The Total Economic Impact™ Of The Salesforce Signature Success Plan

Expertise Efficiencies

Evidence and data. The interviewees detailed ways in which Signature affords their organizations’ internal Salesforce teams with recommended and personalized best practices and training opportunities to increase their day-to-day productivity. By maintaining a close relationship with their CSM and learning alongside technical experts, developers and business analyst team members learn about untapped tools or upcoming product releases to speed up tasks and save time on independent research.

• The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization estimated developers save 10% of their time annually on day-to-day Salesforce activities. They provided an example: “There were very primitive ways of doing unit testing for our developers. They were following an approach, but our Salesforce counterparts, the technical architects and the TAM, suggested another Salesforce tool that would speed up the unit testing. I don’t think we would have gotten [the recommendation] if we didn’t have that kind of support. We wouldn’t have even known. … Now we’re doing less research because we have good information at hand.”
• For change management and business analyst team members, the senior technology group leader estimated a productivity lift of up to 20% annually. They shared: “Our change management champions talk constantly with our [Customer] Success folks on the Salesforce side. They provide guidance: ‘Hey, you know what, there are these tools you should look for to see if you can improvise on your user experience’ — hence the adoption.”
• The manager, IT, at the transportation organization estimated between 5% and 8% efficiency increase for developers, and a slightly higher efficiency gain for business analysts. Providing additional detail, they said: “There are times when it might be higher than that. It just depends at some level with the org: some of the orgs that are using newer products where there is maybe a little bit more that Salesforce hasn’t quite gotten [completely] ironed out yet versus the people who are just straight Sales Cloud, and there’s nothing complicated to maintain.”

• The director, CRM applications and program delivery, at the security services organization shared: “Salesforce Architectural Design Reviews [ADRs] have been one of the more powerful tools for us. ... We wouldn’t really have engaged Salesforce from an ADR perspective if it hadn’t been pushed on us to some extent by our TAM — like, ‘I see where you are going. I see what problems you’re having. I really think we should engage these resources.’”
• The same director at the security services organization estimated that eight employees have completed 20 to 25 Salesforce certifications. Explaining the impact, they told Forrester: “When the team works through a Salesforce admin or sales consultant certification, they get pushed into some of the knowledge areas that we aren’t quite using yet. It gives people an idea and understanding of what the product availability is within those silos. As business concerns come up … even if they don’t remember the definitive details on how to turn something on, we can go back to Salesforce Signature support, certifications, and online materials that work through those pieces and sharpen the tools.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the financial analysis as applied to the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• Twenty-five Salesforce developers and 15 business analysts work on building and optimizing the composite organization’s Salesforce platform.
• With Signature, developers and business analysts save 10% and 15%, respectively, of their time each year.
• The fully burdened cost of a developer is $150,000.
• The fully burdened cost of a business analyst is $100,000.

Risks. The size of this cost can vary among organizations based on:

• The size of internal Salesforce teams.
• Annual salaries.

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 $1.3 million.

Issue Response Time Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees emphasized the need for a prompt and informative response from Salesforce should an issue arise in their environment. With Signature Technical Support, interviewees detailed how their organizations’ cases were prioritized and how Salesforce adhered to the 15-minute response time for business-critical issues. With improved response times, the interviewees’ internal Salesforce team saves time that otherwise would have wasted waiting for direction and next steps.

• The manager, IT, at the transportation organization estimated each Cloud within their environment submits, on average, 10 cases per month. They told Forrester: “There certainly has been an improvement [in response times]. If I had to put a percentage on it, we’re probably getting an initial response from Salesforce in somewhere between a third and half of the time of what it used to be.”
• In response to a particular incident in their prior environment, the same manager told Forrester: “Very senior people in IT asked, ‘Why isn’t Salesforce giving us more tailored updates?’ And I said, ‘Because we aren’t that level [of] customer. … This why we need Signature support. If you want updates every 15 minutes where they’re going to be telling you precisely when this is back, that is Signature — that’s not Premier.’”
• The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization estimated between 10% and 20% of their cases per month are more “severe” or require a prompt response from Salesforce. They shared: “On the Signature side, our tickets, our cases — depending on the priority or severity — we get prioritization because [of] us being critical. ... They go beyond; they engage more teams of product people where needed in a proactive manner. If we didn’t have the Signature? Oh, it could be a problem.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the financial analysis as applied to the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• Six hundred Salesforce support cases are submitted annually.
• Fifteen percent of those cases are critical (Sev1) issues that impact the internal Salesforce team’s ability to conduct work. The remainder of cases (85%) encompass non-critical general best practice or ‘how to’ questions.
• Previously with the Salesforce Premier Success Plan, critical response time took 1 hour.
• With Signature, critical response time is now 15 minutes, resulting in 90 hours saved annually per team member.
• There are 25 developers, 15 business analysts, and 10 administrators impacted.
• The fully burdened hourly cost for a developer is $72, for an admin is $63, and for a business analyst is $48.

