Forrester: The Total Economic Impact (TEI) of SAP Integration Suite
SAP commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic ImpactTM (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying SAP Integration Suite. Download the DocumentA FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ STUDY COMMISSIONED BY SAP
The Total Economic Impact™
Of SAP Integration Suite
Cost Savings And Business Benefits
Enabled By SAP Integration Suite
AUGUST 2024
The Total Economic Impact™
Of SAP Integration Suite
Cost Savings And Business Benefits
Enabled By SAP Integration Suite
AUGUST 2024
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SAP INTEGRATION SUITE
Table Of Contents
Executive Summary ................................................ 1
The SAP Integration Suite Customer Journey ..... 7
Key Challenges ..................................................... 7
Solution Requirements .......................................... 8
Composite Organization........................................ 9
Analysis Of Benefits ............................................. 10
Increased Integration Developer Efficiency ......... 10
Improved Productivity For Self-Service Users..... 13
Incremental Profit From Unlocking Additional
Revenue Streams ............................................... 16
Cost Savings From Reducing Or Retiring Legacy
Platforms ............................................................. 18
Unquantified Benefits .......................................... 20
Flexibility ............................................................. 20
Analysis Of Costs ................................................. 22
External: Cost Of SAP Integration Suite.............. 22
Internal: Initial And Ongoing Training Expenses . 23
Internal: Initial Deployment And Ongoing Support
Expenses ............................................................ 24
Financial Summary ............................................... 26
Appendix A: Total Economic Impact .................. 27
Appendix B: Supplemental Material.................... 28
Appendix C: Endnotes ......................................... 28
Consulting Team: Erach Desai
ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING
Forrester provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders deliver key outcomes. Fueled by our
customer-obsessed research, Forrester’s seasoned consultants partner with leaders to execute their specific priorities using a
unique engagement model that ensures lasting impact. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting.
© Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best
available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester
Wave, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective companies.
Table Of Contents
Executive Summary ................................................ 1
The SAP Integration Suite Customer Journey ..... 7
Key Challenges ..................................................... 7
Solution Requirements .......................................... 8
Composite Organization........................................ 9
Analysis Of Benefits ............................................. 10
Increased Integration Developer Efficiency ......... 10
Improved Productivity For Self-Service Users..... 13
Incremental Profit From Unlocking Additional
Revenue Streams ............................................... 16
Cost Savings From Reducing Or Retiring Legacy
Platforms ............................................................. 18
Unquantified Benefits .......................................... 20
Flexibility ............................................................. 20
Analysis Of Costs ................................................. 22
External: Cost Of SAP Integration Suite.............. 22
Internal: Initial And Ongoing Training Expenses . 23
Internal: Initial Deployment And Ongoing Support
Expenses ............................................................ 24
Financial Summary ............................................... 26
Appendix A: Total Economic Impact .................. 27
Appendix B: Supplemental Material.................... 28
Appendix C: Endnotes ......................................... 28
Consulting Team: Erach Desai
ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING
Forrester provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders deliver key outcomes. Fueled by our
customer-obsessed research, Forrester’s seasoned consultants partner with leaders to execute their specific priorities using a
unique engagement model that ensures lasting impact. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting.
© Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best
available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester
Wave, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective companies.
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SAP INTEGRATION SUITE 1
Executive Summary
Organizations adopt cloud services and SaaS applications to leverage real-time
interactions for increased business velocity and agile collaboration with customers,
suppliers, and partners. But integration development teams are challenged to integrate
business-critical applications with business processes in heterogenous cloud and hybrid
IT landscapes. SAP Integration Suite is an iPaaS solution that empowers integration
developers to integrate end-to-end processes and deliver 360-degree visibility.
To adapt and thrive, companies need to foster
engagement and enhance productivity across
extended business processes that connect them with
their customers and suppliers. Business processes
with manual and repetitive tasks can negatively
impact efficiency and productivity. Connecting
fragmented business processes is critical for agility
and growth.
