between IT and business stakeholders. Open standards such as BPMN improve communication between developers and business stakeholders, and Camunda’s visual tools enable business stakeholders to contribute to process development and thereby reduce development costs.
  • Improved visibility into processes. By orchestrating its most complex processes with Camunda, the composite organization can gather analytics about those processes and gain insights into them, which enables it to improve them over time.

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

  • Camunda licensing costs of $3 million over three years. Camunda licensing costs are based on usage. Initially, the composite organization uses Camunda to orchestrate only 25 business processes. However, by Year 3, the composite organization uses Camunda to orchestrate 140 business processes with 46 million process instances.

For , Camunda licensing costs might be over three years.

  • Process development costs of $23 million. Developers and business analysts distributed across multiple departments and business units contribute to process automation work. The composite organization’s development effort per process decreases over time as it matures its Camunda practice (e.g., builds reusable components, etc.). In Year 1, the composite organization develops and maintains 45 orchestrated processes with 34 FTEs. By Year 3, the composite organization has 140 orchestrated processes, and process development efforts grow to include 71 FTEs.

For , process development costs might be over three years. By Year 3, might have 0 orchestrated processes, and process development efforts might involve 0 FTEs.

  • Training costs of $92,000 for new Camunda users. The composite organization’s developers and business analysts who build processes with Camunda become proficient in four weeks or less. Because Camunda uses open standards, new users can leverage prior experience (e.g., with first-class programming languages, BPMN, and DMN). New users also benefit from resources such as Camunda Academy. As the composite organization’s Camunda practice matures, new users increasingly learn both from internal resources as well as from their colleagues.

For , training costs for new Camunda users might be over three years.

  • Platform administration costs of $1.1 million. The composite organization creates a central team of nine business analysts and developers who spend part of their time supporting and enabling Camunda usage throughout the organization, but they spend most of their time on tasks unrelated to Camunda. Because the composite organization uses Camunda on-premises rather than in the cloud, some administration costs grow as its Camunda usage increases.

For , platform administration costs might be over three years.

  • Employee and end-user retraining costs of $486,000. Whenever the composite organization automates a new process with Camunda, it must train the employees who perform that process on any new procedures. As the composite organization orchestrates more processes with Camunda, these change management costs grow. To be conservative, Forrester assumes that 2,208 total employees each need 5 hours of retraining.

For , employee and end-user retraining costs might be over three years.

The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $139.5 million over three years versus costs of $27.5 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $112.1 million and an ROI of 408%.

might experience benefits of over three years versus costs of , adding up to an NPV of and an ROI of 0%.

Key Statistics

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    Return on investment (ROI)

    408%408%
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    Benefits PV

    $139.5M$139.5M
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    Net present value (NPV)

    $112.1M$112.1M
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    Payback

    8 months8 months
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Benefits (Three-Year)

Customer satisfaction Operations efficiencies Development efficiencies Process quality

TEI Framework And Methodology

From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment Camunda.

The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the investment decision. Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact that Camunda can have on an organization.

  1. Due Diligence

    Interviewed Camunda stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to Camunda.

  2. Interviews

    Interviewed five representatives at four organizations using Camunda to obtain data about costs, benefits, and risks.

  3. Composite Organization

    Designed a composite organization based on characteristics of the interviewees’ organizations.

  4. Financial Model Framework

    Constructed a financial model representative of the interviews using the TEI methodology and risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns of the interviewees.

  5. Case Study

    Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology provides a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.

Disclosures

Readers should be aware of the following:

This study is commissioned by Camunda and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.

Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Camunda.

Camunda reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.

Camunda provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.

Consulting Team:

Jeffrey Yozwiak

Zahra Azzaoui

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