Improved Developer Productivity Through Streamlined Integration And API Delivery

Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that adopting MuleSoft significantly reduced the effort required to develop APIs and integrations. MuleSoft’s suite of tools and prebuilt connectors streamlined design, testing, and deployment workflows. By embracing a composable architecture, organizations could reuse these assets, further accelerating development. As a result, interviewees reported overall efficiency gains ranging from 25% to 92%, driven by both reuse and MuleSoft’s tooling. They described the following ways that MuleSoft improved efficiency:

• Reuse. With MuleSoft, the interviewees’ organizations moved to a composable approach. Instead of building each API and integration to be purpose-fit for a single application or use, they adopted a modular strategy and designed components to deliver discrete, reusable functions that they could flexibly combine and leverage across different systems and applications. For example, the director of applications at a financial services company shared that their organization built foundational APIs to expose data from core banking systems, such as member profile information and transaction history, which it then reused across multiple digital channels, including online banking, the contact center, and branch operations. This approach enabled the organization to avoid building and maintaining separate integrations between each system and channel. On average, interviewees reported that the composable strategy with MuleSoft enabled a 43% API reuse rate.

• Design. MuleSoft provided the interviewees’ organizations with a centralized platform and capabilities to design, build, test, and deploy their APIs and integrations, helping teams streamline workflows and accelerate delivery. For example, the director of applications at a financial services company shared: “The Design Center within the MuleSoft platform simplifies the overall design of our APIs. It provides a single pane of glass where you can build, design, develop, and run those APIs and visualize how your ecosystem is running in production.”

• Out-of-the-box connectors. Interviewees also leveraged MuleSoft’s out-of-the-box connectors, which helped them avoid building common API and integration logic from scratch. For example, the CIO at the healthcare company utilized MuleSoft’s HL7 and electronic data interchange connectors to easily facilitate data exchange between their internal healthcare systems and third parties.³

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization builds 75 new APIs and integrations each year.

• Before MuleSoft, an API or integration took 250 hours of developer effort to build.

• With MuleSoft tooling, the composite reduces the effort to develop an API or integration by 60%.

• The composite organization has 15, 90, and 165 cumulative APIs and integrations available at the start of Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3, respectively, based on development completed in the preceding years. Of these assets, 45% are reusable for multiple projects and business initiatives. Forrester conservatively assumes that an organization will utilize each reusable asset at least once during the course of the year.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for a developer is $84.

• The composite recaptures 80% of developer time savings productively.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The following factors may impact this benefit.

• The number of new APIs and integrations built each year.

• An organization’s prior methods for API and integration development and associated development time.

• The extent to which an organization designs APIs and integrations for reuse.

• The variation in developer salaries.

• The likelihood that an organization recaptures time savings productively.

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 $3.0 million.

Improved Developer Productivity Through Reduced Ongoing Management Efforts

Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that MuleSoft significantly reduced the effort required to manage and maintain APIs and integrations. With MuleSoft, organizations benefited from tools for monitoring, security, and cataloging and avoided management efforts due to reuse. Interviewees estimated that, without MuleSoft, they would have needed two to ten additional resources to manage the current scope of their APIs and integrations. They detailed several areas in which MuleSoft drove efficiencies, including:

• Security and governance. MuleSoft streamlined security and governance by centralizing and automating controls. Teams could easily configure authentication, security policies, rate limiting, and access permissions without extensive manual effort. The director of applications at a financial services company said: “Security, compliance, and policy management are all handled within its unified platform with just a few clicks, which makes things a lot easier. There’s policy assignment and handling, including rate limiting, which we can adjust based on the thresholds needed for different types of transactions. It’s a life saver for us.” Additionally, the director of AI initiatives at a pharmaceutical company shared: “MuleSoft has robust API management tools, especially in terms of security. It’s easier to connect to our single sign-on, and the security layer is better compared to others.”

• Monitoring and performance. MuleSoft provided the interviewees’ organizations with real-time visibility into the health and performance of their APIs and integrations through centralized dashboards. This allowed teams to monitor performance metrics across their environments and set alerts to flag issues, enabling faster troubleshooting and proactive incident response. The director of AI initiatives at a pharmaceutical company shared: “From an operations standpoint, we’ve experienced easier maintenance, especially on the observability side. MuleSoft helped us identify errors, missing data, and other issues. In those cases, we’re able to pinpoint the issue and then reprocess those messages.”

• Documentation and cataloging. MuleSoft provided the interviewees’ organizations with a centralized repository to organize and document APIs, making them more easily accessible for developers and other stakeholders. The senior director of digital products at a healthcare company noted that this helped effectively manage their API catalog and documentation, while also enabling easier discoverability for reuse. The director of applications at a financial services company shared that their organization was in the process of adopting MuleSoft’s Experience Hub to document and publish APIs for external consumption.

