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Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc. 1 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School Instituto de Empresas | Business School Nicholas Hoffmeyer October 2016 GMBA BL S2 - Group Dodos Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc. It is rare that a market leading company radically shifts their business model and strategic focus in a short time frame. Conservative management often stays the course and innovates iteratively, defensively maintaining their hard won market position. Other firms that attempt to adjust are paralyzed in the middle of the transformation because they are unable to manage the process, change embedded culture or have the ability to effectively lead the execution of the vision. Adobe Systems, a software firm, was able to anticipate the need for change and produce an amazing transformation and expedited evolution that propelled the steadily performing firm to something greater. This is the story of Adobe and Shantanu Narayen. Adobe was founded in 1982 by Dr. John Warnock and Dr. Charles Geschke who named the company after a creek that ran near Warnock’s home. They began by developing universal software that efficiently translated digital page creations onto a physical printed page, which liberated creative professionals’ dependence on the printing industry. In 1986 Adobe went public and began developing new commercialized visual creative software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and PageMaker. Adobe enjoyed a first mover advantage to gain majority market share with their PC desktop creative software licenses targeted at creative professionals like graphic designers, photographers and publishers. Shantanu Narayen became Adobe’s CEO in 2007 just as the $3.2 billion second largest (behind Microsoft) desktop PC software company celebrated their 25 th anniversary. 18 Narayen had 10 years of experience at Adobe as an engineer, COO and spearheaded several major acquisitions. Adobe seemed to be stable and in a strong market position with their dominance of the creative software market that was strengthened their industry standard software formats PDF and Flash. However, as the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 set in, Narayen knew Adobe needed to reevaluate their strategy and implement changes in order to remain competitive for the next 25 years.

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Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

1 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

Instituto de Empresas | Business School

Nicholas Hoffmeyer October 2016

GMBA BL S2 - Group Dodos

Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

It is rare that a market leading company radically shifts their business model and strategic focus in a

short time frame. Conservative management often stays the course and innovates iteratively,

defensively maintaining their hard won market position. Other firms that attempt to adjust are

paralyzed in the middle of the transformation because they are unable to manage the process, change

embedded culture or have the ability to effectively lead the execution of the vision. Adobe Systems, a

software firm, was able to anticipate the need for change and produce an amazing transformation and

expedited evolution that propelled the steadily performing firm to something greater. This is the story

of Adobe and Shantanu Narayen.

Adobe was founded in 1982 by Dr. John Warnock and Dr. Charles Geschke who named the company

after a creek that ran near Warnock’s home. They began by developing universal software that

efficiently translated digital page creations onto a physical printed page, which liberated creative

professionals’ dependence on the printing industry. In 1986 Adobe went public and began developing

new commercialized visual creative software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and PageMaker. Adobe

enjoyed a first mover advantage to gain majority market share with their PC desktop creative

software licenses targeted at creative professionals like graphic designers, photographers and

publishers.

Shantanu Narayen became Adobe’s CEO in 2007 just as the $3.2 billion second largest (behind

Microsoft) desktop PC software company celebrated their 25th anniversary. 18 Narayen had 10 years

of experience at Adobe as an engineer, COO and spearheaded several major acquisitions. Adobe

seemed to be stable and in a strong market position with their dominance of the creative software

market that was strengthened their industry standard software formats PDF and Flash. However, as

the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 set in, Narayen knew Adobe needed to reevaluate their

strategy and implement changes in order to remain competitive for the next 25 years.

Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

2 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

“I hope the crisis won't affect innovation. From our perspective we look at this and say it is such a

great opportunity because the strong companies are going to get stronger. It has been a great

galvanizing opportunity within the company to focus on what we think is really important.” –

Shantanu Narayen, CEO, April 2009.3

THE ADOBE CREEK SLOWS DOWN TO A TRICKLE

Narayen and the executive management team scanned the environment and likely performed analysis

frameworks such as PESTLE and Porter’s Five Forces. As the market leader in desktop software

development, Abode appeared to be strong but cracks began to materialize in the foundation of their

business model. Adobe had limited their product scope to a small target market of creative design

professionals. Adobe was reliant on their creative division; in 2009 59% of Adobe’s revenue came

from the sale of software and the licenses of their creative software unit. 1 Additionally, their primary

software revenue streams were cyclical and tied directly to the launches of new boxed product

versions and upgrades. Software development at Adobe followed the ‘waterfall’ process that,

although effective, required a 12 - 24 month release cycle for each of their new products. Adobe

seemed to be trapped in a niche, albeit a profitable niche, with no room or ability to grow to provide

solutions for new customer segments.

