The Business Value of Leanix

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX | October 2023
The Business Value of LeanIX

Enterprise Architecture
Management and SaaS
Management Solutions
Megan Szurley Neil Ward-Dutton
Senior Research Analyst VP, AI and Intelligent Process
Business Value Automation European Practices
George Mironescu
Associate Research Director,
App Development and Delivery
The Business Value of LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Management and SaaS Management Solutions
Table of Contents CLICK ANY HEADING TO NAVIGATE

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Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Business Value Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Situation Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Digital-First Business Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Sheer Architectural and Operational Complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
In Need of Cloud-Estate Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Iteration Key in Changing Innovation Approaches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Mapping and Managing Value Streams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
LeanIX Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Enterprise Architecture Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
SaaS Management Platform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Value Stream Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The Business Value of LeanIX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Study Firmographics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Choice and Use of LeanIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Business Value and Quantified Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
SaaS Management Platform (SMP) Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Security Benefits from LeanIX EAM and/or SMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
End-User Benefits from EAM and/or SMP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
ROI Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Challenges/Opportunities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Appendix: Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
About the IDC Analysts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

October 2023 | IDC #EUR151243123
2
Executive Summary
LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) and SaaS
Management Platform (SMP) are designed to help IT architects, IT asset
managers, business leaders, and DevOps teams achieve transparency Business Value
and control over their enterprise architectures, software-as-a-service
(SaaS) portfolio, and application landscapes. Through a series of in-
Highlights
depth interviews, IDC conducted research to explore the value and
benefits for organizations of using LeanIX EAM and/or SMP, such as an $1.1M
ability to understand the full scope of the software estate, transform the
average annual
benefits per
organization, and better serve customers. Based on this data collected
organization
from LeanIX customers and through its Business Value methodology,
IDC calculated that these customers achieve benefits worth an annual
average of $1.1 million ($2,670 per LeanIX-managed application), by: $2,670
average annual benefit
per LeanIX-managed
• Creating a comprehensive and accessible overview of the application
organization’s IT landscape, which facilitates collaboration between
IT and business teams, supports effective decision making, and aligns
business technology with strategic goals
386%
three-year ROI
• Boosting overall business performance by improving the efficiency of
various teams, including IT management, security, procurement, and Five month
compliance payback period
• Tracking and monitoring the performance of SaaS applications

35%
• Improving business results by increasing the productivity of end users more efficient
enterprise architecture
• Ensuring better IT systems security teams
$56,079
one-time total SaaS
application cost
savings
51%
more productive
financial management
teams

Table of Contents 3
As reported by interviewed organizations that deployed

LeanIX’s solutions, the tangible and intangible benefits are
Business Value
manifold, including economic and technical gains on several
levels: Highlights
• Architecture, transformation, and system-redesign — through an 48%
improved ability to make decisions on portfolio structure, size, and more efficient IT
design, including deeper insights into the maturity and morphology of management
IT estates and better-informed road map choices
• Procurement and finance department — through savings and

23%
more productive
the improved financial planning of budget allocations; enhanced
procurement teams
discoverability of spending across decision-making centers;
and heightened visibility into the renewals calendar and points
of engagement with vendors, providing the foundation for deal $231,509
in annualized IT cost
negotiations
avoidances
• IT management — through reported savings in sizing operational
teams and the resources in charge of IT operations, support, and 7%
services management more productive
compliance teams
• Governance, risk, compliance, and security — through increased
oversight and centralization across the application estate and
33%
operations and improved visibility, access, control, and traceability
more efficient security
across the IT estate and users, including better policy enforcement teams for both
solutions
• End-user — through an increase in business user productivity due to
streamlined processes and workflow design and greater efficiency in
processes from the removal of redundant or duplicated functionalities 19%
within the application estate more productive
business end users

Table of Contents 4
Situation Overview
Digital-First Business Agenda
As per IDC’s 2022 worldwide CEOs survey, 95% of organizations are shifting
to digital-first agendas. Such strategies move beyond digital transformation as
the primary vehicle to drive modernization across the IT estate and operating
processes. A digital-first strategy centers on programs and efforts that bring
software and digital processes into every corner of the organization and into
every interaction with customers and in the broader ecosystem. Under this vision,
digital first becomes a critical way to engage successfully in the market and drive
business competitiveness.
However, critical technology and organizational challenges lie just beneath the
surface of such a strategy. CEOs are likely unaware of these challenges, but IT
and software/application delivery teams will need to address them.
Sheer Architectural and Operational

Complexity
As any enterprise technology specialist or leader with significant experience
knows, it is rare for technology to be completely retired from an enterprise;
organizations commonly provide homes for systems and applications that have
been in use for decades. Although, as successive technology waves have
reached further into and across business functions and enterprise boundaries,
complexity for those seeking to drive transformation is about far more than simply
dealing with legacy and variety. Four dimensions are in play:
• Applications, data management technologies, and infrastructure platforms:

Organizations are struggling with ever-more diverse technology stacks. Even
looking purely at the burgeoning variety of SaaS applications, IDC’s SaaSPath
Survey, 2022 found that over 50% of organizations use more than 50 SaaS
applications, and around 32% use 100 or more. Evidence of the challenge
that this creates abounds. For example, according to an IDC survey from Q1
2022, the most common barrier to achieving digital resilience pertains to “the
cost and complexity of supporting multiple generations of infrastructure and
applications.”
• IT delivery platforms and models: Investments in public cloud delivery

continue to rise steadily, with more than half of software spending — as per
IDC’s Software Tracker — taking place in public-cloud environments since 2022.
We live in a hybrid, multicloud world that is becoming more, not less, complex.
IDC’s CloudPath Survey, 2022 revealed that 57% of organizations leverage
private cloud implementations, 35% leverage managed private cloud services,
and 23% continue to maintain traditional on-premises infrastructure — all in the
context of increasing infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service
(PaaS), and SaaS usage.