• Reuse. With MuleSoft, interviewees reported that their organizations experienced an average reuse rate of 43% for existing integration and API assets. This allowed them to avoid building unique APIs and integrations for each individual system, application, or use case, helping them not only reduce upfront development work but also minimize ongoing efforts to manage and secure them.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization allocates 2 hours per month to API and integration management, equating to 24 hours per year.

• Due to reuse, the composite organization avoids building several APIs and integration assets each year, which also eliminates the need to manage those assets over time. The cumulative number of avoided assets is seven in Year 1, 48 in Year 2, and 122 in Year 3.

• For existing APIs and integrations, MuleSoft’s tooling reduces ongoing management efforts by 70%.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for a developer is $84.

• The composite recaptures 80% of time savings productively.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The following factors may impact this benefit:

• An organization’s prior environment, tooling, and time required for ongoing management of integrations and APIs before MuleSoft.

• The number of APIs and integrations built and managed.

• The extent to which an organization designs APIs and integrations for reuse.

• The variation in developer salaries.

• The likelihood that an organization recaptures time savings productively.

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 $605,000.

Incremental Profit From Improved Time To Market

Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that MuleSoft helped their organizations accelerate time to market for new digital capabilities and third-party integrations. By shortening development timelines through reusable assets and MuleSoft tooling, organizations could respond to business needs more quickly. This enabled faster product and service launches, quicker new market entry, and improved sales and service experiences, which ultimately helped their organizations realize outcomes, like improved sales, sooner. They shared the following experiences:

• The director of software engineering at a financial services company reported that MuleSoft played a pivotal role in improving time to market for new revenue-driving digital capabilities and client integrations. With MuleSoft, the organization avoided redundant development work by leveraging reusable APIs, leading to an estimated tenfold acceleration in time to market. This helped the organization improve its digital offerings and provide integrations to clients, contributing to hundreds of millions of dollars in new deposits and the ability to win and retain clients. They said: “In our space, there’s traditionally been limited connectivity, but once we were able to offer those integrations, our sales teams could go out and sell our product and offer instant integrations that could let [clients access] their data. Last year, I think we brought in over $800 million in deposits. So it’s a significant chunk of revenue right there. We also had clients that were going to leave us and take their $130 million with them if we couldn’t provide integrations. We were able to meet that goal with MuleSoft.”

• The CIO at a healthcare company shared that MuleSoft was instrumental in helping their organization quickly expand to new markets. With plans to expand services to several new states, the organization needed a scalable way to integrate health information and billing systems with external partners. By reusing core APIs for billing, eligibility, and health information exchanges, the organization avoided redundant integration work, reducing integration timelines from several months to as little as two weeks. This accelerated time to value allowed the organization to quickly meet integration requirements and operationalize care delivery in new regions, supporting the company’s growth initiatives.

• The senior director of digital products at a healthcare organization also reported that MuleSoft accelerated time to value for integrations between its back-office systems and customer-facing and employee-facing tools, resulting in outcomes such as improved member conversion and retention. With MuleSoft, the organization could rapidly develop digital capabilities and integrations for sales and service operations. They shared that the improved connectivity enabled teams to produce more effective outreach campaigns and better serve prospects shopping for health plans, ultimately driving higher conversion rates. Additionally, customer service representatives gained better access to member history data, which reduced handling times and improved inquiry resolution, contributing to stronger member retention. They said: “With the use of MuleSoft, we’ve greatly accelerated how much faster those integrations can be created. … The benefits have flowed downstream in improving the sales and customer service experience. It’s improved our ability to serve prospects and others who are shopping for a plan, helping with conversion and retention.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• One-quarter of the composite organization’s APIs and integrations drive revenue by powering new digital products, services, and third-party integration capabilities.

• Each API and integration drives annual revenue of $5 million ($416,700 per month).

• Prior to adopting MuleSoft, the average time to market for launching a new API or integration was four months.

• With MuleSoft, time to market improves by 40%, enabling the composite organization to capture revenue sooner.

• The organization has an operating profit margin of 12%, which is applied to calculate the incremental profit from accelerated revenue capture.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The following factors may impact this benefit:

• The number of APIs and integrations that drive revenue, and the degree to which they do so.

• Actual time to market for launching new digital products, services, or third-party integrations prior to MuleSoft, which factors beyond API and integration development may influence, such other business processes and departments involved in delivering new products or services.

• An organization’s operating profit margin.

• External factors such as demand, pricing strategies, and customer adoption rates, which may influence the revenue that APIs and integrations generate.

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 $3.0 million.