“We had an idea our business was beginning to stagnate. We weren’t speaking to a big enough

audience. These markets were becoming saturated.” Chuck Geschke, co-founder and co-chairman.2

The second vexing problem for Adobe was the high rate of piracy of their software licenses. Many

companies and individuals balked at a steep price of $700 - $2,500 USD for one license. Each new

version of Adobe’s creative desktop software would become outdated shortly within every few years.

Three of Adobe’s products: Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects were unceremoniously featured

in the top 10 most popular pirated software in 2012.4 The loss of revenue from piracy of their

products is hard to quantify but it was estimated to cost Adobe $1Billion USD every year.5

To confront all these challenges, Narayen needed to offset the drop in sales, and laid off 8% of its

work force in 2008.1 Adobe also coped with the slowing growth by moving some software development

and operations offshore to save costs.

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3 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

“We weren’t growing for several reasons. Our products were too expensive for the broader market it

consider, and the learning curve for many of these products was too steep for many non-

professionals. Additionally, the incredible success of our desktop applications had pigeonholed us into

a particular part of the value chain – and many didn’t understand the potential of connecting these

applications to the broader creative workflows.” - Shantanu Narayen, CEO. 7

BREAKING THE ADOBE CREEK LOGJAM

To this point Narayen had followed the steps in the ‘Strategy Sandglass” as he had first scanned the

environment to identify the trends. Now he was ready to formulate a long term strategy and then find

a way to make this plan reality through strategic programming and finally strategic implementation.

Kotter’s 8-Step Process for Leading Change perfectly describes the methods Narayen employed to

put his plan into action: first create a sense of urgency, then build a guiding coalition, next form a

strategic vision and initiatives, then enlist a volunteer army, enable action by removing barriers,

generate short term wins, sustain acceleration and finally institute change. 20

Narayen and management, had the sense of urgency from their slowing growth and the GFC and now

they had the management coalition in agreement that they needed growth from different sources and

soon. The keys to success were in jump starting the lagging growth, finding new customer segments

and alleviating the average product returns. Adobe could not become complacent in the cutthroat

software industry and wait for a disruptive innovation to erode or even replace any of their

competitive advantages. The strategic direction that was decided on was first to accelerate Adobe’s

growth by looking at the entire creative content value chain: content design, creation, and

management, dissemination and effectiveness measurement. This would build an enterprise software

solution that encompassed all the stages in this chain would broaden the myopic software focus and

open Adobe software to new customer segments. The second and more revolutionary strategic focus

would be to transition from desktop perpetual software licenses to cloud based subscription product.

If executed effectively this new strategy could simultaneously alleviate many of Adobe’s challenges

by helping to smooth out revenues for Adobe, allow for faster, more agile software development,

lower the barrier to entry for new customer segments and hopefully reduce piracy losses.

Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

4 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

Internally there was worry about how radical this transition would be and if it was achievable. It was a

departure from the iterative software innovations to building new agile solutions for the entire

content value chain, and capturing value through a new pricing model. All of these ambitious

strategies were challenging alone, notwithstanding the fact that they needed to shift the entire

organization’s mission, structure and culture at the same time to institutionalize the change. The

transformation was a risky gamble but Narayen and management knew they needed this revolution to

stay ahead of the market trends and the competition.

With a strategy formulated, the strategic programming began to take shape with the acquisition of

Omniture, a digital marketing and analytics software firm for $1.8 billion USD in 2009. Adobe now had

a path to filling in the marketing and analytics technology into an enterprise software solution allowing

marketers to measure the impact of creative content. Omniture was a natural strategic fit for Adobe

as it extended their ability to provide solutions further down the value chain and also enhance

Adobe’s traditional strengthens. **See Exhibit C for a graphical representation of the fit Omniture

brought to Adobe.

