Total Economic Impact
Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Adobe Ultimate Success
A FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY COMMISSIONED BY Adobe, June 2025
Total Economic Impact
A FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY COMMISSIONED BY Adobe, June 2025
Adobe Experience Cloud solutions provide organizations with tools to build compelling digital experiences for customers. In order to create these experiences, decision-makers often work with a team to create a roadmap of business objectives to execute against to increase revenue, expedite time to value, and mitigate risk. Organizations that partner with Adobe Ultimate Success stand to best position themselves to realize the full value of Adobe Experience Cloud.
Adobe Ultimate Success is a subscription service that delivers strategic, proactive guidance to help organizations maximize the value and performance of their Adobe Experience Cloud solutions. A team of designated experts, consisting of a Customer Success Manager, Support Service Manager, and Technical Account Manager, partner with an organization to align technical and business roadmaps to the organization’s priorities and execute against strategic objectives. This designated team deploys Success Accelerators, which are short engagements with Adobe experts, to assist in driving technical readiness, organizational readiness, and capability adoption. Launch Advisory, one of the Success Accelerators, provides assistance with newly licensed or never-deployed Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to launch best practices and provide customer-specific guidance from planning to go-live.
Adobe commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and evaluate the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by engaging the Ultimate Success team.1 The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Ultimate Success on their organizations.
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed five representatives with experience working with the Adobe Ultimate Success team. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the interviewees and combined the results into a single composite organization, that is a global, industry-agnostic (e.g., B2B2C, multiple business lines across industries), enterprise-sized company with $10 billion in annual revenue and 20,000 employees.
Interviewees said that prior to working with Adobe Ultimate Success, their organizations had Adobe Experience Cloud solutions in place but training and adoption of the software among employees was moving slowly. Teams didn’t have bandwidth to educate colleagues on best practices and expected value of the solutions. As a result, each team continued to use their legacy solutions, which prolonged siloed operations across the organizations and made it difficult for employees to collaborate. Interviewees also had limited internal technical support for launching Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, which concerned them given technical challenges that could arise from poor implementation. These challenges contributed to interviewees’ organizations’ inability to meet business goals and justify their investment in Adobe.
After partnering with Adobe Ultimate Success, the interviewees mapped out objectives they wanted to realize in the near future, including expanding adoption of their current Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, addressing any technical challenges, and driving business growth from improved operations. Adobe Ultimate Success helped increase the usage and maturity of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to create more engaging digital experiences that drove greater business results. The interviewees’ teams were able to successfully deploy additional Adobe Experience Cloud solutions with the support of an Ultimate Success-provided Launch Advisory Success Accelerator. Their Technical Account Manager helped accelerate time to resolution on technical challenges, allowing the interviewees’ organizations to avoid critical issues and downtime altogether. By working with Adobe Ultimate Success, the interviewees’ organizations maximized the impact of their investment in Adobe Experience Cloud.
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:
Doubling the number of trained users of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions who each deliver 10% more revenue. The Adobe Ultimate Success team helps train users at the composite organization with classroom-style training programs, educating them on best practices for how to effectively leverage Adobe Experience Cloud solutions. These learnings continue with desk-side coaching and feature guidance. With employees trained on the solutions, regular usage and alignment increases, enhancing their ability to build and iterate on compelling digital experiences that drive value for the composite organization. Additional revenue grows from $3.8 million in Year 1 to $11.9 million in Year 3, offering the composite a three-year present value profit of $2.1 million.
Shrinking spending on legacy software by 2.5% and on services by 5%. With the Adobe Ultimate Success team helping the composite organization expand and improve its usage of Adobe Experience Cloud, the organization can move away from legacy digital solutions over time and recoup 2.5% on software costs. As a result of greater maturity and centralized operations with Adobe Experience Cloud, the composite organization also reduces spending on third-party (excluding Adobe) support for digital solutions by 5%. Altogether this totals $1.9 million in three-year present value cost savings.
Improving time to resolution on noncritical events by 33%. The composite organization experiences five noncritical incidents per month that range from “important” to “urgent.” Time spent on resolving these incidents decreases 33% with support from its Support Service Manager through Adobe Ultimate Success and a better understanding in how Adobe Experience Cloud supports their architecture. The annual time savings on this work totals over 2,000 hours by the end of Year 3 and the three-year present value for this efficiency is $234,000.
Shrinking the length of critical downtime events by 50%. Critical downtime incidents occur several times over the course of a year for the composite organization, negatively impacting operations (e.g., website outages or inactive page buttons) for as many as a few hours per incident. Ultimate Success’ Support Service Managers investigate each incident and manage resolution, providing updates along the way until they are resolved. This cuts resolution time in half and mitigates the impact of each downtime event. The composite organization avoids nearly $4.0 million in revenue losses in Year 1 and nearly $8.0 million by Year 3. The three-year present value of profit from this benefit is $1.6 million for the composite organization.