Table of Contents 5
• Supported business products and services: Modern technology stacks support

more business products and services than ever, and investments (and ROI)
are being driven from more places than ever within organizations. As digital
transformation continues to play out, one result has been a major shift in the
dynamics of technology investments and decision-making within organizations.
Where IT departments used to control, or at least orchestrate, most IT
investments, the picture is now very different: More than 50% of IT spending, on
average, is controlled by business functions. A major challenge arising from this
is that understanding the relationships between technology service performance
and business product/service performance has become far more important —
but also far more difficult.
• Stakeholders: The dispersion of ownership over technology investments and

outcomes also means that platform health, performance, and cost are important
to more and more diverse stakeholders than in the past. More people care about
operational platform qualities than before, and fewer of them have technical
backgrounds than previously.
In Need of Cloud-Estate Optimization

As organizations moved to cloud, changing operating and investment models
created new challenges for them. At the same time, the shift to as-a-service
models enabled both different ways to finance access to digital solutions
and different routes for the business to address their specific digitalization
needs. However, this created notable challenges, including concerns related to
overspend and financial/resource wastage. As per IDC’s European CloudOps
Survey, 2023, 50% of CEOs are very or extremely concerned about their growing
cloud expenditures, while 6 in 10 organizations are spending more on cloud than
they originally budgeted for.
These conditions compel organizations to increase their operational discipline,

including a greater ability to capture and manage the various cloud assets they
consume. Beyond tactical considerations, senior executive leaders are pressed to
better manage the cloud estate to drive governance in IT delivery and to define
strategic road maps involving architecture and investments.

Table of Contents 6
Iteration Key in Changing Innovation

Approaches
Under a digital-first agenda, organizations are mandating new innovation models,
centered on the idea of iteration. Through iteration, organizations are achieving
incremental value, yet delivered at constant cadence through continuous
feedback loops with the beneficiaries of that value. Almost 30% of organizations
in EMEA have been driving their innovation initiatives under an iteration-based
model, such as minimal-viable-product approaches. Such approaches are
expected to be adopted at an accelerating rate in the medium term. IDC believes
that, by 2026, 75% of market leaders will have systemic, structured digital
innovation programs and investments that support ongoing iterative innovation,
enabling growth, scale, agility, and resilience (Source: IDC FutureScape:
Worldwide Future of Digital Innovation 2023 Predictions).
Mapping and Managing Value Streams

Nonetheless, to be able to deliver through iteration-based innovation models,
organizations need to gain a deeper understanding of their application
development and delivery activities and of how value flows along the application
delivery chain. This is very important, since the roles and involvement of various
parts of the business in app delivery often remain nebulous and difficult to trace.
According to IDC’s European DevOps and Software Innovation Survey, 2022,
not even 1 in 10 organizations has been operating a unified delivery engine that
brings together stakeholders across development, business line/function, testing/
quality assurance, operations, and security. Getting better visibility into how these
teams operate with each other and how they can streamline their workflows and
collaborate is key to increasing competitiveness in application delivery.
Interest in mapping and managing the value delivered and the efforts contributed
by the various constituents along the delivery chain has been growing
noticeably. For instance, optimizing app-delivery operations emerges as a top
2 organizational priority, as indicated in IDC’s European DevOps Survey, 2023
and Modern App Delivery Survey, 2023. This only underlines the importance of
establishing value-stream capabilities across the app-delivery landscape.

Table of Contents 7
LeanIX Overview
LeanIX was founded in 2012 in Bonn, Germany, to provide an enterprise
architecture platform and toolset that helps IT architects and business leaders
achieve transparency and control over their business technology landscapes. The
company has expanded strongly since it was founded. For example, from 2021
to 2023, it doubled its customer count. The company now has offices in Germany,
the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Slovenia, and the United States, and it currently
has more than 500 team members and over 1,000 customers, including large
multinational enterprises such as Volkswagen, Adidas, Bosch, DHL, and Vodafone.
LeanIX acquired SaaS management application specialist Cleanshelf in 2021,

enabling it to expand its core enterprise architecture offering. In 2021, LeanIX
released a third offering focused on helping engineering managers, DevOps
teams, and product IT teams to streamline operations.
As a result of these developments, LeanIX now offers three

complementary products:
• Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM)
• SaaS Management Platform (SMP)
• Value Stream Management (VSM)
All three products are hosted on LeanIX’s Continuous Transformation Platform — a

proprietary SaaS platform built on Microsoft Azure that is architected and operated
in compliance with security and trust regulations, including SOC2, ISO27001, and
Cyber Essentials Plus.
Enterprise Architecture Management

LeanIX Enterprise Application Management (EAM) focuses on giving stakeholders
real-time overviews of the organization’s IT landscape and business capabilities
to power analyses that help drive effective business planning, transformation, and
productivity.
As with all LeanIX’s products, LeanIX EAM focuses on ensuring that foundational
data on existing systems, applications, and capabilities is complete, consistent,
and up to date. To achieve this, EAM is built on a predefined and fully configurable
metamodel. This ensures faster time to value because organizations can avoid the
time-consuming process of defining the metamodel. By supporting widespread
collaboration and featuring a pricing model that enables unlimited users, LeanIX
makes it possible to leverage organizational knowledge to continually improve
data quality. Automated SaaS discovery, powered by integrations with a range
of key enterprise systems (Google, Microsoft, Okta, etc.) and out-of-the-box
integrations with category leaders, further ensures data accuracy. These

Table of Contents 8
integrations include SAP Signavio (for business process models), ServiceNow (for
IT assets), and Collibra (for business data entities).
The core of LeanIX EAM is the Application Portfolio Management (APM) base
module. Customers can optionally license add-ons focused on Technology
Risk Management (used to identify and manage obsolescence risk of end-of-
life technologies) and Business Transformation Management (used for target
architecture modeling and advanced scenario planning to accelerate business
transformation).
SaaS Management Platform