The difficulty would be to integrate Omniture into Adobe smoothly into the new organizational culture

to realize the synergies of their strategic fit. Adobe and Narayen personally made sure that Omniture

and their existing culture was welcome within Adobe. They allowed Omniture to maintain many of

their processes and decision making autonomy. Adobe sought to learn from Omniture and not force

them just to be another Adobe product division. Following this methodology, Adobe would continue to

supplement their marketing and creative cloud expertise by acquiring over the subsequent years Day

Software (2010), Efficient Frontier (2012), Behance (2012), Neolane (2013), and Fotolia (2015). 10

At the 2011 Adobe user conference called MAX, the first phase of their transformation was initiated

with the announcement of the Creative and Marketing Clouds. These new software suites would be

offered as both as a monthly subscription and a perpetual license version. Adobe announced they

would reorganize from the 6 product divisions to three: Digital Media, Digital Marketing and Document

Clouds in order to focus on the new enterprise market growth areas. This would streamline Adobe’s

6 divisions in which since 2009 were Creative Solutions (59% revenues), Knowledge Worker

[Omniture] (23%), Enterprise (7%), Mobile and Device Solutions (3%), Platform (3%), Print and

Publishing (6%). 1 The new simplified organizational structure however would require a reduction in

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5 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

workforce (7%) in order to realign the organization at a cost of an estimated $87 - $94 million USD. 7

Narayen was reorientation the organizational structure to focus resources on the long term vision of

an enterprise software solution based on subscriptions. Leadership was convinced of the future

benefits of a better structure would outweigh the near term costs.

In order to successfully execute the strategy at Adobe, Narayen and the leadership team needed to

build internal consensus by enlisting a volunteer army of Adobe employees and remove any barriers

to success to combat any resistance. This required extensive travel, town halls and face to face

meeting to effectively communicate to all employees.

“The hardest part of it has been getting people internal to the company sometimes to see the vision,

there was always a risk antibodies in the system would kick in” - Shantanu Narayen 9

Donna Morris, head of People Resources recognized that the performance review cadence did not fit

with the new flexible strategic vision. In efforts to institutionalize change annual performance reviews

were replaced with more frequent check-ins. This not only increased employee feedback it also saved

significant costs and resources by eliminating the time investment of conducting annual reviews that

were estimated to consume 80,000 hours in 2012.19

“We’re not a 12 month company anymore... There was more risk associated with not making a

change because the entire company was evolving and our people practices needed to keep up with

the pace.”- Donna Morris, SVP of People Resources 19

The Digital Media division would be the next iteration of the core profit center of Adobe’s creative

solutions. Narayen was taking a gamble by converting the firm’s primary cash cow to a subscription

model. This would even out the revenue stream but at the risk of alienating the current user base by

shifting the value capture system. Narayen sought to mitigate this risk of user loss by allowing

customer to choose either a perpetual license or a monthly subscription to the new Creative Cloud.

The new Digital Marketing business built on the Omniture acquisition extending Adobe’s ability to

provide value to a new segment along the creative value change. The product would be an enterprise

software product targeted at Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) seeking to consummate a partnership

that would be an end-to-end solution to marketing process.

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At the 2013 MAX Conference the final phase of the metamorphosis took almost all industry analysts

and customers by surprise: Adobe was shifting to only a subscription business model. By offering only

subscriptions of their Creative, Marketing and Document Cloud products, it was a signal from Narayen

that Adobe burning the bridge to commit to transformation. Customers and the market had a visceral

negative reaction to this radical shift because customers would now have to pay monthly, needed to

be connected to the internet to access files and they were worried about losing ownership of any

work or data if their subscription lapsed, as it would all be locked in the Adobe cloud. By 2013 over

26,000 individuals signed a Change.org petition to get Adobe to continue to offer the perpetual

software license. 7 Also CNET survey at the time indicated that 76% of current subscribers of the

perpetual creative software product would never switch to the new subscription version. 21 Despite

these reactions Narayen and Adobe remained steadfast in their commitment as they knew that they

had a winning and validated strategy.