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:
Privileged access to product and engineering teams within Adobe. The Adobe Ultimate Success team connects key stakeholders at the composite organization to experts like product team leads on the Adobe side who can influence product roadmap and feature development. These engagements help stakeholders communicate areas of need that would help them to see even greater value from Adobe Experience Cloud.
Customer advocacy on behalf of the Ultimate Success teams in interactions with Adobe. The Adobe Ultimate Success team acts like an extension of the composite organization’s business by advocating for it with internal teams at Adobe to prioritize technical support for their client. Without the support of their team, it would have to spend time trying to find the right person at Adobe to help with its problems. This advocacy contributes to faster ticket resolution for the composite organization.
Flexibility. An organization might implement Adobe Ultimate Success and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including
Greater support for measuring and reporting value on Adobe Experience Cloud Solutions. The Adobe Ultimate Success team takes an active role in tracking the value that the composite organization receives from Adobe Experience Cloud. They regularly report and share analysis on value delivered by digital experiences built with the solutions, as well as identifying opportunities for additional business. These insights and KPIs help the composite organization justify its investment in Adobe Experience Cloud to budgetary decision-makers.
Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:
Onboarding costs for Adobe Ultimate Success. Key stakeholders from the composite organization meet with their Adobe Ultimate Success team to map out key business objectives over the course of several weeks. These are weekly or biweekly, hour-long meetings where the stakeholders discuss the current deployment of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions and how they would like to mature by leveraging them at their organization.
Annual costs for Adobe Ultimate Success services. The composite organization pays an additional cost of $1.0 million per year for support from Adobe Ultimate Success. This figure is based on the organization’s level of investment and usage of Adobe Experience Cloud in its operations.
The financial analysis that is based on the interviews found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $5.8 million over three years versus costs of $2.6 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $3.2 million and an ROI of 120%.
Return on investment (ROI)
Benefits PV
Net present value (NPV)
| Role | Industry | Region | Number Of Employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transformation manager | Telecommunications | HQ in Western Europe | <100,000 |
| Martech manager | Telecommunications | HQ in Western Europe, global operations | 100,000+ |
| Production technology lead | Agency | HQ in Western Europe, global operations | 100,000+ |
| Head of digital | Government | HQ in EMEA | <5,000 |
| Senior vice president of growth marketing | Banking | HQ in Asia | 200,000+ |
Prior to working with Adobe Ultimate Success, interviewees’ organizations had leveraged several Adobe Experience Cloud solutions for years, including Adobe Analytics, Experience Manager, Audience Manager, Campaign, Experience Platform, and Target. Interviewees said small teams incorporated these various solutions into their daily workflows. While employees saw success with the solutions, the interviewees identified several areas where the solutions could improve. Interviewees’ teams needed to:
Scale training and improve adoption of Adobe solutions across the organizations. Interviewees sought to expand usage of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to where business users could self-serve performance analysis and marketers could implement changes to digital experiences built with Adobe tools. However, they didn’t have the bandwidth to train other employees on how to effectively analyze data or manage assets to reach their goals. They lacked oversight of solution usage across their organizations and were unable to identify common challenges that were impacting employee usage across teams. The interviewees needed help centralizing the visibility of these issues.
Better align and collaborate on Adobe solutions. Given the size of their enterprise organizations, interviewees recognized there were many groups across their organizations that needed to integrate unique legacy solutions with newer Adobe solutions. This required understanding teams’ current states and deciding how to move away from legacy tools to more fully take advantage of the end-to-end Adobe ecosystem and facilitate collaboration between colleagues. The transformation manager at a telecom organization said: “There were various products sitting in different parts of the organization. … We had to build a stakeholder map and understand the key people involved in managing the products and investigate what key business outcomes they were trying to achieve. Then we had to make sure we’re not duplicating work and we’re learning the best practices from each other to achieve the best business outcome.”
Consolidate measurement and performance reporting across Adobe solutions. Siloed operations at the interviewees’ organizations led to teams conducting their own independent measurement and reporting on their business performance. Analysts were often slow to share reporting with marketing teams and, when it was distributed, interviewees found a lack of standardized language that made it difficult for marketers to understand it. The senior vice president of growth marketing at a bank said, “If you hope to get value out of Adobe Analytics by giving it to a data scientist or engineer, you will not get far. It requires an understanding of digital KPI metrics. The language of digital marketing should be known for a marketer to then use Analytics’ analysis. We realized we needed to create awareness internally for this as an area to work on.”
Enhance technical support in implementing Adobe solutions. Interviewees had a desire to launch more Adobe Experience Cloud solutions at their organizations; however, that meant retiring legacy solutions and integrating Adobe solutions with their current architectures. Interviewees’ stakeholders were resistant to change given the amount of work involved, especially because legacy solutions varied across different organizational silos and there were potential technical challenges that could arise from leveraging new solutions. The head of digital at a government organization said, “If we didn’t have support we might miss out on planning for 10 critical items that need to be configured properly.” Outside of turning to agencies for support, interviewees needed additional oversight to ensure a smooth transition to Adobe Experience Cloud solutions at their organizations.
