Key Findings
Quantified benefits. The following risk-adjusted present value (PV)
quantified benefits are representative of those experienced by the
companies interviewed:
› Increased productivity of hundreds of developers valued at
$3,512,438. Each of the interviewed customers reported an increased
efficiency in their development teams from: better understood business
requirements; the ability to rapidly develop, socialize, and build
consensus around prototypes; and the specifications from InVision code.
The increase in productivity averaged $3,146 per developer per year.
Financial Summary
Payback
period: Total benefits
<3 months PV, $4.6M
Benefits (Three-Year)
$3.5M
$744.0K
$213.6K $161.1K
Increased productivity Increased productivity Avoided cost of tools Accelerated pace and
of developers of design professionals with redundant increased quality for
functionality releasing new offerings
CASE STUDY
Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling InVision ’s
impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing
sophistication that enterprises have regarding ROI analyses related to IT
investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology serves to provide a complete
picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see
Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.
DISCLOSURES
Readers should be aware of the following:
InVision provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate
in the interviews.
Interviewed Organizations
For this study, Forrester conducted four interviews with InVision
customers. Interviewed customers include the following:
Key Challenges
After conducting interviews with four companies, Forrester identified the
following challenges that they experienced prior to using InVision. The “When we took a hard look at
issues included: the spectrum of our digital
offerings, we simply didn’t
› Struggling to find a common, cohesive voice for digital offerings.
achieve the company goals for
“For the past four to five years,” said the head of design at a financial
services company: “We have been trying to find our voice within the customer experience or come
company. We are decentralized and creating a cohesive digital anywhere close to the
strategy and singular customer experience required a great deal of experience that customers
effort.” realized in our stores. We had
to completely rethink our
› Having to fix products after the core development was completed. digital approach and InVision
One executive told Forrester: “We had a number of developers that helped us streamline and
didn’t appreciate the downstream implications of work. Some would expedite the dramatic change
just say, ‘It’s good enough and I’m going to do what I’m going to do.’
required.”
Sometimes it was difficult for us to even identify the problem when it
could be a subtle color shade or just a few pixels off.” The insurance Director, digital design,
executive added, “It was a new standard that our engineers were telecommunications industry
expected to build the design’s digital products as they were designed.”
Key Results
The interviews revealed investing in InVision produced the following key
results:
› Scaled and created consistency of design across the
organization. “InVision became so intrinsic to
One financial services executive said: “We’ve started using InVision to our processes that it became a
develop our B2B offerings. It helped us design systems that were verb, ‘We’re going to InVision
much simpler and overhaul products around how customers used our this.’”
services. InVision enabled us to develop consistency across the User experience design lead,
organization.”
financial services industry
› Simplified and clarified communications to company executives.
Twenty-seven percent of companies report that design is represented
at the C-level.1 Using prototypes rather than conceptual presentations
is a much better method to convey ideas, test expectations, and build
consensus. Another executive added: “InVision helped us at all levels
of the company, right up to the CEO. It gave us confidence that we
could show the executive branch what our intended product is and
where it’s going. It eliminated a lot of uncertainty and surprises.”
Composite Organization
Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI framework, a
composite company, and an associated ROI analysis that illustrates the
areas financially affected by using InVision. The composite organization
is representative of the four companies that Forrester interviewed and is
used to present the aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The
composite organization that Forrester synthesized from the customer
interviews has:
› A design professional headcount that:
• Begins with 30 in Year 1.
• Increases to 50 in Year 2.
• Grows to 70 by the end of Year 3.
› Increased the number of developers working on design-related
initiatives:
• Begins with 450 in Year 1.
• Increases to 500 in Year 2.
• Grows to 560 by the end of Year 3.
Forrester research indicates that the ratio of design professionals to
developers evolves as a company’s digital product design practices
mature.2 The specific ratios of designers to developers for this study are:
• 1 to 15 in Year 1.
• 1 to 10 in Year 2.
• 1 to 8 in Year 3.
Total Benefits
PRESENT
REF. BENEFIT YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3 TOTAL VALUE
Increased productivity of
Atr $1,273,950 $1,410,750 $1,581,750 $4,266,450 $3,512,438
developers
Increased productivity of
Btr $185,725 $306,850 $427,975 $920,550 $743,980
design professionals
Avoided cost of tools with
Ctr $58,500 $87,750 $117,000 $263,250 $213,606
redundant functionality
Accelerated pace and
Dtr increased quality for releasing $64,800 $64,800 $64,800 $194,400 $161,148
new offerings
Total benefits (risk-adjusted) $1,582,975 $1,870,150 $2,191,525 $5,644,650 $4,631,172
Increased Productivity Of Developers The table above shows the total of all
Customers shared with Forrester a variety of ways that using InVision benefits across the areas listed below,
impacted the efficiency and efficacy of developers, including: as well as present values (PVs)
discounted at 10%. Over three years,
› Streamlining the process of prototyping and socializing ideas with the composite organization expects
business units, executives, and testing with customers. risk-adjusted total benefits to be a PV
of over $4.6 million.