Operational Efficiency Improvement

Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that MuleSoft played a role in improving operational efficiency across a range of business functions. By connecting systems of record and business applications, the interviewee’s organizations reduced manual information searching, automated workflows, and ultimately enhanced staff productivity. They shared the following experiences:

• The CTO at a healthcare company shared that their organization saved more than 5,000 hours of work annually by automating patient intake and billing processes. Before MuleSoft, administrators and nurses had to swivel-chair between different applications to find, enter, and validate data related to patients and insurance. By adopting MuleSoft, the organization improved interoperability between electronic medical records systems and applications used for patient care and billing, automating manual data entry and validation work. This not only streamlined processes but also freed up staff to focus on patient care.

• The director of applications and the VP of digital banking at a financial services company highlighted how integrations through MuleSoft drove efficiency and labor savings for customer communication processes and service operations. Prior to MuleSoft, their organization relied on manual processes to generate and send customer statements. With MuleSoft, the company integrated backend systems with digital channels, enabling it to automate customer statement processes and provide more timely communications. Similarly, customer service staff experienced improved access to data within the organization’s contact center solution, allowing them to quickly find relevant case information and serve customers more efficiently.

• The senior director of digital products at a healthcare company also highlighted that MuleSoft drove efficiencies for staff including customer service representatives and campaign managers. Integrating customer record systems with staff-facing tools made relevant customer data, including historical activity, claim history, and member information, more easily accessible. This improved efficiency by reducing the need to navigate multiple systems to find information. The interviewee shared that this led to efficiency gains for customer service reps, including reduced handling times and higher first call resolution. It also enhanced operational efficiency for campaign teams by making reporting and insights more readily consumable.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has 15,000 employees, with 50%, 60%, and 70% experiencing workflow automation enabled by MuleSoft APIs and integrations in Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3, respectively.

• Each impacted employee conservatively experiences 30 minutes of time savings per week due to workflow automation.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for an employee is $47.

• The composite recaptures 25% of time savings productively.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The following factors may impact this benefit:

• The number of employees impacted by APIs and integrations.

• The actual impacted workflows and the extent of the time savings.

• The variation in salaries across employees.

• The extent to which an organization recaptures time savings productively.

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 $5.8 million.

Unquantified Benefits

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

• Performance improvements. Interviewees highlighted that MuleSoft improved reliability, reporting minimal downtime and, in one case, a significant improvement in app scalability. The senior director of digital products for a healthcare organization shared: “We have very strong performance and little downtime with MuleSoft. There are a few instances I can think of when a source system had downtime and they were not directly attributable to MuleSoft.” The director of software engineering at a financial services company said that their organization saw a significant boost in performance for a revenue-generating application after migrating from its legacy integration architecture to MuleSoft APIs. They shared that previously, the application was slow and resource constrained due to tightly coupled integrations, which limited scalability and prevented the business from selling access to new clients. With MuleSoft, they saw performance improve by 20 times, enabling the application to become a sellable product again.

• Security and compliance management. Forrester’s research finds that organizations are increasing their adoption of APIs to create new products, partnerships, and revenue streams, and this expansion provides an attractive attack surface that technology leaders must fully address.⁴ Interviewees shared that MuleSoft helped their organizations manage security controls and handle compliance requirements, such as those for HIPAA, personally identifiable information, and GDPR. By centralizing policy enforcement, MuleSoft reduced the burden of manual oversight and improved visibility into API activity, allowing teams to maintain control while scaling their API footprints.

• Developer experience improvements. The director of software engineering at a financial services company said that adopting MuleSoft helped their organization modernize its development practices, empowering developers to work more efficiently and adopt a modern, automated software development lifecycle. Additionally, the senior director of digital products at a healthcare company said that using MuleSoft freed developers to focus on higher-value work beyond just building integrations and APIs.

Flexibility

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

• Direct API monetization. Although the interviewees’ organizations monetized their APIs indirectly by powering new digital products and services, the interviewees at financial services companies said they saw potential to directly monetize APIs in the future. The director of software engineering at the financial services company explained: “Once we expand our opening banking capabilities and expose specific endpoints to people who want to use them, it creates another revenue stream because now we can charge for that data. Banks do a lot of file exchange, but if they want real-time data, they’ll have to pay a certain amount to access these APIs. And so we’re starting to turn that into a revenue stream as well.”

• Agentforce enablement. Two interviewees noted that their organizations were in the process of building out or ideating on use cases with Agentforce and that MuleSoft would play a key role in integrating the data sources required for their agents. The VP of IT at a pharmaceutical company explained that their organization was building out a proof of concept with Agentforce for contract management. They shared that MuleSoft acted as the integration layer between the organization’s document management platform and Salesforce Data Cloud, enabling Agentforce to access large volumes of unstructured data, such as PDFs and other documents, for use in agentic workflows. The CIO at a healthcare company shared that their organization was ideating on a variety of Agentforce use cases to automate manual administrative tasks such as chart preparation and discharge summaries. They shared that MuleSoft’s connectors for health information exchanges would be essential to enabling those use cases.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).