Risks. The size of this cost can vary among organizations based on:

• The number of cases submitted annually.
• The severity of cases.
• The size of internal Salesforce teams and their associated salaries.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $506,000.

Business Continuity Improvement

Evidence and data. Interviewees described that prioritized service not only impacted the response time for their organizations but also the resolution time for any platform interruptions. Platform interruptions may include system downtime as a result of an outage or intermittent service because of platform degradations. Interviewees detailed many features of Signature that support their organizations’ goal to limit business interruptions and maintain platform stability: 24/7 Proactive Monitoring, Annual Technical Health Reviews, technical debt assessments, and Architecture Design Reviews (ADRs).

• The CRM digital program director at the manufacturing organization shared: “This is a better quality of service, [and] therefore [has] less downtime. Less downtime means fewer business interruptions for users and therefore less loss.”

• The director, CRM applications and program delivery, at the security services organization gave this example: Prior to having Signature, two interruptions impacted their systems, one of which required upward of 4 hours to resolve. With Signature, they explained that resolution time for their platform interruption for one particular incident was between 60 and 90 minutes.
• The same director continued: “We’ve had one issue recently in field service where we introduced something new. We’re engaging Salesforce support to help us understand by working through all the Splunk logs to define root cause — all that detail that typically would not be available as a Premier customer. We’re on with Salesforce support, and they’re sharing that information at a much more critical phase, so we can identify what’s happening.”
• The lead IT director at the healthcare organization stated: “They’re extremely helpful when it comes to issue resolution. [When] we have an outage and we need a request for corrective action filled out within our timeframe, they’re on top of it.”

• The lead IT director provided an example of proactive issue resolution: “The [Salesforce] release notes are hundreds of pages long. You’ll easily miss something, even if you read it cover to cover. We do testing, but if we didn’t necessarily test the right scenario in the lower environment when it went live, it could break. Now, on day one, we have production users who can’t get into the system — that becomes an immediate issue that goes up to the top levels of the company. We are all on a phone bridge pulling Salesforce in and conducting root cause analysis and corrective action to understand.”

• The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization emphasized: “They have seamless transition to the offshore teams as well so that they can pick it up where the handoff happened. There’s continuous support all through with no gaps.”
• The lead IT director at the healthcare organization told Forrester: “For all the releases in terms of the three times a year Salesforce upgrades, [the Signature team] does a soup-to-nuts [review] of what the high-level advances have been — what capabilities and functionality are now available in the new release and how it benefits customers, but also areas where the customer needs to know, ‘Hey, you need to do something about this, or when this goes live, it’s going to cause you an issue. You’re going to have a production outage.’”

Modeling and assumptions. For the financial analysis as applied to the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• In the prior environment, 480 minutes of platform interruptions occur annually.
• With Signature, there is a 60% improvement in platform interruption time.
• There are 2,500 sales reps within the composite organization, 75% of whom adopt Salesforce in Year 1, 85% adopt it in Year 2, and 95% adopt it in Year 3.
• The fully burdened hourly salary of a sales rep is $38.

Risks. The size of this cost can vary among organizations based on:

• The scale and complexity of platform interruptions.
• The number of impacted end users and their associated salaries.
• The time it takes for CSMs to acclimate to a customer’s Salesforce environment. This may impact the ability of full improvement to be present in Year 1. Readers may consider a ramp for improvement in Year 1.

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 $813,000.

End-User Adoption And Efficiency Lift

Evidence and data. End users gain efficiencies in their day-to-day from a stable, reliable Salesforce platform that is constantly optimized by internal developers, administrators, and business analysts. In addition to these downstream impacts, interviewees provided examples of how their CSM works alongside their organization to help teams understand end-user license adoption and recommend trainings and workshops for end users to gain additional efficiency.

