Who

Director of Market Strategy, Software AG

Why Forrester

Forrester's Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) methodology — and demonstrated service-oriented architecture (SOA) expertise — would prove invaluable to Software AG as it showed customers and prospects how to calculate the ROI of an SOA investment. Forrester created an online tool that would help Software AG's sales force quickly demonstrate the financial benefits of an SOA investment.

Challenge

Calculating the value of SOA is difficult. There are many elements to take into account, which vary from one organization to the next (even in the same industry) and overwhelm any set of simple formulas. Forrester Consulting was challenged with creating an interactive tool that would frame the value of SOA for individual organizations. It would also provide a quick start for calculating the ROI of SOA initiatives. The SOA Value Assessment tool would:

• Demonstrate the business value of SOA, in financial terms, specific to the organization using the tool.
• Help Software AG's sales team to generate leads, shorten the sales cycle, and improve win rates through identifying the correct audience.
• Communicate the value proposition directly and immediately to the prospect using a Web-based interface

Forrester sought to conduct a sufficiently rigorous analysis to estimate the expected risk-adjusted and non-risk-adjusted business case. Forrester's approach to the engagement:

• Gather information from interviews with Software AG executives.
• Employ Forrester's extensive knowledge of typical SOA benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks.
• Create a tool to estimate potential benefits, flexibility, and risk of SOA. Forrester and Software AG worked in partnership to structure a series of questions that became the basis of the SOA Value Assessment.

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