LeanIX SaaS Management Platform (SMP) focuses on creating a complete SaaS
inventory for an organization using continuous automated discovery to keep this
inventory up to date. (The SaaS discovery functionality is also provided as part of
EAM Application Portfolio Management base module.) SMP helps IT management
and procurement staff responsible for managing SaaS investments to:
• Identify duplicate subscription licenses and redundant contracts
• Track and monitor application usage and manage spending
• Identify opportunities to optimize usage and reduce spending
• Manage the lifecycles of contracts and renewals and proactively plan for
negotiations
• Map SaaS application compliance with regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR and
SOC2)
As is the case with EAM, SMP integrates with a multitude of third-party systems
to make it as easy as possible to create an up-to-date single source of truth about
SaaS applications and their usage. Integrations with popular single-sign-on (SSO)
systems, cloud access security brokers (CASB), and HR, finance, and expense
management systems help to discover application licenses in use. When it comes
to tracking usage, SMP integrates directly with over 130 SaaS applications out of
the box, or customers can implement their own integrations.
Value Stream Management

LeanIX Value Stream Management (VSM) focuses on giving technology product
teams transparency across their software supply chains, insight into vulnerabilities,
and a platform through which to collaborate with business teams.
As with the other LeanIX products, the foundation of VSM is a services-focused

asset catalog powered by integrations with third-party enterprise information
sources, including GitHub repositories and Azure repositories. Insight into
vulnerabilities and potential exposure to risks comes from an ability to analyze
software bills of materials (SBOMs), which track and identify dependencies in

Table of Contents 9
complex software configurations. LeanIX VSM can import SBOM definitions from
third-party tools, including Snyk, Jfrog Xray, CycloneDX, and Sonatype.
The solution enables customers to map technical services to team ownership, as

well as to the business products they enable. With team responsibilities assigned,
VSM can also be used to gather and report on team performance and value
delivered based on industry-recognized DevOps Research and Assessment
(known as DORA) metrics.
The Business Value of

LeanIX
Study Firmographics
IDC conducted research to explore the value and benefits for organizations
of using LeanIX EAM and/or SMP, such as an ability to map and optimize their
entire enterprise architectures, transform their organizations, and better serve
customers. The project included a total of 10 interviews with organizations that
use LeanIX and have experience with and/or knowledge of the benefits and
costs of using these solutions.
During the interviews, the companies were asked a variety of quantitative and
qualitative questions about the offering’s impact on their IT operations, core
businesses, and costs. Specifically, five interviewed organizations solely use
LeanIX EAM, three only use LeanIX SMP, and two use both LeanIX solutions. As
a result, metrics impacting ROI have been weighted based on organizational
usage, and that weight is reflected in the tables.
Table 1 presents the study’s demographics. The organizations that IDC

interviewed have an average base of 37,751 employees and total average
annual revenues of $33 billion. On average, these companies have 654 IT staff
supporting 1,044 business applications. In terms of geographic distribution,
five companies are based in the United States, with the remainder in Germany
(two), Australia (two), and Ireland (one). A wide variety of vertical markets are
represented in the sample — software (two), education (two), financial services
(two), and media, distribution, security, and retail (one each).

Table of Contents 10
TABLE 1
Firmographics of Interviewed Organizations
Firmographics Average Median Range
Number of employees 37,751 1,300 90 to 300,000
Number of IT staff 654 380 2 to 2,000
Total number of
1,044 183 5 to 8,000
business applications
Annual revenue $33B $1.3B $28.5M to $250B
United States (5), Germany (2),

Countries
Australia (2), Ireland (1)
Software (2), Education (2), Financial

Industries Services (2), Media (1), Distribution (1),
Security (1), Retail (1)
Source: IDC Business Value Research, May 2023
Choice and Use of LeanIX

The organizations IDC interviewed described their typical usage patterns for LeanIX
Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) and/or SaaS Management Platform (SMP).
They also discussed their rationale for choosing these solutions as a cost-effective way of
understanding the full scope of existing software capabilities, enabling them to transform
their organizations and better serve their customers. IDC’s data analysis has confirmed
that the offerings have had positive impacts on the IT operations and core businesses of
participant companies.
In commenting on their decision criteria, study participants noted that EAM provides
transparency and visibility into interface integrations from a global perspective, while SMP
helps them to arrive at a deeper understanding of SaaS application use. In addition, they
stated that both SMP and EAM helped them upgrade their respective application portfolio
management systems.
Study participants elaborated on these benefits as follows:
• Improved ability to design/architect and operationalize application systems —

education organization (EAM):
“Our organization selected LeanIX to establish the architecture practice we needed.
LeanIX is a tool that can manage a bunch of different things, including applications,
performance, and whatnot. We ran a competitive assessment on a number of tools
available in the marketplace, and we picked LeanIX.”

• Increased application landscape transparency and visibility — financial services

organization (EAM):
“One of the most important use cases when our organization first looked at LeanIX was
transparency and visibility into our interfaces’ integrations from a global perspective.
Our organization has a global application ecosystem. We needed to create visibility and
transparency so that our member firms can see all the interfaces they can use.”
• Deeper understanding of SaaS application use — software organization (SMP):

“Our organization was looking for something to help aggregate all the SaaS applications
that we use. We weren’t tracking them from a central place. LeanIX gave us the ability
to track contract renewals and reduce spend by contacting our SaaS provider prior to
contract renewal and working on prices.”
• Improved portfolio management and architecture — software organization (both

EAM and SMP):
“Our organization was looking to upgrade our application portfolio management system.
The reason we selected LeanIX for the upgrade was the combination of its EAM and SaaS
management capabilities. That was a key area of focus. LeanIX offers better control over
our applications, better visibility, and more proactive renewal management.”
Table 2 shows organizational usage of LeanIX customers at the time of the interviews. The
average total number of business applications in play that are associated with LeanIX
solutions is 413. In addition, the number of business users of those applications averaged
227,316. Additional metrics are presented below.
TABLE 2
Organizational Usage of LeanIX
LeanIX Usage Average Median
Number of applications 413 195
Number of business application users 227,316 1,300
Figure 1 presents additional data on the IT infrastructures of study participants. This data
breakout shows that most applications (65%) are hosted in public cloud, with 17% residing on
premises.

