The Total Economic Impact™ Of SymphonyAI IT Service Management (ITSM)

Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By AI-Powered ITSM

A Forrester Total Economic Impact Study Commissioned By SymphonyAI, December 2024

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, decision-makers face increasing pressure to optimize their organization’s IT operations and enhance service delivery. SymphonyAI aims to address this critical need by providing an AI-powered IT management solution that aims to simplify processes, reduce costs, and improve overall efficiency.

SymphonyAI ITSM is an integrated IT and enterprise workflow automation platform that unifies service management, asset management, and operations management into a single, user-friendly solution. It leverages advanced AI capabilities such as predictive analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) to automate workflows, enhance employee productivity, and reduce the complexity and cost of IT operations. SymphonyAI’s goal is to enable the IT-led transformation of enterprises by providing robust security, comprehensive reporting, and seamless integration with other applications, to enable them to streamline their IT processes and improve service delivery.

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

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Return on investment (ROI)

204%204%

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Net present value (NPV)

$3.2M$3.2M

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four representatives with experience using SymphonyAI ITSM. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is an organization with 25,000 employees who generate a total of 240,000 IT tickets annually.

has employees who generate IT tickets annually. Custom results are based on user inputs and the TEI case study.

Interviewees noted that prior to using SymphonyAI ITSM, their organizations utilized a combination of alternative vendor solutions and some internally built processes. However, these attempts yielded diminishing success as they moved from simple catch-and-dispatch ticketing to more complex workflows, leaving them with an ever-increasing level of customization required to ensure their previous ITSM solution remained fit for purpose. These limitations led to security vulnerabilities, vendor reliance, and frequent bug fixes until there was no feasible upgrade path moving forward.

After the investment in SymphonyAI ITSM, the interviewees enjoyed efficiency gains due to the integration of emerging technologies such as AI and automation, greater visibility and control over the ITSM solution, and enhanced employee experience (EX) due to the platform’s intuitive, user-friendly interface for self-service, as well as ease of use via out-of-the-box low-code/no-code features. Key results from the investment include easing the burden on service desk agents and IT technicians by leveraging AI to handle ticket routing and service automation.

The interviewees that Forrester spoke with had deployed a previous version of SymphonyAI’s ITSM solution named Summit. Readers should note that SymphonyAI’s sole ITSM solution moving forward is the new Apex IT Platform, which aims to help enterprises roll out services even faster and boost productivity further. Apex offers the flexibility to adapt and expand applications as needed, potentially reducing the frequency of redevelopment, and ultimately driving increased time and cost savings.

The case study as presented can still serve as a starting point for anyone seeking to understand the potential benefits and costs associated with investment in Apex, the latest version of SymphonyAI’s ITSM solution.

Key Findings

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

  • Improved service agent productivity. SymphonyAI ITSM leverages AI to greatly reduce the workload on the IT service desk. Its digital agent and self-service portal increase ticket deflection by 35% and the use of canned responses, automated workflows, and generative AI (genAI) case summaries reduces average handling time (AHT) by 75%. This provides the composite organization with $3.1 million in value over three years.

For , this benefit might be worth over three years.

  • Improved incident resolution. Even for complex incident reports that require a human in the loop, SymphonyAI ITSM’s service automation can reduce the time to resolution by 2 hours on average. This time saving for IT technicians offers the composite organization with a total benefit of $442,000 over three years.

For , this benefit might be worth over three years.

  • Reduced effort for IT workflow configuration. Using the low-code/no-code features inside SymphonyAI’s Design Studio and Integration Hub enables the composite organization to drastically reduce the time it takes to configure workflows. This reduction in effort is worth $403,000 to the composite organization over three years.

For , this benefit might be worth over three years.

  • Cost savings from retiring legacy solution. Deploying SymphonyAI ITSM enables the composite organization to retire their previous solution, which charged an annual fee of $663 per license. Accounting for 625 users who require licenses, retiring the legacy solution helps the composite organization avoid costs of $824,000 over three years.

For , this benefit might be worth over three years.

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

  • Increased end-user productivity. Using SymphonyAI ITSM solution streamlines the process for end users to submit tickets due to the creation of intuitive and accurate search catalogues. In turn, this increases end-user productivity in the composite organization.
  • Enhanced visibility into team performance and trend analysis. SymphonyAI ITSM’s enhanced reporting capabilities allow employees to conduct trend analyses that they were previously unable to. Additionally, having access to reports at a more regular cadence also improve visibility of the team’s performance, identify gaps, and resolve them.
  • Improved efficiency of reporting and dashboard creation. SymphonyAI ITSM allows service desk personnel to pull together daily reports in just 1 minute and prepare dashboards in between 15 to 20 minutes, compared to when they were previously spending 15 to 20 minutes for daily reporting and half a day each month to produce reports and dashboards from data amalgamated into spreadsheets.
  • Improved user experience. SymphonyAI ITSM offers greater user satisfaction with their intuitive user interface as compared to the legacy tool’s interface.
  • Improved vendor collaboration and responsiveness. SymphonyAI provides prompt resolution of any issues, and are open to the composite organization’s suggestions for improvement.

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

  • Internal solution implementation and ongoing maintenance costs. The initial deployment of SymphonyAI’s solution generally takes 120 hours of five employees’ time on top of 60 hours of user acceptance testing (UAT) by 25 employees. Two employees manage daily solution maintenance on a full-time basis. For the composite organization, solution deployment and ongoing maintenance costs amount to $653,000 over three years.

For , these costs could represent over three years.

  • Onetime professional and annual licensing fees. The SymphonyAI license follows a subscription model. The composite organization incurs annual license fees of $530 per license, as well as a onetime professional fee of $35,000 that covers implementation, customization, training, and support throughout the deployment phase. This results in a total vendor cost to the composite organization of $902,000 over three years.

For , these costs could represent over three years.

The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $4.7 million over three years versus costs of $1.6 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $3.2 million and an ROI of 204%.

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

“From the ITSM perspective, end users are the first customers to us. If we are able to fulfill their needs within required SLAs with transparency, then we can help them honor time-bound activities for our clients.”

Associate vice president of information technology, IT consulting and services

Key Statistics

  • icon icon

    Return on investment (ROI)

    204%204%
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    Benefits PV

    $4.7M$4.7M
  • icon icon

    Net present value (NPV)

    $3.2M$3.2M
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    Payback

    <6 months <6 months
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Benefits (Three-Year)

Improved service agent productivity Improved incident resolution Reduced effort for IT workflow configuration Cost savings from retiring legacy solution

TEI Framework And Methodology

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

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 SymphonyAI ITSM can have on an organization.

  1. Due Diligence

    Interviewed SymphonyAI stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to SymphonyAI ITSM.

  2. Interviews

    Interviewed four representatives at organizations using the previous version of SymphonyAI ITSM, Summit, 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 SymphonyAI 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 SymphonyAI ITSM. For the interactive functionality using Configure Data/Custom Data, the intent is for the questions to solicit inputs specific to a prospect's business. Forrester believes that this analysis is representative of what companies may achieve with SymphonyAI ITSM based on the inputs provided and any assumptions made. Forrester does not endorse SymphonyAI or its offerings. Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this model, SymphonyAI and Forrester Research are unable to accept any legal responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of the information contained herein. The interactive tool is provided ‘AS IS,’ and Forrester and SymphonyAI make no warranties of any kind.

SymphonyAI 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.

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

Consulting Team:

Jamie Macaulay

Amelia Lau

Sruti Pegatraju

M
K

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