By 2015 Adobe’s revenue topped $4.8 Billion USD, a 22% year over year increase mainly driven by

additional individual and enterprise cloud subscriptions. 17 After just three short years Narayen had

been successful in improving overall revenues, restarting company growth, and better integrated

solutions. The proof of success was found not only in the revenues but also through industry

recognition: #1 Computer Software company on “2016 World’s Most Admired Companies” list by

Fortune Magazine, 16 years consecutive years on “100 Best Companies to Work For” list FORTUNE

Magazine and a place on the "World's Most Innovative Companies" list Forbes, 2016. 10

NEW RIVERS TO CROSS

The rapid three year transformation of the Adobe software empire is an inspiring story. The strategic

foresight of Narayen and his team vigilantly identified a potential weakness and turned it into

strength. Even more impressive was the successful implementation of his vision to overcome hurdles

along the way and maintain momentum to carry the organization through the turmoil to a much better

market position. Kotter’s steps to change we follow to almost perfect and Adobe now has an aligned

culture, product strategy, incentives, HR and leadership guiding the company towards a focused long

term vision.

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7 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

Adobe’s success is not guaranteed however, as there are always new threats from competitors,

difficulties from the external environment, or internal erosion of culture. After reviewing the history of

Adobe a few recommendations are warranted to ensure the company’s future success.

Adobe must continue to build value with their non-core strength products and expand further along

the value chain. The firm is now competing directly with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. so

it needs to be prepared for a red ocean of intense, well-funded competition that will continuously

attack their position from all angles. (Exhibit C Shows all of Adobe’s Products).

R&D and Innovation is critical to Adobe’s success and even one of their four core values is

“Innovative: Highly creative and always striving to connect new ideas with business realities.” 10

However, besides searching for, and often buying, new innovations at a premium from external

sources Adobe also needs to improve their internal innovation engine (Exhibit B Describes the

changes in the 12 types of innovation). Adobe just started a new initiative called the Kickbox that

may be this solution and ignite internal innovation. The Kickbox is a simple cardboard box with a

cover warning “Pull in Case of Idea” that contains everything an Adobe employee needs to invent,

outline and trial any new idea including a Starbucks gift card and $1,000 USD prepaid debit card.16 The

program is actually a course of 6 levels that employees can either be assigned or request the first

level box from management and can culminate with a business case pitch to Adobe management.

Although fun and exciting this ‘thinking outside of the box’ innovation process may be too informal

and should be coupled with a more collaborative and formal innovation engine like R&D. It is too early

to evaluate the success of the Kickbox program but it a unique and encouraging step in the right

direction to instill a culture of innovation at Adobe.

Adobe should also be constantly on the lookout for potential acquisitions that will strategically fit into

their culture and improve the value of their offerings. However, Adobe needs to be selective in their

acquisitions, but also vigilant about vital synergies that could be gained through such acquisitions.

Adobe still relies heavily on its traditional core revenue cash cow of the Creative Cloud. In Q3 of

2016 Adobe’s three business segments Digital Media is at 68% of revenues compared to 29% for

Digital Marketing and 3% for Print & Publishing.11 If business innovation will not be developed internally

than acquisition of technologies and systems that will balance out their portfolio should be evaluated.

Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

8 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

Looking beyond the established competition, Adobe needs to be very cautious with potentially

disruptive new competitors. These potential competitors could chip away and erode the established

premium value and price points of Adobe’s software by offering free or cheap software solutions

similar to Adobe’s products. Looking at the Magic Quadrant from Gartner (See Exhibit D) describes

several challengers and visionaries to be wary of. On this low end of the market Adobe needs to

develop an affordable or freemium strategy that can mitigate the ongoing piracy and the potential free

competitive market solutions.

The biggest concern for Adobe’s Marketing Cloud currently should be to compete with Google

Analytics free offering and against their Adobe Analytics function. Google’s analytic software is the

market leader is free and has strong network effects as it ties directly into their digital adword

purchasing solution. This environment makes it difficult for Adobe to compete on the lower end the

market. Adobe could invest in supporting the freelance and startup economy by partnering with small

businesses and individual contractors to provide them with the software at an accessible price point

they need to be successful. This will move Adobe beyond just a software provider but also make

them a trusted partner and advocate of the content creators. Adobe should be able to successfully

capture a large share of this market by provided an affordable ‘Lite’ version of the Creative and

Marketing Clouds. This concept can be expanded to cultivating advisory boards and user groups with

their content managers, analyzers and executives. Adobe has already begun these efforts but also

can supplement these with tie-ins to their actual software offerings.