FIGURE 1
Infrastructure of LeanIX Managed Applications
8%
Hybrid or multicloud
10%
Private cloud
65%
17% Public cloud
On premises
n = 10; Source: IDC Business Value Research, May 2023
Business Value and

Quantified Benefits
IDC’s data analysis confirmed that LeanIX’s offerings have positive impacts on
the IT operations and core businesses of the studied companies. IDC’s business
value research demonstrates how study participants use Enterprise Architecture
Management (EAM) and/or SaaS Management Platform (SMP) to optimize the
business use of their IT and applications resources.
Specifically, IDC evaluated how EAM fosters easy collaboration between IT and
business teams on monitoring and assessing IT resources and determining how
well these resources fulfill overall business goals. IDC also examined how SMP
helps companies track and monitor the performance of SaaS applications.
Both solutions serve to boost overall business performance by improving the

efficiency of various teams. EAM is most impactful for enterprise architects
and compliance teams, while SMP mostly impacts IT management, financial
management, and procurement and compliance teams. Both solutions improve
business results by increasing the productivity of end users and ensuring better IT
systems security.

Study participants offered the following comments on the benefits of EAM:

• Greater interface transparency — financial services organization:
“A large benefit of LeanIX is the interfaces and transparency we now have with our estate.
LeanIX has given us the ability to get knowledge out of people’s heads and into LeanIX
regarding interfaces. It has been eye opening because even the solution architects had
no idea of some of this interface information.”
• Better understanding of business — distribution organization:

“LeanIX provides us with a rapid way to explain the business to someone coming in. This
is especially useful because our organization can provide them with a list of the available
application systems that we provide.”
• The acceleration of transformation and projects — media organization:

“Application portfolio management is a big IT benefit for us. Overall, LeanIX gives our
organization the ability to speed up our change, transformation, and projects; it’s a big
benefit for us. Time and money are big drivers on the IT side.”
Study participants that use SMP mentioned these benefits of the solution:
• Reduced shadow IT — software organization:
“A significant benefit of LeanIX is that it gives our organization the ability to identify all
the services we use throughout the company and to reduce redundancy and simplify our
environment. It also helps with shadow IT, by identifying when someone signs up for a
service themselves, rather than going through the proper channels.”
• An ability to track renewals — education organization:

“The most significant benefit of LeanIX is the license management capability and being
able to track individual renewals. We don’t have a contract management solution in place,
so being able to view upcoming renewals has helped.”
A retail organization familiar with the use of both platforms noted that, “LeanIX is the
indisputable source of the truth in our organization. It has given us the ability to defer
unnecessary investments, which has a business impact on the bottom line. In addition, when
people come to us with a business problem, we can point them to an application, which has
contributed to the business’s speed.”
IDC calculated the cumulative benefits customers achieved in adopting LeanIX. Factoring
in deployment time, average annual benefits are quantified at $1.1M per organization, or
$2,670 per application managed by LeanIX. Below, these benefits are broken down by
solution usage:
• $554,000 in benefits related specifically to the use of the LeanIX EAM, and $236,490 in
benefits related specifically to the use of LeanIX SMP
• $314,720 in benefits from the general use of the LeanIX platform and not specifically
attributed to SMP or EAM

FIGURE 2
Average Annual Benefits Per Organization
(Data reference)
$1.1 million per organization
$554,000
$314,720
$236,490
EAM Benefits SMP Benefits Benefits of Both
Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) Benefits

LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) is designed to help companies leverage
their existing technology investments and manage change through an outcome-driven
approach. The solution is also designed to provide quick and easy access to relevant
data, thereby saving time compared with the more cumbersome process of manual data
collection. By accelerating decision-making with insightful data, companies can reduce
costs and eliminate redundant or unused technology infrastructure and applications. Having
this capability helps organizations free up financial resources for innovation, address
technology risks proactively, and stay compliant with regulations.
EAM comprises three major offerings:

• Application Portfolio Management (APM)
• Technology Risk Management (TRM)
• Business Transformation Management (BTM)
IDC confirmed through interview data analysis that study participants enjoy many of these
benefits. They appreciate that, with single-source aggregation, the solution offers greater
organizational transparency across their existing application portfolios. They also appreciate
that it serves as a single source of IT component relationships — one that can display and
configure relationships between IT components without relying on Visio diagrams or Excel.
In addition, they value its impact on flexibility, time, and cost and how it easily integrated into
their IT landscapes.

Study participants elaborated on these benefits:

• Greater transparency — financial services organization:
“LeanIX gives our organization transparency. This transparency helps people understand
what we have and what they’re responsible for. You can imagine, in a merger situation,
that teams are being thrown together, split, or combined. The applications that they’re
responsible for are potentially doubling because now they’ve got two CRMs instead
of one CRM. So, having all that information in one place and being able to access it is
probably the primary benefit.”
• Single source of IT component relationships — distribution organization:

“A big benefit of LeanIX EAM is being able to display, from a consolidated location, the
relationships between IT components. Without that, you need a bunch of Visio diagrams
and Excel spreadsheets. LeanIX gives us the ability to create the visualizations we need.”
• Increased organizational knowledge — education organization:

“LeanIX reduces cost and increases organizational knowledge around core applications.
That’s the main benefit so far.”
• A positive impact on flexibility, time, and cost — media organization:

“LeanIX has had an impact on flexibility, time, and cost. We have the flexibility to see
what solutions we have in place and can jump from one IT customer to another. This
accelerates solution delivery and avoids comparison work, which costs time. We’ve also
gained the ability to deliver solutions that fit into our IT landscape. We have transparency
into whether the solution fits our business needs. We can get solutions that we can use
more broadly — that fit the whole IT strategy and will be useful for a long time.”
IDC examined EAM module usage across all organizations. As shown in Figure 4, the
greatest usage was seen with Application Portfolio Management (100%), followed by
Technology Risk Management (71%), and Business Transformation Management (29%).
FIGURE 3
LeanIX EAM Tool Usage
(Data reference)
% of EAM Users
Application Portfolio Management

