The Total Economic Impact of BetterCloud, a Study Conducted by Forrester Consulting

SaaS adoption is one of the fastest growing and most complex challenges IT has had to manage. Many IT teams are using a central point of control to automate and standardize processes across apps, but what exactly are the benefits of implementing this kind of platform?

This post summarizes “The Total Economic Impact™ of BetterCloud, Cost Savings and Business Benefits Enabled by BetterCloud,” a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of BetterCloud published June 2020. The full study is available for download here.

As part of the study, Forrester interviewed four customers that have been using BetterCloud for at least a year. Among the study’s key findings, quantified benefits include:

• More efficient management and security of employee offboarding, from 9 hours to less than 1 hour
• Employee onboarding tasks reduced from 6 hours to less than 1 hour
• Employee status change tasks reduced from 2 hours to less than 1 hour
• Security compliance time savings: a 90% reduction in time for collaboration and file security management

Tackling the unique challenges of SaaS

SaaS confers numerous benefits on organizations. However, as the study states, “But trying to handle each service separately can be confusing and time-consuming, and it can create new business risks if not managed properly.”

The study lists common issues that lead organizations to seek out a SaaSOps solution. Here are a few:

• Time-consuming and unmanaged employee onboarding and offboarding tasks. One customer said, “Onboarding and offboarding used to be a nightmare. It took hours to onboard and offboard someone. And when offboarding, we’d always miss something.”
• Time-consuming and incomplete SaaS file and collaboration security management and reporting. “We used to have a senior-level IT resource take care of these tasks. There was so much personal and confidential information that required careful steps and that we needed to make sure were taken care of properly,” said another customer.
• Online accounts and files accessible by former employees. Proper offboarding is critical to cybersecurity, but offboarding tasks are often done individually and manually, leaving room for human error.
• Files shared publicly
• Increased licensing costs

One of the BetterCloud customers interviewed by Forrester Consulting stated that, with double-checking, offboarding a single employee required a total of 14 hours of work.

Without automation, some companies opt to repeat processes to ensure completion for compliance purposes.

Total Economic Impact (TEI) framework

Managing IT environments dominated by SaaS requires new tactics and tools. To calculate the ROI of BetterCloud in particular, Forrester Consulting applied their Total Economic Impact (TEI) framework. According to the study, “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 BetterCloud can have on an organization,” which included the following components:

• Due diligence
• Customer interviews
• Composite organization
• Financial model framework
• Case study

ROI calculations: reducing risks, costs & time with BetterCloud

The next step was to apply quantified benefit data to the composite. Forrester Consulting attributed monetary benefits such as employee onboarding time savings, security risk avoidance, and IT management and support cost savings, among others.

Offboarding alone was calculated to take about 9 hours, which is reduced to just 30 minutes with BetterCloud’s automated workflows.

“When you’re onboarding and offboarding users, you follow detailed checklist documents that run three, four, or five pages. We’ve been able to eliminate these checklists and have everything running through a BetterCloud workflow.” —Rose Layton, strategic technology partner, Strada Education Network

Additionally, Forrester Consulting calculated:

• Onboarding time reduced from 6 hours to 30 minutes or less with BetterCloud
• Time savings of 20 hours per week related to SaaS security management and compliance
• Risk exposure reduced an estimated 50% with BetterCloud
• Cost savings due to reduced SaaS license costs and reduced help desk calls related to SaaS account management

“We had tens of thousands of electronic documents that were at risk with incorrect security settings or missing password protection. With BetterCloud, we are able to find them all and fix it immediately.” —Chris Moreland, director of IT, LaborMAX Staffing

“Now we can ask the help desk to handle automation tasks. Our senior-level people are now concentrated on bigger projects.” —Senior IT director, collaboration software vendor

Forrester Consulting applies great detail to the calculation of ROI. For example, higher per-hour pay rates are attributed to certain sensitive tasks that require the work of senior IT resources. Various metrics and precisely how cost savings are calculated are clearly conveyed in tables listing sources, such as the customer interviews or research from Ponemon.

According to the study: “Forrester’s interviews with four existing customers and subsequent financial analysis found that the composite organization would experience benefits of $2.7 million over three years versus costs of $818,000, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $1.9 million and an ROI of 232%.”

For more information, download the full Forrester TEI study here.