After agreeing to work with Adobe Ultimate Success, the interviewees and their Adobe Ultimate Success teams mapped out several initial key business objectives, including:
Assessing current implementation of Adobe solutions and identifying potential technical challenges that need support.
Guiding implementation of additional Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to stand alongside their current deployment of Experience Cloud solutions.
Developing change management and communication strategies on Adobe solutions to share across the organizations.
Increasing adoption of Adobe solutions across teams at the organizations.
Democratizing access to customer data insights and reports on marketing performance.
Applying insights from analysis across teams to improve business performance.
Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI framework, a composite company, and an ROI analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected. The composite organization is representative of the interviewees’ organizations, and it is used to present the aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The composite organization has the following characteristics:
Description of composite. The composite organization is a global, industry-agnostic (B2B2C), enterprise-sized company with $10 billion in annual revenue and 20,000 employees. Prior to working with the Adobe Ultimate Success team, the composite organization leveraged several Adobe Experience Cloud solutions across its organization for years. However, adoption across the organization was inconsistent, and several teams relied on legacy tools for their daily operations. This lack of alignment limited the composite organization’s ability to make and build upon compelling digital experiences. Employee adoption of Adobe solutions was slower than expected and exposed the composite to technical risks due to lack of oversight into the solutions.
Deployment characteristics. The composite organization works with the Adobe Ultimate Success team over the course of several weeks to map out key business objectives for Adobe solutions. Initial goals in Year 1 with Adobe Ultimate Success were to:
By Year 2, the composite organization’s goals with Ultimate Success evolve to:
Expand adoption of Adobe Experience Cloud further across the organization and reach digital maturity with the solutions.
Review financial impact from business use cases Adobe Ultimate Success influenced and assess how to further improve change management, communications, and operating models to yield greater returns.
By Year 3, the composite organization prioritizes new goals and roadmaps business cases that expand the presence of Adobe Experience Cloud in its daily operations.
$10 billion in annual revenue
20,000 employees
Global, industry-agnostic operations
Currently uses Adobe Experience Cloud solutions and seeks to expand adoption and improve maturity
| Ref. | Benefit | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atr | Increased revenue from expanded training and usage of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions | $414,375 | $861,900 | $1,309,425 | $2,585,700 | $2,072,809 |
| Btr | Software and services cost savings | $488,750 | $775,625 | $1,062,500 | $2,326,875 | $1,883,603 |
| Ctr | Time savings from faster resolution of noncritical technical challenges | $73,440 | $91,800 | $121,176 | $286,416 | $233,673 |
| Dtr | Avoided profit loss from reduced critical downtime | $441,495 | $662,243 | $882,990 | $1,986,729 | $1,612,071 |
| Total benefits (risk-adjusted) | $1,418,060 | $2,391,568 | $3,376,091 | $7,185,720 | $5,802,156 |
Evidence and data. To accelerate the adoption of Adobe solutions at their organizations, interviewees noted their Adobe Ultimate Success Customer Success Manager worked with those teams that would most benefit from the solutions. The customer success managers helped implementation educating employees on capabilities and best practices through classroom-style workshops. Employees also received best practices and guidance from Launch Advisory to effectively start leveraging Adobe solutions. The senior vice president of growth marketing at a banking organization said: “Where I’m seeing value from Ultimate Success is when it comes to creating the right ecosystem for the product: the right team structures and organizational processes that need to change for the [Adobe] products to be fully adopted. Leveraging their experience in adoption across multiple organizational branches helps you leapfrog the learning curve around new solutions.”
Ongoing desk-side coaching and feature guidance, as well as mentoring from industry peer practitioners, further supported the adoption of Adobe solutions at the interviewees’ organizations. This ensured that employees were continuing to correctly incorporate best practices, make use of key features, and drive business growth. For the transformation manager at a telecom company, their Customer Success Manager set up desk-side training sessions and workshop sessions to accelerate employee adoption and maturity with the solutions. The interviewee noted this led to Ultimate Success educating employees 30% faster at their organization than without their support (e.g., nine months to fully train employees instead of 12 months).
Interviewees also relied on Success Accelerators to actualize faster time to value with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions. The transformation manager at a telecom organization had over 20 Success Accelerator initiatives in flight and found their Customer Success Manager brought focus to initiatives. The Customer Success Manager articulated initiative outcomes in a way that was easy for the interviewee to communicate to team members to gain buy-in. Increased access to experts at Adobe to educate in-house colleagues accelerated goal completion. The transformation manager noted that over the last year, support from Success Accelerators contributed to double-digit traffic gains and a single-digit uplift in orders for their telecom organization.