Despite years of digital transformation initiatives,
technological hurdles still stand in the way of
achieving or even approaching seamless business
processes. Application landscapes have only grown
more complex with many more applications — some
still running on-premises — each carrying out
fragments of business processes. Organizations
need to deliver personalized digital experiences to
their customers, partners, and employees. This
requires these enterprise applications to have access
to contextual information including customized
internal applications, and this is precisely where
integration comes into the picture.
SAP offers an integration-platform-as-a-service
(iPaaS) suite of tools that connects and automates
business processes. SAP Integration Suite brings
together comprehensive integration capabilities and
best practices to accelerate and modernize
integration. Customers receive the tools they need to
implement seamless business processes across their
heterogeneous IT landscapes and business
networks.
SAP commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a
Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine
the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises
may realize by deploying SAP Integration Suite.1 The
purpose of this study is to provide readers with a
framework to evaluate the potential financial impact
of SAP Integration Suite on their organizations.
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks
associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed
six representatives with experience using SAP
Integration Suite. For the purposes of this study,
Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences
and combined the results into a single composite
Net savings for integration
developers by Year 3
Using preconfigured
interfaces
60%
Processing integration
requests
30%
Return on investment (ROI)
345%
Net present value (NPV)
$3.70M
KEY STATISTICS
Executive Summary
Organizations adopt cloud services and SaaS applications to leverage real-time
interactions for increased business velocity and agile collaboration with customers,
suppliers, and partners. But integration development teams are challenged to integrate
business-critical applications with business processes in heterogenous cloud and hybrid
IT landscapes. SAP Integration Suite is an iPaaS solution that empowers integration
developers to integrate end-to-end processes and deliver 360-degree visibility.
To adapt and thrive, companies need to foster
engagement and enhance productivity across
extended business processes that connect them with
their customers and suppliers. Business processes
with manual and repetitive tasks can negatively
impact efficiency and productivity. Connecting
fragmented business processes is critical for agility
and growth.
Despite years of digital transformation initiatives,
technological hurdles still stand in the way of
achieving or even approaching seamless business
processes. Application landscapes have only grown
more complex with many more applications — some
still running on-premises — each carrying out
fragments of business processes. Organizations
need to deliver personalized digital experiences to
their customers, partners, and employees. This
requires these enterprise applications to have access
to contextual information including customized
internal applications, and this is precisely where
integration comes into the picture.
SAP offers an integration-platform-as-a-service
(iPaaS) suite of tools that connects and automates
business processes. SAP Integration Suite brings
together comprehensive integration capabilities and
best practices to accelerate and modernize
integration. Customers receive the tools they need to
implement seamless business processes across their
heterogeneous IT landscapes and business
networks.
SAP commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a
Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine
the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises
may realize by deploying SAP Integration Suite.1 The
purpose of this study is to provide readers with a
framework to evaluate the potential financial impact
of SAP Integration Suite on their organizations.
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks
associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed
six representatives with experience using SAP
Integration Suite. For the purposes of this study,
Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences
and combined the results into a single composite
Net savings for integration
developers by Year 3
Using preconfigured
interfaces
60%
Processing integration
requests
30%
Return on investment (ROI)
345%
Net present value (NPV)
$3.70M
KEY STATISTICS
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SAP INTEGRATION SUITE 2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
organization that is a global B2B industrial
manufacturing organization with multiple factories. It
generates $5 billion in annual revenue and has
25,000 full-time employees.
Prior to using SAP Integration Suite, most of the
interviewees’ organizations used multiple legacy on-
premises integration solutions and various point tools
for customization. Legacy tools were complex to
manage and monitor while point-to-point application
integrations were time-consuming to build and
difficult to maintain. These challenges hampered the
organizations’ ability to build digital ecosystems,
innovate new business models, and leverage agile
initiatives for more seamless data access and usage.
With SAP Integration Suite, integration development
teams were able to readily access harmonized
business object definitions and prebuilt integrations
that allowed them to connect with and securely
expose the functionality and data of legacy
applications using APIs. This approach also enabled
new cloud-native applications to take advantage of
the capabilities of existing systems and data.