• With emphasis on the business impact of end-user adoption, the director, CRM applications and program delivery, at the manufacturing organization stated: “Our commitment is that [selling] has to happen in Salesforce. You can’t sell something without CPQ [configure, price, quote] in this company.” They continued: “[In our] current state, we are 95%+ at license adoption, and we try and keep that number relatively tight. That’s part of how we want to maintain the overall program.”
• Speaking specifically about ways to remain committed to the platform, the same director continued: “We conducted a value stream mapping session that included Salesforce. … It speaks to the broader relationship that we have with Salesforce — not just committing to the number of products on the platform, the commitment to Signature, [or] the commitment to our future growth on the platform. I think Salesforce overall values that kind of ongoing relationship as we continue to dig our way into the overall platform.”
• On adoption, the CRM digital program director at the manufacturing organization told Forrester: “We worked a lot with Salesforce on dashboards and reporting on the use of licenses. It helps a certain part in adoption, optimization of use, and contract. This means that if there are licenses that are not used, we can give them to others. Or we need new licenses rather than repurchasing licenses, we do a license switch or swap. We remove licenses that we do not use, and with this credit, we buy others. This is linked to our contract, but Signature via success managers allows us to have better visibility on its element.”
• For end users, the CRM digital program director provided an example: “There is the success manager part, who is normally there to support us on the adoption part. There are several ways. For example, we have an application for account managers to plan their visits. Salesforce helped us to create a small training module on this where they bring in someone to train users. That’s the success part. [They] also work with certain marketing tools on the value vision, making value maps. There, we are rather on the value-adoption approach part.”
• The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization said: “If the adoption rate is lower, Salesforce will help out to understand what kind of gaps there might be [and what the] challenges might be and then provide some kind of guidance or support to see how we can up the adoption rates.”
• The lead IT director at the healthcare organization stated: “Customer success came in and did a whole ride-along with the PBM [pharmacy benefit manager] sales group to understand sales excellence and how our group was doing business. ... In terms of what’s their day-to-day and what are they utilizing Salesforce or non-Salesforce to really understand where there’s potential inefficiencies and where not only can business process change help but also what kind of information these folks might need that they’re struggling to get out of various internal systems, and then also applying some technology to it. … I think it was heavily important to allow top-level sales executives in management to understand where their processes are. … It was eye-opening.”

Modeling and assumptions. For the financial analysis as applied to the composite organization, Forrester assumes:

• The organization grants Salesforce licenses to 2,500 sales reps.
• In Year 1, 75% of sales reps adopt Salesforce. In Year 2, adoption increases to 85%, and in Year 3 it grows to 95%.
• Fifty percent of sales reps attend a training or workshop recommended by their CSM.
• In Year 1, sales reps gain 1% efficiency; in Year 2 this increases to 2%, and in Year 3 it increases to 3%.
• The fully burdened cost of a sales rep is $80,000.

Risks. The size of this benefit can vary among organizations based on:

• The number of end users, their adoption rate of Salesforce, and their associated salaries. While this model accounts for sales reps, readers may consider the impact of other end-user groups (including customer service agents) that utilize Salesforce.
• The extent of training for end users.

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 $3.6 million.

Unquantified Benefits

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

• Greater visibility into the overall Salesforce investment and environment. The Customer Success Score increases understanding of the overall Salesforce environment by tracking three areas: product adoption, customer expertise, and technical health. With benchmarking capabilities tracked over time, leadership gains increased visibility into the overall Salesforce investment. In addition to the Customer Success Score, CSMs who collaborate over time with numerous internal teams at the same organization seek to help standardize best practices across covered Salesforce Clouds to drive further efficiencies.
  • The director, CRM applications and program delivery, at the security services organization shared: “At the point they introduced the Customer Success Score, I spent time to understand what the numbers meant and how they were constructed from the Salesforce side. Then, it was a conversation I had immediately with our CIO to give him a perspective of where we were at in the overall timeline commitment and what our score was relative to our peers’.”
  • The same director continued: “As we go forward, it gives us the same type of benchmarking — to be able to share that with the organization as a whole and say, ‘Three or four years ago, this was the commitment. Here’s where we’re at in our adoption.’”
  • The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization explained: “The Customer Success Score shares how well we are doing in comparison with others, even at the feature level, adoption level, all sorts of things. Salesforce shares on a quarterly basis.”
  • The lead IT director at the healthcare organization shared: “[The customer success team] comes in and tell us, ‘You’re doing it one way, another group is doing it another way, and other group is doing it another way. Is there a way for you to standardize first and then apply the technology to it?’ … which is really where we want to be.”
• Spark innovation across teams. Given the relationship-drive nature of Signature, internal Salesforce teams are in constant communication with product and technical resource experts. Salesforce also arranges discussions for customer reference groups to collaborate on use cases and challenges across similar industries or geographies. These outside perspectives promote new ideas and brainstorms, which foster innovation.
  • The lead IT director at the healthcare organization told Forrester, “Sometimes it’s good to hear someone else try to push it when you get people who have been living and breathing it for 10 years.” They also shared: “Our customer success [manager] can also provide us guidance with what other customers are doing [but] without mentioning anything about that customer or any secret sauce. We had another client who had a similar need, and they utilized this product or these products to do A, B, and C. Just to let us bounce some ideas off of them from that perspective.”
  • The manager, IT, at the transportation organization commented, “We have very, very excellent and wonderfully qualified individuals, but even still, the way that Salesforce is able to get different opinions from customers who actually own and use these products is something that I want to make sure that we are leveraging to its fullest.”
  • The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization shared: “During Dreamforce, on the business side and also on the tech side, sales tries to get us involved with other companies, other banks, to share the experiences in person. They take care of us in that manner.”
• Technical health resource cost avoidance. As previously described, the Annual Technical Health Reviews and 24/7 Proactive Monitoring included in Signature play a critical role in maintaining Salesforce platform stability. The director, CRM applications and program delivery, at the security services organization told Forrester, “We hire Salesforce as an ongoing watchdog.” Interviewees described the investment required to set up and maintain similar monitoring systems internally. Forrester does not include this as a quantified benefit as it is a hypothetical avoided cost.
  • The lead IT director at the healthcare organization explained: “It would be at least tens of hundreds of hours to set up [monitoring features] for each individual org, and then it should be automated. I don’t know what technology or technologies we would need for that, because it’s not a one-size-fits-all.”
  • The CRM digital program director at the manufacturing organization told Forrester, “We would buy more monitoring tools plus maybe a team of two or three people who develop parallel monitoring tools.”