Interviewees shared that Ultimate Success helped teams start building connections between Adobe Experience Cloud solutions so that usage no longer occurred in isolated silos. For example, the marketing technology (martech) manager at a telecom organization described how they used Adobe Target to A/B test digital experiences on a small number of customer groups that took long periods of time to create. Their organization had Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (CDP), which helps quickly build various audience types; however, to leverage that capability, analyst and marketing teams had to adopt and integrate their customer data with the solution. The interviewee’s Customer Success Manager identified key stakeholders across the organization whose customer data could help unlock the value of Adobe Real-Time CDP and engaged with them to gain their support. Once these stakeholders were onboard and began leveraging the solution, teams gained greater governance over their data and enabled greater insights from Adobe Target’s tests on wider audiences.
The martech manager said: “Ultimate Success is changing our maturity internally with these [Adobe] tools. Over these past two years, we went from beginners to intermediate and mature use of them.” They estimated based on their team’s usage of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions that their organization would have had to hire five to 10 employees to produce the same impact that Ultimate Success had on their team of 100 employees.
Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:
Before working with Adobe Ultimate Success, the composite organization had 250 Adobe solution users. These users leveraged the solutions on a daily basis. Without additional support, adoption progressed slowly.
Trained Adobe Experience Cloud users are employees who spent hours attending workshops on best practices for the solutions, watching videos on how to use features, and receiving guidance on leveraging the solutions in daily operations.
Working with the Adobe Ultimate Success team accelerates and increases adoption and the abilities of users with the Adobe solutions by 30% in Year 1, totaling 75 newly trained users. Growth appears highest in Year 1 due to there being a smaller total to improve upon. Adoption among trained users maintains a steady growth of 25% in Year 2 and 20% in Year 3 at over 81 users per year. In total, the number of trained Adobe Experience Cloud solution users grows from 250 in Year 1 to 487 by the end of Year 3.
The average revenue per employee across the organization is $500,000. For employees trained to leverage Adobe solutions and use them effectively, they generate 10% more revenue for the organization than the average employee, or $50,000 in additional revenue contributions. These employees apply their learnings to create more targeted content leveraging customer data, test more variations in content that engage customers, and create generally more relevant customer experiences. As a result, digital experiences drive greater conversions, reach, and other improvements to key performance indicators.
An operating profit margin of 13% is applied to the additional revenue recognized by the composite organization.
Increase in Adobe users
Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:
The level of employee adoption and maturity with Adobe solutions at an organization.
The types of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions leveraged at the organization and goals with the solutions.
The annual revenue and operating profit margin of an organization.
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 $2.1 million.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Adobe users before Ultimate Success | Composite | 250 | 250 | 250 | |
| A2 | Annual improvement in adoption after training | Interviews | 30% | 25% | 20% | |
| A3 | Adobe users onboarded since working with Ultimate Success (rounded) | Y1: (A1*A2)+A1 Y2 and Y3: (A3PY*A2)+A3PY |
325 | 406 | 487 | |
| A4 | Average annual revenue per employee | Composite | $500,000 | $500,000 | $500,000 | |
| A5 | Increased revenue impact from employees trained to use Adobe solutions | Interviews | 10% | 10% | 10% | |
| A6 | Subtotal: Additional revenue generated | (A3-A1)*A4*A5 | $3,750,000 | $7,800,000 | $11,850,000 | |
| A7 | Operating profit margin | Research data | 13% | 13% | 13% | |
| At | Increased revenue from expanded training and usage of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions | A6*A7 | $487,500 | $1,014,000 | $1,540,500 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓15% | |||||
| Atr | Increased revenue from expanded training and usage of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions (risk-adjusted) | $414,375 | $861,900 | $1,309,425 | ||
| Three-year total: $2,585,700 | Three-year present value: $2,072,809 | |||||
Evidence and data. Adobe Ultimate Success Customer Success Managers worked with interviewees to identify areas of redundancy between legacy solutions they were using and Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to which they had access. The production technology lead said their agency retired three legacy solutions after the Adobe Ultimate Success team identified a redundancy in Workfront. Their agency had an unused account for access to Workfront even though stakeholders had invested in solutions to build an equivalent to the capabilities of Workfront for a client. This oversight was flagged and led to stakeholders removing the investment from those other solutions, which led to recouped budget.
Interviewees were further enabled to retire legacy solutions after their Launch Advisory engagement accelerated the implementation of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions and adoption expanded across their organization. The martech manager at a telecom organization described how they had integrations with multiple legacy data cloud solutions because they didn’t want to make a change that would require additional employee bandwidth and budget. The Ultimate Success team helped onboard Adobe Experience Platform’s Customer Data Platform and create a single source of truth for analysts and marketers to leverage. This addition helped the interviewee’s organization avoid subscription costs for each of the legacy data solutions and any associated maintenance to oversee those integrated solutions.
Since retiring legacy solutions, interviewees’ organizations no longer needed to employ related services for overseeing technical advisory and support. In addition, the technical support of Adobe Ultimate Success enabled interviewees to reduce their reliance on third-party (excluding Adobe) support for Adobe Experience Cloud operations. The transformation manager at a telecom company shared that their organization saved 30% of their budget for support services for Adobe Experience Cloud solutions since working with Adobe Ultimate Success. The interviewee also recognized that the Support Service Manager and Technical Account Manager that were included in the services helped their organization mitigate service costs they had been paying to other third-party companies, further justifying their investment in Adobe Ultimate Success.