100%
(APM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Technology Risk Management

71%
(TRM). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Business Transformation Management 29%

(BTM). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The interviewed organizations achieved increased application standardization,

rationalization, and deduplication with the use of LeanIX EAM, which has ultimately reduced
both operational IT costs and risk. As shown in Table 3, study participants benefit from an
average of $231,509 in total annual cost avoidances.
TABLE 3
Impact on IT Cost and Risk
Impact on IT Cost and Risk Annual Cost Avoidances per

Interviewed EAM Organization
Maintenance cost avoidance due to applications meeting common

$182,537
standards
Developer cost savings due to rationalization and deduplication $48,972
Total annual cost avoidances $231,509
The interviewed organizations noted that their enterprise and/or business architects
gained new efficiencies through greater portfolio transparency, more in-depth and granular
application data, increased application rationalization, and better overall standardization.
This has enabled teams to work with greater efficiency, needing 1.8 fewer full-time
equivalents (FTEs) and avoiding hiring 1.7 FTEs who would otherwise have been needed
prior to the deployment of LeanIX EAM. As a result, these companies have experienced a
35% efficiency gain in the work performed by business-architect teams. This has translated
into an annual average efficiency-based business value of $348,823 for each organization
(Table 4).
TABLE 4
Enterprise/Business Architects Efficiency Gain
Enterprise/Business Architects Before Benefit

Efficiency Gain LeanIX With LeanIX Benefit Percentage
Total FTE count 8.4 6.6 1.8 22%
Additional FTE hires that would

1.7
have been needed without LeanIX
Adjusted FTE 10 6.6 3.5 35%
Value of staff time per year $1,004,167 $655,344 $348,823 35%

LeanIX EAM has helped the interviewed organizations better address compliance-related
concerns, especially those associated with European GDPR regulations. They have gained
the ability to tag systems that have identifying information to ensure ongoing compliance.
Table 5 illustrates these benefits. As shown, the companies interviewed have achieved a
7% productivity boost in their compliance teams. This has resulted in an average annual
productivity-based business value of $25,893 for each organization.
TABLE 5
Compliance Team Productivity Gain
Compliance Team Productivity Before Benefit

Gain LeanIX With LeanIX Benefit Percentage
Equivalent productivity level, FTEs 5.2 5.5 0.4 7%
Value of staff time per year $362,500 $388,393 $25,893 7%
SaaS Management Platform (SMP) Benefits

As businesses of all sizes increase their use of SaaS applications, they need to better
manage and accommodate these important IT resources, in part by augmenting application
portfolio management with efficient SaaS discovery. One driver here is increased remote
work resulting in the use of various forms of SaaS-based collaboration software for video
calls and workflow management, necessitating the use of robust SaaS management
platform tools that can aggregate metrics and monitor usage.
LeanIX ‘s SaaS Management Platform (SMP) is designed to help companies meet these
challenges. The solution provides integration with a wide variety of leading SSO systems,
cloud access security brokers (CASB), and HR, finance, and expense management systems.
These capabilities can help IT managers easily discover applications and gain visibility
into their company’s SaaS ecosystems. The offering creates a complete SaaS inventory
using continuous automated discovery to track usage, manage licenses and contracts, and
generate actionable insights.
Study participants confirmed many of these benefits. They appreciate that the solution offers
significant savings in subscription costs and provides greater insight into contract renewals.
They also noted that it offers them a single view of application contracts, while providing the
ability to cut costs by eliminating concerns associated with shadow IT (otherwise known as
“business-led IT”). Participants noted SMP’s ability to enable strategic resource allocation
and analyze license use for renewal purposes.


• The elimination of redundancy — software organization:
“LeanIX has given our organization annualized savings of $350K in subscription costs and
eliminated redundancy. The solution has given us greater insight into contract renewals
and when those are expected to come up. We are able to plan and get on top of it, rather
than being reactive. LeanIX also provides access for our managers, giving them insight
into what tools and services their teams should have access to and more control over their
individual department spend.”
• A single view of application contracts — security organization:

“LeanIX gives our organization the ability to cut costs through the elimination of shadow
IT. Having that single source for viewing what contracts we have out there is a big benefit.
Our organization is in the middle of restructuring, and we had to look at every single
application that we had a contract for and rationalize it. LeanIX has been invaluable to our
organization because we have the ability to pull that information up.”
• Strategic resource allocation — education organization:

“LeanIX makes sure that our organization is not overspending. LeanIX gives us the ability
to actually analyze license use and renew licenses based on use. LeanIX gives our
organization an informed set of data points, so use is not just conjecture. It allows us to be
more strategic about allocating resources.”
To provide a full and accurate picture of post-adoption experiences with LeanIX, IDC
evaluated a variety of impacts, beginning with SaaS management. The interviewed
companies reported that LeanIX manages a significant portion of SaaS applications (85%)
and this gives them better insight into licenses, subscriptions, resource redundancies, and
issues related to business-led IT without IT department oversight.
IDC then evaluated cost impacts. As a direct result of deploying LeanIX SMP, organizations
gained vital information about SaaS application use and redundancies. They were therefore
able to reduce the number of SaaS applications and decrease costs. Table 6 quantifies
these benefits, showing total average annual cost reductions for all companies, calculated at
$149,545 per company.
TABLE 6
SaaS Application Reduction Cost Savings
Total
Number Weighted
of SaaS Total One- One-
SaaS Application Applications Cost per Time Cost Time Cost
Reduction Cost Savings Reduced Application Reduction Reduction
SaaS Application Cost

