Forrester: Total Economic Impact of Adobe CCT for SMBs

The past decade has brought a proliferation of digital creative applications with freemium pricing models targeted toward SMBs with modest budgets. Although these apps can appear attractive, businesses that use them can end up managing a fragmented toolset with hidden costs. 

Now, a new commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe has quantified exactly how much businesses can save by adopting an integrated creative platform. The Total Economic Impact of Creative Cloud for Teams for SMBs reports that organizations that move from a patchwork of single apps to Adobe Creative Cloud for teams experience an ROI of 388% over three years because they can streamline their work environment, better predict licensing costs, and empower teams to connect and collaborate.

The Forrester study found that integrated, up-to-date apps reduced creative app management work by 90% by consolidating contracts and automatically pushing updates to apps. It also learned how Creative Cloud for teams accelerated productivity by nearly 5,000 hours over the three-year period by enabling teams to work faster and collaborate more easily using features such as integrations with popular business apps and shared Team libraries. The integrated creative platform also improved workflow efficiency and reduced the amount of work involved in managing third-party creative apps by more than 1,000 hours. 

Other benefits were less quantifiable but no less significant. Employees told Forrester that they felt their company was investing in them when they added Creative Cloud for teams, and that it resulted in improved work quality and engagement. Access to the entire set of Creative Cloud for teams apps encouraged team members to learn new programs and expand their skillsets. And secure cloud storage enabled remote work by keeping stored files safe and mitigating the risk of file transfers between apps. 

Overall, the benefits of switching to Creative Cloud for teams came in at $428,500 in creative project productivity, $149,800 in administration efficiencies, and $51,500 in management efficiencies — for a total benefits value of $629,742 and net benefits of $500,726. 

The top reasons users cited for adopting Creative Cloud for teams included reducing time spent creating digital assets (50%), expanding the capabilities available to the creative team (48%), and increasing employee satisfaction (43%). Cost efficiency came in lower at 23%, suggesting that while SMBs might be aware of the creative advantages of using an integrated creative platform, they may be less aware of the significant economic benefits. The finding that switching to Creative Cloud for teams results in a 388% ROI makes it an advantageous choice not only for its creative power, but also for its impact on the bottom line.