The software industry is constantly evolving, so Adobe needs to stay agile and vigilant when it is time

to turn the strategy sandglass on its head. They were able to anticipate the move to the cloud and

mobile technologies, but they must identify the next technology trend in order to maintain their

position as an industry leader. Adobe already targets students and educators with their creative suite

but the $19.99 USD monthly cost ($239.88 USD annually) is still too high for many. 13 Adobe should

also create accessible and affordable product versions for younger children to start getting them to

associate fun, imagination and the design process with Adobe creative products. This will open up

new markets, improve the brand and seed the future product pipeline for Adobe.

Adobe needs to provide more educational tools for new users since many of their products not only

have a steep price point but also a steep learning curve. The software solutions are complex,

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9 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

comprehensive and nuanced like learning a new language. If Adobe is able to reduce the perceived

difficulty of proficiency it will increase the number of product trailers as well as increase user

retention rates. By decreasing the knowledge barriers to entry, Adobe empowers more individuals to

become customers and advocates of the Adobe solutions network.

In order to achieve optimal global growth and take advantage of their new internet solution Adobe

needs to focus on international growth. This is an enormous opportunity of the firm that would also

mitigate piracy. Adobe’s software can scale globally quickly because it will require minimal

localization from a language and use standpoint. Adobe does need to invest in local sales, marketing,

support and development teams to capitalize on this opportunity. In 2016, 42% of Adobe’s total

revenues were from outside of the Americas, while 52% of employees based outside of the United

States.12 Adobe have opportunities in developing markets especially in Asia which are fertile ground

for expansion.

Adobe under Narayen no doubt is not resting in the safety of their creative cloud and actively looking

for the next opportunity.

THE ADOBE MODEL FOR CHANGING COURSE MIDSTREAM

“If your business strategy is to preserve the status quo, it’s not a very compelling strategy”

Shantanu Narayen, CEO. 9

Successful transformation requires foresight, courage and leadership as Adobe and Narayen

demonstrated over the past decade. They did not choose to remain comfortable with their average

revenues and iterative innovations, but strove for greatness despite external environmental shifts.

Adobe also had the vision to be the first large software firm to act on these market trends even

though they would be detrimental to revenue in the near term and require a huge fundamental change

effort.

Analysis of these transformations highlights a few key takeaways. First, change management is

difficult and requires both diligence from management and commitment throughout the entire

organization. Stakeholder’s incentives need to be aligned and the organizational structure needs to

Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

10 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

be streamlined to support the core growth objectives. Most importantly this all requires a clear vision

that is communicated effectively from the executive management to front line employees

On communication and the power of repetition: “What it required, honestly, was an incredible amount

of travel. People would joke about how often they heard me, and others in the management team,

constantly reiterating what was going on.” – Shantanu Narayen 9

Narayen had the courage and diligence to lead Adobe through this difficult period. He knew that there

would be unforeseen challenges but that the strategic vision was founded on solid analysis and was

right for Adobe’s future. Implementation was the challenge. Success required a steadfast

commitment and many hours of hands on repetitive clear communication throughout the entire

organization. A sense of urgency was signaled internally to employees by burning the bridges over the

river signally to all stakeholders knew there was no going back. This motivated Adobe and banded

their workers together to ensure a focus on the new objectives.

Adobe is an excellent example of a bold strategic implementation that successfully transformed a

good firm to a great market leading firm. This inspirational story highlight the need for constant

vigilance of environmental trends, the need to test and invest in change, and the fortitude as seen in

Kotter’s steps to execute on this vision.

Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

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EXHIBIT A – Omniture Strategic Fit

Source 15 : http://www.adobe.com/investor-relations/omniture-acquisition.html

EXHIBIT B – 12 Dimensions of Innovation Radar – Pre and Post Change

Soft (ware) Landing into the Cloud - Adobe Systems Inc.

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EXHIBIT C – Adobe Products

EXHIBIT D – Digital Marketing Hub 2016 Magic Quadrant

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13 Nicholas Hoffmeyer – IE Business School

WORKS CITIED

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00144feabdc0.html?ft_site=falcon&desktop=true#axzz4Minjlr7R

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4. Stolen Software: Piracy Hits More than Movies and Music. PC. BY MICHAEL MUCHMORE JANUARY 25, 2012.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399318,00.asp

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http://fortune.com/2012/12/10/will-adobes-new-cloud-strategy-pay-off/

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relations/PDFs/02906102/n39RyxaqrEm7.pdf

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CERTIFIED.pdf

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innovation-kit

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auth/370511

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