15 $10,243 $149,545 $56,079
Savings

The adoption of LeanIX SMP has significantly reduced renewal costs for the interviewed
organizations because they have gained the ability to track renewals. This enables them
to be proactive when it comes time to renew or cancel subscriptions and actively address
redundancies. Table 7 quantifies these benefits, showing renewal cost savings of $26,879
(one time) and $133,475 (annual) per company.
TABLE 7
Impact on SaaS Renewal Negotiations
One-Time Cost Annual Recurring Cost

Impact on SaaS Renewal Negotiations Reduction Reductions
Subscription & license renewals $4,379 $96,424
Subscription cancellations $22,500 $37,051
Total renewal cost savings $26,879 $133,475
IDC then looked at impacts for various IT-related teams. The interviewed organizations
noted that IT management teams benefited from improved application discovery, application
management, and budget allocation with the use of LeanIX SMP. LeanIX SMP’s broad
functionality results in increased overall efficiency and the avoidance of additional FTEs.
Table 8 quantifies these benefits, showing a 48% adjusted FTE gain in efficiency and an
annual average business value of $53,750 per organization.
TABLE 8
IT Management Team Efficiency Gains
IT Management Team Efficiency Before Benefit

Gains LeanIX With LeanIX Benefit Percentage
Additional FTE hires that would

0.4
have been needed without LeanIX
Adjusted FTE 1.1 0.6 0.5 48%

Companies interviewed reported that line-of-business teams also derive benefits. Financial
management departments appreciate the in-depth forecasting and analysis provided
by LeanIX SMP. These features enable them to be more productive in planning for and
purchasing SaaS applications.
Table 9 quantifies these benefits. As shown, the companies interviewed have achieved
a 51% productivity boost in the work performed by their financial management teams,
meaning this department now works at the equivalent productivity level of an additional 0.7
full-time employee. This results in an average annual productivity-based business value of
$48,813 per organization.
TABLE 9
Financial Management Team Productivity Gain
Financial Management Team Before Benefit

Productivity Gain LeanIX With LeanIX Benefit Percentage
The interviewed organizations noted that procurement teams are now more prepared for
contract renewals due to LeanIX SMP notifications. This capability enables the team to
better optimize subscriptions based on organizational usage and application discovery.
Table 10 quantifies these benefits. As shown, the companies interviewed achieved a 23%
productivity boost in the work performed by their procurement departments, translating into
an annual average productivity-based business value of $28,583 per organization.
TABLE 10
Procurement Team Productivity Gain
Procurement Team Productivity Before Benefit

Gain LeanIX With LeanIX Benefit Percentage

Security Benefits from LeanIX EAM and/or SMP

IDC examined an important area for companies in today’s IT environments — security —
and looked at benefits for companies using both LeanIX EAM and LeanIX SMP. The study
participants reported boosting the performance of their IT security teams in the fulfillment of
their day-to-day tasks and responsibilities. They noted that both solutions resulted in better
centralization and information management, while serving to tighten data handling controls.
They also mentioned the benefits of lowering risks from shadow IT, coupled with better
overall regulatory compliance.

• Better centralization and information management — education organization (EAM):
“Our organization has gained clarity and transparency through the deployment of LeanIX.
We have a better understanding of the technology that is out there, who is managing it,
and the costs and risks associated with that. Without that information and transparency,
it’s very difficult to exercise accountability and responsibility. We’ve also started to see
that there are numerous applications under business units that they are not aware of
because of a lack of centralization and information management. The business units
started to see that they were putting data everywhere without proper governance. They
have started to think about how to consolidate and minimize that footprint.”
• Tightened data handling controls — education organization (EAM:

“We had a cybersecurity incident, as a result of which we looked at all the legislation
around information protection. We use LeanIX to capture data objects and then categorize
them using data classification frameworks. We connect those data objects to processes,
and now we can see who is touching the sensitive data in the organization, through
which process, and in which area of business. This review of processes has tightened the
controls around data handling.”
• Reduced risk through reduced shadow IT — software organization (SMP):

“Shadow IT has been eliminated. People are no longer signing up for services without
our knowledge. LeanIX has helped us identify, up front, when a service enters our
environment, and we can vet it and go through proper channels to make sure that it’s
something we want to allow in our environment. It’s also helped identify legacy services
that aren’t being used anymore, which we can eliminate, so they are not just sitting out
there. LeanIX also identifies legacy users, which ensures there’s no company information
available to someone not employed with us anymore.”
• Better technology compliance — retail organization (both EAM and SMP):

“LeanIX has had a huge impact on security. The technology request process is an all-
encompassing process: It forces a check with security, data privacy, and legal. Security
will not recognize software that is not in LeanIX; they will call it non-compliant immediately,
refuse to service it, and insist that it is registered. They rely heavily on that auditing and
checking.”
As these comments indicate, LeanIX EAM and SMP both reduce shadow IT within
interviewed organizations. This results in less overall exposure to risk. The interviewed
organizations noted that LeanIX can serve as a single source of the truth for application

use and establish processes to ensure that application usage and data are appropriately
controlled.
Table 11 illustrates these benefits. As shown, the companies interviewed achieved a 33%
efficiency gain in the work performed by their security teams. Importantly, this efficiency
gain enabled security team members to be repurposed to other business-critical initiatives.
This has resulted in an average annual efficiency-based business value of $184,167 for each
organization.
TABLE 11
Security Team Efficiency Gain
Before Benefit
Security Team Efficiency Gain LeanIX With LeanIX Benefit Percentage
End-User Benefits from EAM and/or SMP

The interviewed companies described how they benefitted from more efficient business
operations using LeanIX EAM and SMP. They commented on how the solutions boost
end-user productivity, leading to better support for business operations and strategies.
In particular, the study participants noted the benefit of having a single source for digital
asset inventory, coupled with greater detail regarding application functionality, enabling
redundancies to be identified. They also noted both solutions’ ability to accelerate business
growth and strategies.