Cost savings on legacy software
Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:
The composite organization allocates $20 million to its software budget and $15 million to support services. These figures represent a portion of the organization’s overall IT and digital budget based on Forrester Research.2
Improving employee maturity with Adobe solutions at the composite organization with Ultimate Success support enables teams to move away from and retire legacy solutions over the course of the three-year period.
Cost savings on services for legacy software
Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:
The amount of budget allocated to software at an organization and number of solutions that overlap with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.
The amount of budget allocated to services to support legacy solutions at an organization.
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 $1.9 million.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | Total software budget | Composite | $20,000,000 | $20,000,000 | $20,000,000 | |
| B2 | Software budget cost savings | Interviews | 1.00% | 1.75% | 2.50% | |
| B3 | Total solution services budget | Composite | $15,000,000 | $15,000,000 | $15,000,000 | |
| B4 | Services budget cost savings | Interviews | 2.50% | 3.75% | 5.00% | |
| Bt | Software and services cost savings | (B1*B2)+(B3*B4) | $575,000 | $912,500 | $1,250,000 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓15% | |||||
| Btr | Software and services cost savings (risk-adjusted) | $488,750 | $775,625 | $1,062,500 | ||
| Three-year total: $2,326,875 | Three-year present value: $1,883,603 | |||||
Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations experienced noncritical technical challenges that lingered for extended periods of time. These incidents were resolved faster when working with their Adobe Ultimate Success teams. Most of these noncritical incidents occurred internally with situations like data not merging correctly between integrated architectures or digital experiences loading slowly. Team leads were able to independently resolve these issues after their Adobe Ultimate Success team members educated them on the Adobe Experience Cloud solutions and how these solutions integrated with their organizations’ tech stacks.
The martech manager at a telecom company said: “From the maturity we have now, we are seeing past difficult events we had faced as ‘easy’ fixes. … If I had a request for a test on personalization on an audience segment in Adobe Target and there was a data format or cache problem, it was typically tied to the setup of the solution. Now, we will know the basic root of that problem and it’s not an issue anymore.” This interviewee also noted that before Ultimate Success, technical teams typically managed tickets for six to seven noncritical challenges at any given time that could last for up to 10 days per instance; today those challenges are resolved within three to four days.
For the production technology lead at an agency, there were no more than 10 noncritical issues going on at a given time that would linger, frustrating teams who would have liked to see them resolved. One technical problem involved internal authentication with single sign-on (SSO) access to Adobe Workfront for 300 employees, where users either could not validate their log-in or, when granted access, were being redirected to the wrong environment with work items they shouldn’t be able to access. The issue went on for several weeks as the agency’s Ultimate Success team took the time to identify the right Adobe product engineers to support the organization. The interviewee said that once these engineers connected with the agency’s team, the problem was resolved. The interviewee noted that their organization might not have been able to resolve the issue without Ultimate Success connecting them to Adobe team members to help them fix the issue.
Improvement in time to resolution on noncritical downtime events
Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:
There are 60 noncritical downtime incidents each year, averaging five noncritical incidents per month. These noncritical incidents were classified as “urgent” or “important” and prior to Adobe Ultimate Success took 12 hours to resolve. Ten employees are affected by the incident, including technical employees who have to work to fix the incident and employees whose work capabilities are limited by the incident.
Working with their Adobe Ultimate Success Technical Account Manager to integrate and enhance Adobe Experience Cloud deployments, technical teams see resolution times increase by 20% in Year 1 and progress to 33% in Year 3.
The fully burdened hourly rate for a technical employee supporting incident resolution is $80.
The TEI methodology incorporates the assumption that for a group of employees who experience a productivity benefit will rededicate time to additional work and a portion to nonwork. For this time savings benefit, three-quarters of the recouped time will go toward additional work and one-quarter will go toward employees having longer breaks or less late shifts, qualitatively making for an improved employee experience.
Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:
The frequency of noncritical downtime incidents annually at an organization.
The level of technical severity and the average time to resolution for incidents.
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 $234,000.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Noncritical downtime incidents per year | Composite | 60 | 60 | 60 | |
| C2 | Hours lost per noncritical downtime event before Ultimate Success | Composite | 12 | 12 | 12 | |
| C3 | Employees affected by downtime | Composite | 10 | 10 | 10 | |
| C4 | Improvement in time to resolution on noncritical downtime events | Interviews | 20% | 25% | 33% | |
| C5 | Time saved on noncritical downtime events (rounded hours) | C1*C2*C3*C4 | 1,440 | 1,800 | 2,376 | |
| C6 | Fully burdened hourly rate for a technical employee | Composite | $80 | $80 | $80 | |
| C7 | Productivity recapture rate | TEI methodology | 75% | 75% | 75% | |
| Ct | Time savings from faster resolution of noncritical technical challenges | C5*C6*C7 | $86,400 | $108,000 | $142,560 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓15% | |||||
| Ctr | Time savings from faster resolution of noncritical technical challenges (risk-adjusted) | $73,440 | $91,800 | $121,176 | ||
| Three-year total: $286,416 | Three-year present value: $233,673 | |||||
Evidence and data. While the occurrence of critical downtime events with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions at interviewees’ organizations didn’t disappear with Adobe Ultimate Success, interviewees said they felt more prepared for these incidents with the support and guidance Adobe Ultimate Success provided. Problems in the form of website outages or inactive buttons (e.g., add to cart, customer service contact, etc.) that could impact large swaths of their customers, create negative experiences, and cause lost business were remediated much faster with Ultimate Success. Key contributing factors included consistent implementation of solutions and dedicated assistance from the Support Service Manager investigating and overseeing incident resolution, alongside help from the Technical Account Manager.
