Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today released a new Forrester Consulting study quantifying the Total Economic Impact and benefits of Salesforce Lightning. In the study1, Forrester found that a composite organization2 deploying Lightning to drive greater productivity and faster time-to-market for application development obtained a return on investment (ROI) of 341 percent over three years.

Salesforce also announced today general availability for the Lightning Experience Transition Toolkit.

This new collection of apps is designed to guide customers through their transition to the Lightning Experience, empowering any business to leverage breakthrough innovations on Lightning – including Einstein, Analytics and IoT.

“We believe that Forrester’s latest study underscores how Lightning is a catalyst for unleashing productivity, innovation and transformation across every industry,” said Anne DelSanto, EVP and General Manager of the Lightning Platform, Salesforce. “The new Lightning Experience Transition Toolkit makes it easier than ever for customers to move to Lightning and accelerate their businesses with a more productive, smarter CRM.”

Lightning redefines CRM – offering an intuitive design, more productivity tools and a better user experience with innovations like Einstein, Analytics and IoT. Forrester’s results revealed significant cost savings and business benefits for sales organizations, application developers and IT departments that have deployed Lightning – boosting productivity by up to 25 percent and cutting time-to-market for applications nearly in half.

Among the other potential benefits, Forrester found that over three years the composite organization:

Saved more than $1.5 million by deploying Lightning Experience, saving end users in sales organizations more than an hour a week in productivity;

Saved more than $1 million by using the Lightning Platform’s component-based framework to build apps without writing code, resulting in faster time-to-market for enterprise apps by up to 50 percent; and

Reduced application developer turnover rates by up to 80 percent saving more than $165,000 in hiring costs.

According to a customer interviewed for this study, an engagement director at a global consulting firm: “Collaboration has been a differentiator of Salesforce; prior to that, many of our territories saw CRM as an admin tool. After our Lightning deployment and broader organizational alignment, we can now leverage technology to be much more. There’s been great success for account team collaboration. They can take quick action and respond.”

Lightning Transition Toolkit

Available today, the Lightning Transition Toolkit is a new suite of apps built to help Salesforce customers navigate their digital transformation on Lightning. The Lightning Transition Toolkit offers direct access to Salesforce Success Cloud tools to help customers migrate successfully to Lightning, including:

Lightning Experience Readiness Check – With just one click, any customer can now understand their current state of readiness, complete with recommended next steps to ensure existing processes, workflows and pages will work within Lightning.

Lightning Configuration Converter – Using the Lightning Configuration Converter, admins can scan any of their Salesforce Orgs, detect JavaScript buttons – including custom links to external documentation – and convert them into Lightning Quick Actions.

Magic Mover for Notes and Attachments – The Magic Mover automatically converts attachments and notes to files, optimized for Lightning, with new features including the ability to associate multiple records with a single file, version tracking and previews.

Lightning Usage App – Reports and dashboards provide customers a 360-degree view into who is using Lightning, empowering any organization to identify where they’re getting the most value and measuring each phase of their rollout.

Leading brands push productivity higher, build apps faster and work smarter with Lightning

Tens of thousands of companies today are working faster and smarter than ever on Lightning. Here’s how leading brands JLL and Autodesk are turbocharging their businesses after transitioning to Lightning:

JLL, a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management, moved to Sales Cloud Lightning to create a simplified sales process and user experience. The transition increased Salesforce adoption among JLL’s sales team, empowering them to build custom apps specific to their goals and business needs.

Autodesk is a leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. The company is in the process of transitioning to Lightning, streamlining and modernizing the Salesforce user interface so admins, developers and end users can innovate and collaborate faster. Autodesk leveraged Trailhead modules – including a curated Lightning Onboarding Trailmix – to ensure a consistent onboarding experience for teams globally.