The Total Economic Impact™ Of Adobe Creative Cloud For Small And Medium-Size Businesses

Increased Content Creation Productivity

Evidence and data. Among surveyed SMB users of Adobe Creative Cloud, 74% identified increased creative productivity as a result of using the solutions. A key contributor to this productivity was Adobe’s genAI capabilities: 30% of respondents who use those features cited it as a significant contributor to productivity, and another 58% said it was a moderate contributor.

Each interviewee identified Photoshop’s Generative Expand and Fill capabilities as most critical to significantly accelerating creative productivity. The creative director at a CPG company said: “The majority of time I’m using Creative Cloud is for its Generative Fill workflow. I may have an outdoor photo and need a little more room in the picture, and I need to get rid of the sun. Instead of doing some sort of clone stamping, like I would have done in the past, I have Generative Fill get rid of that. If I need to add a chair, I can have Fill insert that.” They added that using this feature reduced the time spent on work like this from 45 minutes to 5 minutes.

Beyond Generative Expand and Fill, the CEO at a brand and marketing agency cited creating vectors using Image Trace in Illustrator as a factor in helping increase deliverable output by 40% per month. The interviewee shared: “We do a lot of vector tracing every day with Illustrator. One thing I thought was cool was our designer was making something with watercolors — it’s so imperfect you wouldn’t think it was possible to turn into vectors. It would have taken 10 to hundreds of hours, and we used Illustrator to solve that.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:

• The creative team oversees 60 creative projects per year (i.e., five per month).

• Five FTEs allocate 40 hours of support to each project. Within that time, they dedicate 80% to planning, ideation, and creative for projects.

• Adobe Creative Cloud for teams increases user productivity by 10% in Year 1 as creatives incorporate the solution’s genAI capabilities into their daily workflows. As creatives build maturity with genAI and incorporate it into more projects, their productivity increases to 15% in Year 2 and 20% in Year 3.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for creatives, including employees and contractors, is $75.

• Of the time saved, 66% is reallocated toward productive work, including creating more deliverables or improving content quality. The remaining time is spent on longer work breaks or fewer late nights, creating a better employee experience.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact the benefits include:

• The number of projects a company oversees annually, the number of creatives working on each project, and amount of time spent on each project.

• Use cases for Adobe Creative Cloud for teams and time savings from capabilities used.

• The hourly rate for employees supporting creative 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 $147,000.

Accelerated Content Reviews And Revisions

Evidence and data. Fifty-five percent of survey respondents saw a productivity improvement in content reviews and approvals, and time spent on these activities decreased by a median of 40%. Adobe Creative Cloud for teams’ capabilities were a key factor in accelerating reviews for users and stakeholders signing off on visuals.

The CEO of a brand and marketing agency cited Illustrator’s vector tool as reducing cleanup time by 30% for logo creation, while Photoshop helped them to make “really good” mock-ups that accelerated overall approval time by 50%. They noted After Effects also helped add a “wow factor” with custom animations. The interviewee said, “We’re able to reapply time savings to quality improvements, where we spend more time fully understanding the story of our clients and improving the quality of the content so they’re more satisfied with what we deliver.”

Enhanced collaboration also improved the review process, with 57% of survey respondents agreeing it was a key result of using Adobe Creative Cloud. As interviewees’ entire creative teams gained access to Adobe Creative Cloud for teams, it became easier for individuals to hop onto colleagues’ projects, review materials they created, and lend support without waiting for access. Sharing files and assets no longer required reformatting since everyone was using the same Adobe Creative Cloud apps.

The head of creative at an agency spoke to improved teamwork: “We mostly use Creative Cloud for collaborative projects. If I need to set something up or review work, it’s much easier to do so with a live file than an export. Especially with Premiere Pro, there are source files for it that need to be worked on together with that.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:

• On each creative project, employees allocate approximately 20% of their time to content reviews, edits, and approvals.

• Adobe Creative Cloud for teams accelerates time spent on reviews, edits, and approvals by 30% in Year 1 through enhanced collaboration and tools to improve content quality. This increases to 35% in Year 2 and 40% in Year 3.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact the benefits include:

• The number of creatives and their time spent on content reviews, edits, and approvals before adopting Adobe Creative Cloud for teams.

• Creative and collaboration tools previously used to complete this work.

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 $87,000.