In terms of implementation, the Ultimate Success team’s Launch Advisory ensured that integrations between legacy technology and Adobe Experience Cloud solutions were done correctly, while also educating employees on best practices, such as sharing best practices for integrating with an API and for maintaining integrations. The interviewees’ Support Service Manager also kept key stakeholders informed as they oversaw applying updates for solutions. This technical guidance, in combination with increasing adoption and standardizing the use of Adobe Experience Cloud across the organizations, helped teams improve the time to resolution on technical challenges that arose because fixes could be applied organization wide.
The interviewees said the fast response time of the Adobe Ultimate Success team also accelerated resolution time on major incidents. The martech manager noted their telecom organization had faced challenges around their Dispatcher in Adobe Experience Manager that stored cache files. When they added production releases to Adobe Experience Platform, it would create new challenges around the Dispatcher for them. This rendered pages difficult to load or inaccessible which took away business opportunities for their organization. Before Adobe Ultimate Success, multiple teams would have flagged the issue and each sent several messages to Adobe for support; with Adobe Ultimate Success, they could now contact their Customer Success Manager who could directly bring in the Technical Account Manager who was already familiar with the tech stack of the organization. This direct support from Adobe Ultimate Success around better aligned deployment of Adobe software cut the time to resolution on problems like this in half for the interviewee’s telecom organization.
The head of digital at a government organization shared a similar story in that they were launching over 20 new digital experience webpages but were unable to load new pictures to their site. Their third-party agency could not find the root of the cause. For the government organization, this meant delaying newly launched public-facing services and losing out on potential engagement because they didn’t have images to support the digital experience. By flagging the issue with their Adobe Ultimate Success Customer Service Manager, the root cause of the issue for 20 experiences was resolved within two days. The head of digital also noted they received support from their Technical Account Manager and updates from their Support Service Manager until it was resolved.
Reduction in hours lost per critical downtime event
Modeling and assumptions. For the composite organization, Forrester assumes the following:
The number of critical downtime incidents at the organizations total seven per year or one to two per quarter. Each of these critical incidents takes four hours to resolve prior to working with Adobe Ultimate Success.
As the composite organization works with Adobe Ultimate Success to achieve greater maturity with Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, the time to resolution improves by 25% in Year 1 and reaches 50% by Year 3.
On average, critical incidents impact half of revenue-generating business operations for the composite organization on some level. These incidents add up to $9,513 in costs per minute and $570,776 in costs per hour. The improved time to resolution mitigates the amount of loss experienced at the composite organization.
An operating profit margin of 13% is applied to the recouped revenue recognized at the organization.
Risks. Differences across organizations that may impact this benefit include the following:
The frequency of critical downtime incidents annually at an organization.
The level of technical severity, breadth of impact, and the average time to resolution for incidents.
The annual revenue and operating profit margin of an organization.
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 $1.6 million.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D1 | Critical downtime incidents per year | Composite | 7 | 7 | 7 | |
| D2 | Hours lost per critical downtime event before Adobe Ultimate Success | Composite | 4 | 4 | 4 | |
| D3 | Reduction in hours lost per critical downtime event with Adobe Ultimate Success | Interviews | 25.0% | 37.5% | 50.0% | |
| D4 | Hours lost per critical downtime event with Adobe Ultimate Success | D2-(D2*D3) | 3.0 | 2.5 | 2.0 | |
| D5 | Total annual revenue | Composite | $10,000,000,000 | $10,000,000,000 | $10,000,000,000 | |
| D6 | Percentage of operations impacted per critical downtime event | Assumption | 50.0% | 50.0% | 50.0% | |
| D7 | Revenue impacted per hour (rounded) | (D5*D6)/(365 days*24 hours) | $570,776 | $570,776 | $570,776 | |
| D8 | Avoided revenue loss with reduced critical downtime event length with Adobe Ultimate Success | D6*(D2-D3)*D1 | $3,995,432 | $5,993,148 | $7,990,864 | |
| D9 | Profit margin | Research data | 13.0% | 13.0% | 13.0% | |
| Dt | Avoided profit loss from reduced critical downtime | D1*D8*D9 | $519,406 | $779,109 | $1,038,812 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓15% | |||||
| Dtr | Avoided profit loss from reduced critical downtime (risk-adjusted) | $441,495 | $662,243 | $882,990 | ||
| Three-year total: $1,986,729 | Three-year present value: $1,612,071 | |||||
Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:
Privileged access to product and engineering teams within Adobe. When interviewees were interested in the product roadmap for Adobe Experience Cloud and wanted their voice to be heard on upcoming capabilities, their Adobe Ultimate Success team introduced them to product team lead on the Adobe side. The martech manager at a telecom organization said that their team looks to unlock business cases from new features by networking with Adobe leaders. The interviewee noted that their team could make suggestions to Adobe to keep companies like theirs in mind when building new capabilities. The interviewee said, “Our CSM is like a business partner. They understand all our use cases and have put together an agenda for us. … They try to solve our problems by talking internally with the rest of Adobe and addressing points they have to solve to best help us, which then lets us move ahead with our agenda.”
