SAP Jam Worth Millions in ROI, Forrester Study Finds

SAP has been touting the benefits of Jam, its cloud-based business platform. Now, a study conducted by Forrester Consulting (on behalf of SAP) is confirming—and qualitating—Jam’s worth.

Forrester surveyed 30 enterprise-size Jam customers and conducted interviews with five that have multiple years of experience with the product. What it found, SAP shared Aug. 16, is that over three years, organizations can experience:

• a 15 percent decrease in the time it takes to access information or expertise, which can lead to gains of more than $17 million;
• a 9 percent reduction in the length of time it takes to close new business, leading to sales efficiencies worth potentially $4.8 million over three years;
• customer service issues that are more quickly resolved, leading to a potentially 14 percent reduction in costs;
• a 19 percent reduction in the costs related to training and onboarding new employees, which can lead to savings of $5.7 million; and
• a 20 percent reduction in overlapping licensing fees from multiple collaboration products.

In total, the study found that enterprises using Jam reported a combined net present value (NPV) of more than $19 million—as well as an 11 percent increase in ROI, compared with a similar study performed a year earlier.

“Growing evidence points to a road to measuring collaboration success,” Art Schoeller, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester, wrote in a Forrester report, Define Business Value in Collaboration. “Sales, customer service and the supply chain are initial areas where collaboration adds measurable business value.”

Collaboration, that is, coupled with efficiency.

The Forrester study for SAP explains that prior to Jam, customers had collaboration architectures that were multitool and multivendor. Moreover, the tools varied by department and location and weren’t integrated on the back end with customer relationship management (CRM) and human capital management (HCM) software.

“In many cases, employees defaulted to email exchanges for collaboration and lost productive time searching for information, emailing, and waiting for responses,” states the study.

In short, “vital corporate information, data and expertise were siloed, making it difficult to access and share widely,” it added.

Fast collaboration and considerable efficiencies of course come with a price tag.

As for the costs of implementing Jam, Forrester found the composite organization experienced:

• software licensing fees totaling more than $2.8 million over three years (annual recurring fees based on per-user pricing);
• implementation costs of $760,000 (one-time professional service fees for setup and configuration); and
• ongoing training and support costs of $825,000 over three years.

Daisy Hernandez, global vice president of product management, enterprise collaboration at SAP, said in a statement, “It’s clear that customers are willing to invest in collaboration technology that can help increase ROI.”