The organizations used SAP Integration Suite to build
a unified data access layer that created opportunities
for tighter integration with their customers and
provided the foundation for scalability and flexibility.
All of these capabilities and features comply with the
SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology that
provides a framework for optimal usage of the
integration platform.
KEY FINDINGS
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted
present value (PV) quantified benefits for the
composite organization include:
• Increase in integration developers’ efficiency
by 30% when addressing integration
requests. The composite organization’s
developers speed up integration requests by
leveraging SAP Integration Suite’s overall
methodology and availing themselves of the
combination of capabilities. Additionally, with
SAP’s prepackaged integration flows, this team
saves 60% of time for major application-to-
application integration projects. The reduction of
the average integration project from nine to three
months allows business units to start using the
application six months earlier. Over three years,
the increased efficiency for the core integration
team results in just under $1.5 million in savings
for the composite organization.
“Is SAP Integration Suite worth
it? Yes, because integration is
the single point of failure when
two systems connect. Having a
robust, agile, next-generation
platform that powers all types of
integration productivity is not
only critical, but paramount for
the success of any company.”
Global CIO, apparel
“Imagine the scene if we hadn’t
adopted [SAP Integration Suite]?
Integration would be unwieldy
and unmanageable. It was one of
the first major initiatives
undertaken by our CIO in moving
the organization onto the journey
for cloud technologies. So, he is
aware of the value of SAP
Integration Suite.”
Integration team lead, luxury retail
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
organization that is a global B2B industrial
manufacturing organization with multiple factories. It
generates $5 billion in annual revenue and has
25,000 full-time employees.
Prior to using SAP Integration Suite, most of the
interviewees’ organizations used multiple legacy on-
premises integration solutions and various point tools
for customization. Legacy tools were complex to
manage and monitor while point-to-point application
integrations were time-consuming to build and
difficult to maintain. These challenges hampered the
organizations’ ability to build digital ecosystems,
innovate new business models, and leverage agile
initiatives for more seamless data access and usage.
With SAP Integration Suite, integration development
teams were able to readily access harmonized
business object definitions and prebuilt integrations
that allowed them to connect with and securely
expose the functionality and data of legacy
applications using APIs. This approach also enabled
new cloud-native applications to take advantage of
the capabilities of existing systems and data.
The organizations used SAP Integration Suite to build
a unified data access layer that created opportunities
for tighter integration with their customers and
provided the foundation for scalability and flexibility.
All of these capabilities and features comply with the
SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology that
provides a framework for optimal usage of the
integration platform.
KEY FINDINGS
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted
present value (PV) quantified benefits for the
composite organization include:
• Increase in integration developers’ efficiency
by 30% when addressing integration
requests. The composite organization’s
developers speed up integration requests by
leveraging SAP Integration Suite’s overall
methodology and availing themselves of the
combination of capabilities. Additionally, with
SAP’s prepackaged integration flows, this team
saves 60% of time for major application-to-
application integration projects. The reduction of
the average integration project from nine to three
months allows business units to start using the
application six months earlier. Over three years,
the increased efficiency for the core integration
team results in just under $1.5 million in savings
for the composite organization.
“Is SAP Integration Suite worth
it? Yes, because integration is
the single point of failure when
two systems connect. Having a
robust, agile, next-generation
platform that powers all types of
integration productivity is not
only critical, but paramount for
the success of any company.”
Global CIO, apparel
“Imagine the scene if we hadn’t
adopted [SAP Integration Suite]?
Integration would be unwieldy
and unmanageable. It was one of
the first major initiatives
undertaken by our CIO in moving
the organization onto the journey
for cloud technologies. So, he is
aware of the value of SAP
Integration Suite.”
Integration team lead, luxury retail
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF SAP INTEGRATION SUITE 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Improved productivity for self-service users.
In addition to providing a robust iPaaS solution,
the low-code nature of SAP Integration Suite
enables the composite organization to offer the
solution to self-service users outside the core
integration team. For business unit integration
tasks, line-of-business (LOB) developers save
24% of their time by Year 3 while data engineers
and analysts working with business users save
12% by Year 3. Over three years, the combined
time savings for the composite organization’s
self-service users results in savings of nearly
$1.8 million.