Customer advocacy on behalf of the Ultimate Success teams in interactions with Adobe. Interviewees’ Adobe Ultimate Success teams helped them gain access to experts at Adobe by proactively advocating for their clients to get support, acting in their best interest. The head of digital at a government organization said they had 60 longstanding tickets requiring support from Adobe that their support agency couldn’t resolve. These problems were impacting the organization’s live campaigns and web experiences. The Ultimate Success Technical Account Manager helped them resolve these issues by getting into the deep technical details, even finding in one case that an upgrade to the cloud environment on Adobe’s side impacted the organization specifically. With their technical account manager connecting to the right engineers at Adobe, they rolled back the upgrade on the government organization’s system to make fixes that enabled them to be ready for the upgrade to then be applied.
For the production technology lead at an agency that had issues with single sign-on for Workfront said that Adobe Ultimate Success introduced them to team members, which was critical to addressing the issue: “We may have kept going down the same path of talking to the wrong people at Adobe who would not be able to escalate our problem to an engineer on their side. With our [Ultimate Success] Customer Success Manager, they can get us to talk to a product owner of Workfront who not only helps us with that problem but also helps us on several of the issues we were facing with Workfront.”
The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Adobe Ultimate Success and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:
Greater support for measuring and reporting value on Adobe Experience Cloud solutions. Several interviewees who worked with Adobe Ultimate Success said they regularly received analysis and reports on the value delivered by digital experiences built with Adobe Experience Cloud. Based on these insights and KPIs, their teams identified opportunities for additional business. A more complete picture of the impact of Adobe Experience Cloud on their organizations helped justify continued investment in the solutions. The transformation manager at a telecom organization said: “Adobe helps us understand what value we’re getting with our money, which helps us when go back into renewing our agreements with them. We have a monthly standard health check on what we’re getting and where we need to improve and the value of all that.”
Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).
| Ref. | Cost | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etr | Adobe Ultimate Success onboarding costs | $27,300 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $27,300 | $27,300 |
| Ftr | Adobe Ultimate Success costs | $0 | $1,050,000 | $1,050,000 | $1,050,000 | $3,150,000 | $2,611,195 |
| Total costs (risk-adjusted) | $27,300 | $1,050,000 | $1,050,000 | $1,050,000 | $3,177,300 | $2,638,495 |
Evidence and data. Interviewees noted that once their organizations agreed to work with Adobe’s Ultimate Success team, they met to discuss how their organizations had previously deployed Adobe Experience Cloud solutions. Stakeholders and interviewees would meet with various Adobe team members to discuss how Adobe Experience Cloud supported their daily operations, including its place in the tech stack and use cases for the solutions.
These conversations went on for roughly an hour each week. After these meetings, the Adobe Ultimate Success team built an Adobe Experience Cloud maturity model for the interviewees’ organizations. They used this to present a roadmap of key business objectives and outline the work that needed to be done to realize those goals. They also provided recommendations on fixes for long-standing technical challenges of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions that stemmed from poor integrations and launch advisory support for adding Adobe Experience Cloud solutions to their tech stack.
Modeling and assumptions. Assumed costs for the composite organization are based on the following:
Twenty-five key internal stakeholders meet with their Adobe Ultimate Success team over the course of 13 weeks (three months) for 1-hour engagements. They review their current implementation of Adobe Experience Cloud and discuss how to leverage the solutions going forward, developing goals to work toward.
The blended, fully burdened hourly rate for employees in different roles attending these meetings is $80.
Risks. Costs may not be representative of all experiences and will vary between organizations depending on several factors, including:
The level of deployment of Adobe Experience Cloud prior to working with Adobe Ultimate Success and time needed to review how it has been implemented thus far.
The number of internal team members involved with overseeing Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.