• Preserve integrity and scalability of the platform. With the guidance of their CSM, Salesforce teams avoid “over-customizing” or extensive customization leading to complications and limitations that make it difficult to maintain, upgrade, or integrate with other systems. The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization commented: “Salesforce provides support to say there are certain new technologies coming up. For instance, we may have built something in a customized way, [or] there could be something coming up or that has come up where that product that we have built is actually part of the platform itself. … We can just refactor, remove the old one that we built at customizations, and we can leverage what Salesforce offers out of the box.”
• Promote employee recognition. Internal Salesforce teams work with their CSM to understand which Salesforce certifications may most appropriately benefit their work and allow for further personal growth. The senior technology group leader at the financial services organization commented: “Regardless of the role, we want all employees to get certified. We track everybody’s certifications to see who has done it, and then we recognize those employees in bigger calls as well.”

Flexibility

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

• Exploring the impact of AI functionality. Interviewees shared anticipation for future exploration of AI functionality within their existing Salesforce environment, noting the proactive behavior of their Signature team to discuss and support them in this journey.
  • The director, CRM applications and program delivery, at the security services organization commented: “We’ve got to figure out what the business is trying to achieve from an AI perspective and what is the data strategy that we need to look at now to support those outcomes as we go forward. That’s hopefully something we’ll start to look at in the next three to six months.”
  • The lead IT director at the healthcare organization told Forrester: “I see things like that with Signature, where they come in proactively to share information on what’s happening with Salesforce and AI and do a demo of it to have the conversation with the broader audience. It reduces barriers because they’re answering some of the questions on the call, and it is unlocking new opportunities because people might not be aware of that. … They would all look at each other and say, ‘This is a huge opportunity that we should explore at least with the proof of concept and determine just what the value proposition is, so we can then determine whether we should move forward with it.’ I think things like that are very, very important, and they’re being flexible by taking the time with us to go through all of this. A lot of times, it’s just informational and it doesn’t transpire into opportunity, but it only needs to transpire into an opportunity a couple of times before it’s pretty fruitful.”
• Continuous partnership as the roadmap evolves and Salesforce environment matures. As interviewees look to invest in new Salesforce features or new Salesforce Clouds entirely in the future, they expressed that they anticipate the continued guidance from their CSM to support their organization in driving business value from these new technologies. For example, this included establishing best practices around lead times for new solutions that require an architectural review approval in an effort to create efficiencies, particularly for revenue-driving initiatives.
  • The lead IT director at the healthcare organization shared a different example of how the Signature partnership supports roadmap evolution: “We’re doing monthly webinars with a large population of the company, not necessarily just IT, to show how specific Salesforce products are utilized. I would say that helps reduce barriers and unlocks new opportunities.”
  • On responsiveness within the partnership, the lead IT director at the healthcare organization commented: “Obviously, we use [communication platforms] with them to engage on a daily basis. They all have my cell. I have their cell numbers. So if we’re in a meeting and I have a question, I’ll shoot out a text, and they’re very good at sending a response.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A).