• A single source for digital asset inventory — financial services organization (EAM):
“Our client-facing practices benefit from having just one place to look for the inventory
of digital assets. Prior to this, I think we had about 12 different lists of things. We have
rationalized and now we have one list. The business units are really happy that we have
finally moved to one list. Our organization can now go through that list and make sure that
all the questions for risk, branding, and legal are compliant.”
• Higher application functionality — software organization (SMP):

“LeanIX enabled our organization to have more functional applications because we
identified services that were redundant and used by two different teams. We identified
the better service, eliminated the redundancy, and migrated the other team to the better
performing application.”

• Intention to link LeanIX to growth strategy — financial services organization (EAM):

“Our organization intends to use LeanIX to accelerate business growth and strategy after
this fiscal year. We plan to use LeanIX to link our business strategies, objectives, and
capabilities throughout the organization.”
LeanIX EAM and SMP have enabled the interviewed organizations to reduce application
redundancy and eliminate applications not in use. End users now have better access to
more useful applications, which has improved the speed at which they can work and thus
productivity.
IDC quantified end-user business enablement benefits after adoption (Table 12). Factoring
in an operation margin of 15%, these calculations indicate that end-users have been able to
work with the productivity and speed of two additional FTEs. This end-user productivity gain
amounts to $160,208 in business value for each interviewed organization.
TABLE 12
Business Enablement — End-User Productivity Gains
Business Enablement — End- Before Benefit

User Productivity Gain LeanIX With LeanIX Benefit Percentage
Total FTE count 81 96 15 19%
Total FTE count, net 81 83 2 2.80%
Calculated value of productivity

$5,645,000 $5,805,208 $160,208 2.80%
gain
ROI Summary
Table 13 presents IDC’s return-on-investment analysis for study participants’ use of LeanIX.
As shown, IDC projects that these companies will achieve three-year benefits (calculated
using discounted cash-flow [DCF] analysis) worth an average of $2,624,100 per organization
($6,348 per LeanIX managed application) through better application management, staff
efficiencies, and improved business performance. These benefits compare with total three-
year DCF costs of $540,100 per organization ($1,306 per LeanIX managed application).
These benefit levels and investment costs are projected to result in an average three-year
ROI of 386% and an investment break-even point in 5 months.

TABLE 13
Three-Year ROI Analysis
Per LeanIX Managed

Three-Year ROI Analysis Per Organization Application
DCF benefits $2,624,100 $6,348
DCF investment $540,100 $1,306
Net present value $2,084,000 $5,041
ROI 386% 386%
Payback (months) 5 5
Discount rate 12% 12%

Challenges/Opportunities
Over the last decade, most organizations have been leading their digital landscapes with
agendas dictated by velocity, agility, and tactical-win considerations. This has often led to
heuristics taking precedence over adequate architecture and planning. Furthermore, cloud
has been disrupting the traditional way of designing systems and managing portfolios, with
architectural-complexity considerations often being either an afterthought or delegated to
SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS platform vendors. Some of the biggest pain points that organizations
have been struggling to navigate on the back of cloud adoption are the rapid accumulation
of technical debt and the financial overspend caused by poor planning and resource
management. The decentralization of solution buying and the empowerment of business
stakeholders to acquire solutions add to the challenges; organizations need to contain their
cloud bills, drive transparency, and maintain alignment over buying-decision processes.
While such organizational attitudes and priorities remain visible today, many organizations
are now being more disciplined in their architecture, portfolio, and financial management —
not least because spending in today’s IT environments provides notable room for savings,
optimization, and efficiency.
Opportunistic decisions can lead to no, or poorly informed, architecture. This typically
results in long-term pain for organizations on all levels — including security, integration,
scalability, performance, and finance (e.g., technical debt management) — when it comes
to evolving the IT estate. LeanIX needs to elevate among its audiences the importance
of discipline for all the above considerations and the risks posed to organizations that
ignore such dimensions for a prolonged period. LeanIX’s forward-thinking approach to
enterprise architecture, application portfolio and technology risk management, and business
transformation places it in a good position to support customers as they reconsider their
priorities and shift behaviors.
One area that is very rapidly surging as a key organizational priority among senior business
leaders is sustainable IT, ranging from networks and racks to application operations and
software engineering. In this context, customers need discoverability, auditing, and analytics
capabilities to capture and reduce the impact their IT has on their carbon footprints. Through
its expertise in enterprise architecture management, LeanIX is positioned to support
customers with their sustainable IT programs on several fronts.

Conclusion
According to IDC research conducted in 2023, 67% of senior IT leaders and 74% of
IT architects rank the role of enterprise application portfolio management in coping
with the growing complexity and surging number of IT assets over the coming years as
very or extremely important. As per the same research, organizations are driving their
application strategies under two very clear mandates: 1) to improve business productivity
(74% of organizations) and 2) to lower the overall cost of the application estate (54% of
organizations).
To successfully navigate the business, organizational, and technology challenges ahead,

every organization will need the strategic capabilities of enterprise architecture and SaaS
management.
With the pace of change and digital innovation in the market accelerating, it is inconceivable
that organizations will be able to compete in a digital-centric business environment without
robust enterprise architecture and high financial, operational, and regulatory compliance
discipline across the application estate — especially across the rapidly expanding
SaaS estate. The ability to cope with structural changes in the market is dependent on
organizational and technical agility, security and compliance posture, and financial control
over everything digital. All these considerations are, in turn, dependent on how competitive
an organization’s enterprise architecture and SaaS estate management capabilities are.
IDC interviewed 10 organizations to understand the impacts of LeanIX Enterprise

Architecture Management and SaaS Application Management on users of these solutions.
These organizations reported multiple financial and productivity benefits centered around
greater visibility into digital asset inventory, higher application functionality, and business
growth. As such, these organizations will achieve, on average, a 386% ROI over three years.

