How current economic uncertainty points to productivity software improvement

As modernity continues to loom over any organization attempting to keep up with trends, strategies, and technologies necessary to achieve positive business outcomes, ever-rising costs, demand of resources, and skill level requirements threaten to halt progressive transformation. How can enterprises navigate these economic times while ensuring that they adapt to the needs of the modern industry?

Experts from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) and Foxit Software joined KMWorld’s webinar, “Productivity Software Tools—Understanding Current Business Sentiment and Strategies,” to dive into how understanding the current business sentiment and best practice strategies—as well as embracing a variety of productivity software tools—can transform organizations into successful, contemporary competitors despite macroeconomic headwinds.

The discussion focused on the context of ESG and Foxit Software’s study, “Balancing Tech Investments and Cost Cutting in the Face of Macroeconomic Uncertainty,” which Adam Demattia, senior director of custom research at Enterprise Strategy Group, explained the hypothesis of: Assess business and IT leaders’ sentiment about the economy, and understand if and how sentiment is disrupting technology plans.

Business sentiment, Demattia argued, exists in an intersection between the economy, the government, and the business; between high interest rates and high inflation, these economic stressors contribute to how an enterprise behaves regarding business decisions, which are ultimately clouded by uncertainty.

Demattia reviewed the study’s key findings: respondents in the report forecasted a 61% likelihood of a recession between now and the next 12 months; 82% of respondents indicated that their organization is in a cost containment/reduction mode; organizations would rather cut tech spending than headcount by a 7:1 margin; and productivity software is the #1 area organizations think they can save.

It’s undoubted that an air of pessimism has grown throughout rightly concerned organizations responding to macroeconomic uncertainty and fears of a recession; according to Demattia, “That negativity is starting to bleed into business planning,” where a cost conserving mode has overtaken most industries.

What organizations aim to do through this uncertainty-fueled business planning is purchase new tech with lower TCO and better ROI, outsourcing and globalization, as well as auditing tech spend to find underutilized tools. Saving on tech spend is a massive presence for businesses looking to conserve costs and resources, the study found.

The study further discovered what contributors will lead to a tech cut within a business’ infrastructure, citing those disruptions to business processes in association with deployment, rising operational costs, and slow innovation progression will result in a technology’s elimination.

The target of this tech-cutting fervor settles on incumbent productivity software, as most organizations cited that this area is where they could save money for organization-wide benefit.

“There is a belief among IT and business leaders that organizations are overspending on this category [productivity software] of technology,” said Demattia. “The implication in the data, to me, is that many respondents believe that purchasing new technologies with lower costs and better ROI may be possible.”

Deboshree Sarkar, senior product marketing manager at Foxit Software, shifted lenses onto Foxit Software’s viability in productivity software in these tough economic times. Focusing on the TEI analysis process (a proven, consistent, repeatable methodology to justify technology investment) conducted by Forrester to evaluate the practicality of the Foxit PDF Editor, Sarkar highlighted the following tangible benefits of employing Foxit’s productivity software:

• Benefit A: Reduced cost of prior solution, where organizations felt an 84% gross reduction in prior licensing costs, as well as a 70% per user, per year reduction in licensing costs, for a total financial impact of $558k three-year, present value.
• Benefit B: Reduced cost of troubleshooting and ongoing management, where 1.7 gross FTEs were saved when 84% of the prior solution was decommissioned, for a total financial impact of $435k three-year, present value.
• Benefit C: Organizations experienced a 6x average user expansion with a 7% gross productivity improvement for the expanded user set, where of those participants employing Foxit PDF Editor, productivity improved by 5-10%, resulting in a total financial impact of $5.4 million three-year, present value.
• Benefit D: Time spent on annual security upgrades was reduced by 3,696 hours for a total financial impact of $399k three-year, present value.

Sarkar further emphasized that there are other benefits recorded by organizations leveraging Foxit PDF Editor that were unquantifiable; these benefits include Foxit’s quality of customer service, integrated e-signatures, additional investments for business initiatives, and improved employee experience overall.

Based on this analysis of Foxit PDF Editor customer feedback, ROI was calculated at a massive 284%, accompanied by a total of $6.8 million in benefits and an NPV of $5 million.

Deedee Kato, VP of corporate marketing at Foxit Software, finished off the discussion by exploring more of Foxit’s productivity software solutions to enable enterprises to modernize efficiently. Tools like Foxit’s eSignature Platform, Enterprise-Scale Document Conversion, and PDF APP Development Kit can guide an organization’s digital transformations despite the state of the economy.

Kato also explained that Foxit provides flexible licensing to prevent stringent costs, integrates with existing tech environments, and offers competitive costs and outstanding service, all provided by one, widely-trusted enterprise as the #2 PDF provider.

For an in-depth review and discussion of current business sentiment and Foxit’s productivity software, you can view an archived version of the webinar here.