Revenue Growth Driven By Content Production Gains

Evidence and data. By completing work on projects faster, interviewees said they were able to expand their project pipelines. The events organization increased the number of annual events it supports by more than 40%. Meanwhile, the CEO at a brand and marketing agency said their business nearly doubled over one year as the timeline for projects decreased from seven weeks to four weeks. The high quality of the work produced with Adobe Creative Cloud for teams also helped attract more business.

Forty-five percent of survey respondents cited increased revenue as an outcome of using Adobe Creative Cloud. In terms of impact, 71% saw at least a 5% increase in revenue. Growth in reach contributed to this improvement, with 25% of respondents seeing more than a 20% gain in this area. Creatives’ faster content creation speeds with Creative Cloud applications allowed marketers to refresh campaign content more frequently to reach and engage more audiences.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:

• One-third of creative projects worked on annually are related to marketing campaigns.

• Creatives can get creative content to market 15% faster in Year 1 due to Adobe Creative Cloud for teams. As the organization becomes more aligned with the platforms and matures with its genAI features, its speed to market increases to 25% in Year 3.

• The average incremental revenue that can be directly tied to a marketing campaign is $100,000. This value represents roughly five times the investment in the campaign for the organization.

• An operating profit margin of 10% is applied to account for all operating costs.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact the benefits include:

• The number of marketing campaigns an organization produces.

• The average revenue of each marketing campaign.

• The operating profit margin on revenue.

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 $78,000.

Cost Efficiencies With Adobe Creative Cloud For Teams

Evidence and data. Multiple interviewees either retired non-Adobe creative solutions or scaled down their usage to consolidate creative workflows through Adobe Creative Cloud for teams. The head of creative at an agency said: “We had a third-party solution for video editing, where it was specifically used for that. Now being able to use Premiere Pro as part of Creative Cloud takes care of that. We’ve downgraded our license just to have it for sharing assets with clients using it.”

Among survey respondents, 38% cited Adobe Creative Cloud as increasing cost savings. In terms of legacy creative solutions, their organizations saved an average of $17,500 on subscriptions and $14,000 on ongoing IT management costs per year.

Respondents’ organizations also saw cost savings from third-party professional services, averaging $19,500, and from stock image purchases, averaging $13,500 per year. Seventy-three percent of respondents attributed genAI as a factor in 6% to 15% of these cost savings. Between Firefly’s genAI models and Adobe Stock images, users had an abundance of visual content to incorporate in their creative work.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:

• Each creative FTE uses one to three additional creative tools, and the cost per license for access is $300.

• Each year, 200 hours is spent on third-party creative tools to manage integrations, apply updates, conduct maintenance, and provision licenses.

• The blended fully burdened hourly rate for creative directors and IT overseeing licensing and integrations is $85.

• One-fifth of creative projects involve third-party support, including freelance or external support, or stock images, averaging $100 per project.

Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact the benefits include:

• The number of non-Adobe creative solutions an organization uses before Adobe Creative Cloud for teams and time spent maintaining them.

• Use of third-party services or stock images on creative projects and the associated costs.

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 $44,000.

Unquantified Benefits

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

• Commercially safe genAI use and access to partner models through Adobe Firefly. Interviewees felt secure with Adobe’s approach to genAI, its training models only on Adobe Stock, and content with permissions for use. In addition, interviewees took advantage of Adobe’s open ecosystem for access to leading genAI models from best-in-class partners. With Adobe Firefly, they noted not having to pay a subscription for each genAI tool and could use the models directly in the Firefly app. The director of media and interactive at an events company said: “We’ve not had a moment of regret moving into [genAI] with Adobe Creative Cloud. … I will leverage all of the available partner models in Firefly because we want everyone on the team to see what’s out there.”

• Secure creative asset management with Creative Cloud. More than half (51%) of surveyed Adobe Creative Cloud users felt the solution improved asset security, and 69% of these respondents selected identity and access management as contributing to improved security. Data encryption (64%) was the second leading factor for improved security. Moving operations primarily to Adobe Creative Cloud helped protect files and mitigate their transfer between creative solutions where they could be exposed to third parties.

Flexibility

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

• Streamlined management of Adobe Creative Cloud licensing. Organizations moving from an à la carte approach with Adobe Creative Cloud applications licensing to adopting all applications with Adobe Creative Cloud for teams were able to simplify admin licensing conversations. Instead of negotiating access for each Adobe Creative Cloud application, admins only had to discuss their overall usage and licensing plans for Adobe Creative Cloud Pro for teams, which saved them time on negotiations and calculating cumulative costs for the applications. According to survey respondents, admin costs decreased by an average of $10,000 per year.

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