• Incremental profit of $984,000 by unlocking
additional revenue streams. By offering an
online catalog of products for its strategic
customers, the composite organization realizes
new revenue of $75 million in Year 1, $85 million
in Year 2, and $100 million in Year 3. Because
SAP Integration Suite can create application
interfaces for electronic data exchanges with
customers and partners, the integration
development team creates integration flows
between systems that previously could not be
connected. The three-year profit generated from
this incremental revenue is $984,000.
• More than $554,000 in cost savings from
retiring legacy platforms. Before switching to
SAP Integration Suite, the composite
organization used multiple third-party on-
premises integration platforms and point tools
that required large ongoing investments and
extensive maintenance. Because SAP Integration
Suite is flexible and can handle many of the
composite’s applications — some running on-
premises and others on various cloud platforms
— the organization eliminates all costs related to
legacy integration tools, including licensing
expenses, infrastructure costs, and maintenance
services fees.
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value
for the composite organization but are not quantified
in this study include:
• Creating a more rewarding and fulfilling work
environment for integration developers and
self-service users. Interviewees said that since
rolling out SAP Integration Suite, employee
morale and job satisfaction on their integration
development teams have increased along with
the organizations’ ability to recruit and retain
developers.
• Improved and efficient communications with
business partners. Interviewees said one of the
key capabilities of SAP Integration Suite is
“Without SAP Integration Suite,
you cannot survive in a modern
IT infrastructure because you
can’t manage all those
applications or connect all those
applications without having one
strategic integration platform.”
Head of applications integration,
instrumentation manufacturing
“SAP Integration Suite provided
a good return on investment. ...
The initial setup cost is typically
returned three times in the first
year, making it a cost-effective
solution for our customers.”
Integration solutions lead,
professional services
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Improved productivity for self-service users.
In addition to providing a robust iPaaS solution,
the low-code nature of SAP Integration Suite
enables the composite organization to offer the
solution to self-service users outside the core
integration team. For business unit integration
tasks, line-of-business (LOB) developers save
24% of their time by Year 3 while data engineers
and analysts working with business users save
12% by Year 3. Over three years, the combined
time savings for the composite organization’s
self-service users results in savings of nearly
$1.8 million.
• Incremental profit of $984,000 by unlocking
additional revenue streams. By offering an
online catalog of products for its strategic
customers, the composite organization realizes
new revenue of $75 million in Year 1, $85 million
in Year 2, and $100 million in Year 3. Because
SAP Integration Suite can create application
interfaces for electronic data exchanges with
customers and partners, the integration
development team creates integration flows
between systems that previously could not be
connected. The three-year profit generated from
this incremental revenue is $984,000.
• More than $554,000 in cost savings from
retiring legacy platforms. Before switching to
SAP Integration Suite, the composite
organization used multiple third-party on-
premises integration platforms and point tools
that required large ongoing investments and
extensive maintenance. Because SAP Integration
Suite is flexible and can handle many of the
composite’s applications — some running on-
premises and others on various cloud platforms
— the organization eliminates all costs related to
legacy integration tools, including licensing
expenses, infrastructure costs, and maintenance
services fees.
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value
for the composite organization but are not quantified
in this study include:
• Creating a more rewarding and fulfilling work
environment for integration developers and
self-service users. Interviewees said that since
rolling out SAP Integration Suite, employee
morale and job satisfaction on their integration
development teams have increased along with
the organizations’ ability to recruit and retain
developers.
• Improved and efficient communications with
business partners. Interviewees said one of the
key capabilities of SAP Integration Suite is
“Without SAP Integration Suite,
you cannot survive in a modern
IT infrastructure because you
can’t manage all those
applications or connect all those
applications without having one
strategic integration platform.”
Head of applications integration,
instrumentation manufacturing
“SAP Integration Suite provided
a good return on investment. ...
The initial setup cost is typically
returned three times in the first
year, making it a cost-effective
solution for our customers.”
Integration solutions lead,
professional services