Key business objectives that teams have in mind and time needed to make plans to realize those goals.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 5%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $27,300.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E1 | Weeks spent with Adobe Ultimate Success team mapping out business objectives | Interviews | 13 | |||
| E2 | Attendees of planning sessions | Composite | 25 | |||
| E3 | Length of engagement sessions (hours) | Interviews | 1 | |||
| E4 | Fully loaded hourly rate for an employee involved (blended) | Composite | $80 | |||
| Et | Adobe Ultimate Success onboarding costs | E1*E2*E3*E4 | $26,000 | |||
| Risk adjustment | ↑5% | |||||
| Etr | Adobe Ultimate Success onboarding costs (risk-adjusted) | $27,300 | ||||
| Three-year total: $27,300 | Three-year present value: $27,300 | |||||
Evidence and data. Interviewees said their organizations paid a fee for support from the Adobe Ultimate Success team. They noted this fee represented a small portion of their overall spending with Adobe. The cost figure varied across organizations based on the number of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions currently in place and adoption among employees.
Modeling and assumptions. Assumed costs for the composite organization are based on the following:
The size of the composite organization in terms of annual revenue, employees, and assumed large investment in Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.
The composite organization’s Adobe Experience Cloud footprint will expand over the three-year period but for this analysis the annual costs will remain in the range of $1.0 million.
Risks. Costs may not be representative of all experiences and will vary between organizations depending on several factors, including the demographics of the organization like employee size and level of adoption of Adobe Experience Cloud solutions.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 5%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.6 million.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | Annual Adobe Ultimate Success costs | Composite | $1,000,000 | $1,000,000 | $1,000,000 | |
| Ft | Adobe Ultimate Success costs | F1 | $1,000,000 | $1,000,000 | $1,000,000 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↑5% | |||||
| Ftr | Adobe Ultimate Success costs (risk-adjusted) | $0 | $1,050,000 | $1,050,000 | $1,050,000 | |
| Three-year total: $3,150,000 | Three-year present value: $2,611,195 | |||||
| Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total costs | ($27,300) | ($1,050,000) | ($1,050,000) | ($1,050,000) | ($3,177,300) | ($2,638,495) |
| Total benefits | $0 | $1,418,060 | $2,391,568 | $3,376,091 | $7,185,720 | $5,802,156 |
| Net benefits | ($27,300) | $368,060 | $1,341,568 | $2,326,091 | $4,008,420 | $3,163,661 |
| ROI | 120% |
The financial results calculated in the Benefits and Costs sections can be used to determine the ROI, and NPV for the composite organization’s investment. Forrester assumes a yearly discount rate of 10% for this analysis.
These risk-adjusted ROI, and NPV values are determined by applying risk-adjustment factors to the unadjusted results in each Benefit and Cost section.
The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time 0” or at the beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All other cash flows are discounted using the discount rate at the end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary tables are the sum of the initial investment and the discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur.
From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment in Adobe Ultimate Success.
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 Adobe Ultimate Success can have on an organization.
Interviewed Adobe stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to Ultimate Success.
Interviewed five decision-makers at organizations using Ultimate Success to obtain data about costs, benefits, and risks.
Designed a composite organization based on characteristics of the interviewees’ organizations.
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.
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.
Benefits represent the value the solution delivers to the business. The TEI methodology places equal weight on the measure of benefits and costs, allowing for a full examination of the solution’s effect on the entire organization.
Costs comprise all expenses necessary to deliver the proposed value, or benefits, of the solution. The methodology captures implementation and ongoing costs associated with the solution.
Flexibility represents the strategic value that can be obtained for some future additional investment building on top of the initial investment already made. The ability to capture that benefit has a PV that can be estimated.
Risks measure the uncertainty of benefit and cost estimates given: 1) the likelihood that estimates will meet original projections and 2) the likelihood that estimates will be tracked over time. TEI risk factors are based on “triangular distribution.”
The present or current value of (discounted) cost and benefit estimates given at an interest rate (the discount rate). The PV of costs and benefits feed into the total NPV of cash flows.
The present or current value of (discounted) future net cash flows given an interest rate (the discount rate). A positive project NPV normally indicates that the investment should be made unless other projects have higher NPVs.
A project’s expected return in percentage terms. ROI is calculated by dividing net benefits (benefits less costs) by costs.
The interest rate used in cash flow analysis to take into account the time value of money. Organizations typically use discount rates between 8% and 16%.
Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders.
Related Forrester Research
Build A Shortlist Of Providers, Forrester Research, Inc., April 11, 2024.
Five Practices That Accelerate Your Customer Success Team’s Journey, Forrester Research, Inc., April 12, 2023.
1 Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders.
2 Source: 2024 IT And Digital Budget Benchmarks, North America, Forrester Research, Inc., May 21, 2024; 2023 Digital Budget Benchmarks, Global, Forrester Research, Inc., October 27, 2023; Digital Business Market Insights, 2024, Forrester Research, Inc. December 5, 2024.
Readers should be aware of the following:
This study is commissioned by Adobe 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 Adobe Ultimate Success. For any interactive functionality, 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 Adobe Ultimate Success based on the inputs provided and any assumptions made. Forrester does not endorse Adobe or its offerings. Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this model, Adobe 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 Adobe make no warranties of any kind.
Adobe 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.
Adobe provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.
Corey McNair
June 2025
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