Appendix: Methodology
IDC’s standard ROI methodology was utilized for this project, with the foundation being data
gathered from current LeanIX users.
IDC performed a three-step process based on interview responses to

calculate the ROI and payback period:
1. IDC gathered quantitative benefit information during interviews using a before-and-
after assessment of the impacts of LeanIX. In this study, the benefits included IT cost
reductions and avoidances, staff time savings and productivity benefits, and revenue
gains.
2. IDC created a complete investment profile (three-year total cost analysis) from interview
responses. Investments go beyond the initial and annual costs of using LeanIX and can
include additional costs related to migrations, planning, consulting, and staff or user
training.
3. IDC calculated the ROI and payback period. IDC conducted a discounted cash-flow (DCF)
analysis of the benefits and investments for the organization’s use of LeanIX over a three-
year period. ROI is the ratio of the net present value (NPV) and the DCF investment. The
payback period is the point at which cumulative benefits equal the initial investment.
IDC bases the payback period and ROI calculations on a number of

assumptions, which are summarized as follows:
• Time values are multiplied by burdened salary (salary + 28% for benefits and overhead)
to quantify efficiency and productivity savings. For the purposes of this analysis, IDC
has used assumptions of an average fully loaded $100,000 per year salary for IT staff
members and an average fully loaded salary of $70,000 for non-IT staff members. IDC
assumes that employees work 1,880 hours per year (47 weeks x 40 hours).
• The net present value of the three-year savings is calculated by subtracting the amount
that would have been realized by investing the original sum in an instrument yielding a
12% return to allow for the missed opportunity cost. This accounts for both the assumed
cost of money and the assumed rate of return.
• Because LeanIX requires a deployment period, the full benefits of the solution are not
available during deployment. To capture this reality, IDC prorates the benefits on a
monthly basis and then subtracts the deployment time from the first-year savings.
Note: The numbers in this document may not be exact due to rounding.

About the IDC Analysts

Megan Szurley
Senior Research Analyst Business Value
Megan Szurley is a Senior Research Analyst for the Business Value Strategy Practice,
responsible for creating custom business value research that determines return-on-
investment (ROI) and cost-savings for enterprise technology products. Megan’s research
focuses on the financial and operational impact of these products for organizations once
deployed and in production.
More about Megan Szurley
Neil Ward-Dutton
VP, AI and Intelligent Process Automation European Practices
Neil Ward-Dutton is vice president, Automation, Analytics and AI at IDC Europe. In this role
he guides IDC’s research agendas, and helps enterprise and technology vendor clients
alike make sense of the opportunities and challenges across these very fast-moving and
complicated technology markets. In a 28-year career as a technology industry analyst, Neil
has researched a wide range of enterprise software technologies, authored hundreds of
reports and regularly appeared on TV and in print media.
More about Neil Ward-Dutton
George Mironescu
Associate Research Director, App Development and Delivery
George Mironescu leads the app development and delivery research across Europe,
covering areas such as modern app delivery environments, developer and DevOps
platforms, software delivery pipelines, app integration, cloud native frameworks and open
source communities.
George looks at the challenges and pain points facing end user organizations within
their software development/delivery roadmaps, taking a persona-based view on realities,
perceptions, and ambitions. He also closely follows vendor product development and areas
of investment.
More about George Mironescu

This publication was produced by IDC Custom Solutions. The opinion, analysis, and research results
presented herein are drawn from more detailed research and analysis independently conducted and
published by IDC, unless specific vendor sponsorship is noted. IDC Custom Solutions makes IDC
content available in a wide range of formats for distribution by various companies. This IDC material
is licensed for external use and in no way does the use or publication of IDC research indicate IDC’s
endorsement of the sponsor’s or licensee’s products or strategies.
IDC Research, Inc.

140 Kendrick Street, Building B, Needham, MA 02494, USA
T +1 508 872 8200
@idc @idc idc.com
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services,
and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.
With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology
and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC’s analysis and insight helps IT professionals,
business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to
achieve their key business objectives.
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Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX | October 2023

The Business Value of LeanIX

Table of Contents CLICK ANY HEADING TO NAVIGATE

Business Value Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Business Value of LeanIX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Business Value and Quantified Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

About the IDC Analysts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

• Tracking and monitoring the performance of SaaS applications

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

As reported by interviewed organizations that deployed

• Procurement and finance department — through savings and

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

Sheer Architectural and Operational

• Applications, data management technologies, and infrastructure platforms:

• IT delivery platforms and models: Investments in public cloud delivery

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

• Supported business products and services: Modern technology stacks support

• Stakeholders: The dispersion of ownership over technology investments and

In Need of Cloud-Estate Optimization

These conditions compel organizations to increase their operational discipline,

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

Iteration Key in Changing Innovation

Mapping and Managing Value Streams

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

LeanIX acquired SaaS management application specialist Cleanshelf in 2021,

As a result of these developments, LeanIX now offers three

• SaaS Management Platform (SMP)

• Value Stream Management (VSM)

All three products are hosted on LeanIX’s Continuous Transformation Platform — a

Enterprise Architecture Management

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

SaaS Management Platform

• Identify duplicate subscription licenses and redundant contracts

• Track and monitor application usage and manage spending

• Identify opportunities to optimize usage and reduce spending

Value Stream Management

As with the other LeanIX products, the foundation of VSM is a services-focused

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

The solution enables customers to map technical services to team ownership, as

The Business Value of

Table 1 presents the study’s demographics. The organizations that IDC

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

Firmographics Average Median Range

Number of employees 37,751 1,300 90 to 300,000

Number of IT staff 654 380 2 to 2,000

Annual revenue $33B $1.3B $28.5M to $250B

United States (5), Germany (2),

Software (2), Education (2), Financial

Source: IDC Business Value Research, May 2023

Choice and Use of LeanIX

Study participants elaborated on these benefits as follows:

• Improved ability to design/architect and operationalize application systems —

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

• Increased application landscape transparency and visibility — financial services

• Deeper understanding of SaaS application use — software organization (SMP):

• Improved portfolio management and architecture — software organization (both

LeanIX Usage Average Median

Number of applications 413 195

Number of business application users 227,316 1,300

Source: IDC Business Value Research, May 2023

Business Value White Paper, sponsored by LeanIX

n = 10; Source: IDC Business Value Research, May 2023