› Delivering superior design specifications that allowed developers to
build faster because they had a clearer direction on the required
product.
› Reducing revisions that came from failing to follow standards or
complying with company branding.
In building a financial model, Forrester used the following observations
from interviews. Users should adapt these numbers throughout the study
to the size, scale, and complexity of their environments to be able to $3.5 million
approximate the value that this benefit might have on their company. The three-year
composite organization: benefit PV
› Included a team of developers that are working on design-related
initiatives. The design-based model increased the productivity of digital 76%
releases by 33% using InVision.
› Determined that much of the impact was due to design work generally,
but that 10% of the credit for improvements should be attributed to
using InVision to realize the change. Increased productivity of
Among the companies that Forrester interviewed, the number of developers:
developers impacted from design work varied widely, but the benefit 76% of total benefits
level reported was relatively consistent. As such, Forrester adjusted this
benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of
over $3.5 million.
Ct Cost savings from phasing out tools with redundant functionality C1*C2 $65,000 $97,500 $130,000
Flexibility
The value of flexibility is clearly unique to each customer, and the
measure of its value varies from organization to organization. There are
multiple scenarios in which a customer might choose to use InVision and
later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including: Flexibility, as defined by TEI,
represents an investment in additional
› Expand outside the walls of the company to engage partners and capacity or capability that could be
customers. One executive told Forrester: “To date, our focus and use turned into business benefit for a future
for InVision has been internal, on our products and services. We think additional investment. This provides an
there is an opportunity to use the tools and begin co-creation work with organization with the “right” or the
ability to engage in future initiatives but
customers and partners directly. We are thinking about ways to go to not the obligation to do so.
consumers and say, ‘Hey, help us understand how you use our
products and services.’”
› Rapid validation of design logic and customer sentiment. Another
executive said: “I think there is value in bringing a lot more logic into
the customer experience. What I mean is validating whether a design
is going to break, or validating new ideas for usability, but doing so
quickly.”
Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific
project (described in more detail in Appendix A).
Total Costs
PRESENT
REF. COST INITIAL YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3 TOTAL VALUE
Cost of InVision
Etr $0 $237,600 $291,000 $348,600 $877,200 $718,404
licenses
Cost of onboarding
employees and
Ftr $0 $89,775 $39,900 $39,900 $169,575 $144,566
platform
maintenance
Total costs
$0 $327,375 $330,900 $388,500 $1,046,775 $862,970
(risk-adjusted)
$4.0 M
$3.0 M
PRESENT
INITIAL YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3 TOTAL VALUE
Total costs $0 ($327,375) ($330,900) ($388,500) ($1,046,775) ($862,970)
ROI 475%
InVision is a digital product design platform used by more than 5 million designers, developers, marketers, and
executives to make amazing customer experiences and design better products, faster. InVision’s design tools
and educational resources help teams navigate every stage of the digital product design process, from ideation
to development. Today, every company in the Fortune 100 and organizations like Amazon, HBO, Netflix, Slack,
Starbucks, and Uber rely on InVision to streamline their design workflow, rapidly design and prototype products
before writing code, and collaborate across their entire organization.
InVision is a fully distributed company with employees in 28 countries around the world. The company has raised
$350 million in funding from leading investors including Accel, Goldman Sachs, ICONIQ, Firstmark, Tiger Global,
Battery Ventures, and Spark Capital. Visit us at InVisionApp.com and InVisionApp.com/blog
Benefits represent the value delivered to the business by the Net present
product. The TEI methodology places equal weight on the value (NPV)
measure of benefits and the measure of costs, allowing for a
full examination of the effect of the technology on the entire The present or current value of
organization. (discounted) future net cash flows
given an interest rate (the discount
rate). A positive project NPV
normally indicates that the
investment should be made, unless
Costs consider all expenses necessary to deliver the other projects have higher NPVs.
proposed value, or benefits, of the product. The cost category
within TEI captures incremental costs over the existing
environment for ongoing costs associated with the solution. Return on
investment (ROI)
Payback
period
The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time 0” or at the
beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All other cash flows are discounted The breakeven point for an
using the discount rate at the end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for investment. This is the point in time
each total cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary tables are at which net benefits (benefits
the sum of the initial investment and the discounted cash flows in each year. minus costs) equal initial
Sums and present value calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and investment or cost.
Cash Flow tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur.
Appendix C: Endnotes
1
Source: “How To Scale Your Design Organization,” October 18, 2018.
3Net Promoter and NPS are registered service marks, and Net Promoter Score is a service mark, of Bain &
Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.