Calculate the ROI of Salesforce DevOps

According to a May 2022 Gartner survey, 1 in 5 CFOs plan to reduce budgets as their primary tool for fighting inflation — with the number expected to balloon to 39% if inflation persists. As budgets shrink and spending slows, businesses are often expected to do the same (if not more) with less in order to keep up with customer demands.

Solving the Budget Squeeze with Low-Code Technology

Salesforce and other low-code solutions have the potential to slash software development time by up to 90% (per Red Hat). And today’s most innovative companies leverage Salesforce DevOps to accelerate value through automation and artificial intelligence. Copado provides an end-to-end Salesforce DevOps solution that triangulates people, process and technology to help you deliver features with quality at speed. According to 2021 research by Forrester, Copado helps customers:

• Reduce the time to deploy a User Story from 15 days to 30 minutes.
• Deploy an additional 4,440 User Stories over three years (on average).
• Save $6 million thanks to increased release speed, quality and productivity.

The ROI of Software Delivery

IT delivers features and functions that drive an avalanche of revenue. However, many technical leaders struggle to quantify the financial impact of their teams. Teams face mounting pressure to connect the dots between digital transformation projects and ROI. In many cases, opportunities for accelerating business value lie in the way teams work — not the work itself.

This graph highlights the value of linear output versus the value gained from micro- improvements throughout the Salesforce development process.

Current State vs. Improved State: How Much Work is Complete and Accurate?

For example, let’s say 90% of the items in your value stream are complete and accurate in the Planning stage, 50% are C&A in the Building stage and 70% are C&A in the Testing stage. Ultimately, just 31.5% of the initial work planned will be released into production without quality issues (0.90 X 0.50 X 0.70 = 0.31.5). The resulting rework will delay time- to-value.

However, If you improve the percentage of complete and accurate work to 90% across all three stages, you’ll be able to release 72.9% of the initial work planned into production without quality issues. By continuously increasing the amount of complete and accurate work, you can now deliver more than double the value in the same amount of time.

3 Core Metrics for Calculating DevOps ROI

Business users rely on Salesforce development teams to deliver innovation that increases efficiency and helps them deliver seamless customer experiences. At Copado, we calculate ROI across three core metrics to drill deeper into business value and the work streams that drive it.

To estimate the financial impact of your IT team, subtract the cost of downtime and IT resources from total value delivered. To estimate potential financial gains, add downtime averted and IT resource time saved to the increased value delivery you’ve achieved so far.

ROI Calculator: Measure 7 DevOps Value Metrics

In 2021, Forrester Consulting measured the Total Economic Impact of Copado by interviewing Copado customers in several industry verticals. Forrester’s research found an average increased output of 7% and a significant reduction in wasted time, risk and turnover. We used Forrester’s findings to estimate the value of 7 DevOps performance metrics: Efficiency, Innovation, Velocity, Agility, Quality, Turnover Reduction and Risk Reduction.

5 DevOps Metrics that Drive Business Value

To calculate ROI, you need to divide potential gains by the cost (in tools and effort) it takes to achieve them. The equation is fairly simple — but how do you quantify your costs? From planning to deployment, development teams can measure their performance through a variety of metrics.

How Do I Explain the Value of Reduced Lead Time to My CFO?

A long Lead Time means it takes longer to get valuable features into the hands of users. Measuring your aggregate Lead Time and the cost of delays in comparison to the industry average helps you diagnose and solve inefficiencies that hamper the time-to- value of new features. Tracking Lead Times enables you to pinpoint areas in need of process improvement and change management. Adding development resources and increasing training can seem like expensive measures in the short term, but they help the business generate exponential value over time.

How Do I Explain the Value of Deployment Frequency to My CFO?

Deployment Frequency enables valuable features to make it to production without delay. In addition, more frequent deployments reduce the time it takes to make fixes (since it’s easier to spot issues in smaller deployments). Shorter interruptions lead to fewer productivity losses for business users. According to the State of Salesforce DevOps Report, elite performers deploy once a week or more — while low performers deploy less than once a month. The gap between deployments can have major financial implications: Elite performers realize $5M+ in ROI annually, while low performers realize under $250K.

How Do I Explain the Value of a Low Change Fail Rate to My CFO?

While testing and compliance reduce risk, it’s impossible to prevent errors 100% of the time. A higher change fail rate = more interruptions to productivity, which ultimately leads to less profit over time. What’s more, downtime can prevent customers from logging support cases and completing their orders. For example, if Salesforce CPQ has a broken process, your sales team won’t be able to generate quotes and send them out — which delays revenue and puts it at risk.

How Do I Explain the Value of Shorter Recovery Time to My CFO?

Downtime impedes productivity. And low productivity damages employee and customer trust. For example, if Service Cloud is down, customers can’t engage with support reps and will quickly lose their confidence in your ability to meet their needs. Simultaneously, your case backlog continues to pile up since reps can’t process them. Both of these issues have financial implications that extend far beyond the downtime itself. Your ability to reduce production failures and recovery time are essential for risk mitigation and long-term financial growth.

How Do I Explain the Value of Reduced Work in Progress to My CFO?

Development teams create business value by delivering changes that allow software to run better. Work in progress is an avoidable cost (like excess inventory) and can be optimized to reduce waste. Minimizing WIP enables work to seamlessly move through the value chain, avoid wait times and efficiently reach end users.