There’s no shortage of new developer tools promising to reduce toil and improve productivity. But investing in the latest technology can require a leap of faith organizations can no longer afford to make. Leaders need assurance that the investment they’re making will pay off, quickly.
That’s why Cortex commissioned Forrester Consulting, an independent research firm, to interview and assess the return on investment for four customers of Cortex’s market leading Internal Developer Portal (IDP) and combine the results to form a single composite organization. IDPs offer a new way to reduce friction in building and maintaining high quality software, and Cortex’s solution in particular offers several unique advantages that accrue to real savings and benefit for our customers.
To download the full Forrester Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study complete comprehensive calculations and detailed analysis, visit our website.
Top quantified benefits of investing in Cortex IDP over alternatives
The Forrester TEI study provides a detailed analysis of the benefits provided by Cortex IDP, highlighting a Return on Investment (ROI) of 224%, 6 month payback timeline, and a Net Present Value (NPV) of $4.41 million over three years..
Image from the Forrester Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study of Cortex's Internal Developer Portal
This return captures four quantifiable areas of return:
1. 20% Improvement to Engineering Productivity
Cortex IDP boosts productivity by 20% through operational improvements like reduced context switching, reduced “time-to-find,” and higher velocity in deploying new services and resources.
“We had worked out a cadence for context-switching, but it might take someone an hour or two to work it out. Whereas now, that’s zero hours. That’s gone.” - ENGINEERING DIRECTOR, MEDIA
2. 75% manager time savings on strategic tasks
Cortex IDP cuts the time required for team leads to gather metrics, monitor migrations, and compile reports by 75%, freeing them to focus on strategic initiatives.
“Managers wouldn’t have been able to do this at all before Cortex. It was analysis paralysis. Cortex has such a broad array of metrics and tooling, and I think very few developer leaders would have been able to do this on their own.” - SVP, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING ENABLEMENT, SPORTS
3. 25% faster time to market for increased revenue capture
Cortex IDP reduces the overall time required to deploy new software, system upgrades, or new features by 25%, significantly improving ability to drive new revenue.
“Our integrations are configured in such a way that we systematically pull in the right information, and presto! The engineering leader has information they never would have been able to capture themselves. … Cortex knows where to find the right information.”- SVP, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING ENABLEMENT, SPORTS
4. Reallocation of 6 engineering FTE from reduced TCO
Cortex’s extensible platform offers many out-of-the-box integrations and features that obviate the need to build and maintain custom solutions, saving 6 FTE whose work could be reallocated to other operational, infrastructure, and front-end tasks.
“[Before Cortex], we had a service catalog and before that, we had spreadsheets. … Our compliance and certification team told us it was very hard to keep these up to date.”- PLATFORM ENGINEER, SOFTWARE
Additional Strategic Benefits
Security and Compliance Enhancements: Cortex streamlines compliance processes across the development lifecycle, simplifying the adherence to stringent regulatory requirements.
Faster Onboarding and Ramp-Up: New developers integrate into projects more quickly, reducing the time to their first meaningful contributions.
“Before, if I wanted to understand our operational health, I had to go to [multiple different tools]. Now, I can go to Cortex and understand where each service is at a glance thanks to the Scorecards. Pulling this information from a multiple places is a huge time-saver.”SVP, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING ENABLEMENT, SPORTS
Knowledge Preservation: Cortex ensures that institutional knowledge is retained and accessible, which is crucial during reorganizations or team changes.
“We used a variety of platforms to promote documentation standards or promote the availability of products for developers, whether with business messaging apps, town halls, or newsletters. None of them were able to bring the developer community together.” - SVP, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING ENABLEMENT, SPORTS
Reduced Downtime: Being able to gather information more quickly during an incident saved time and hastened the resolution of potential outages and issues.
“We’ve improved our time to restore, and I can attribute some of that to Cortex.”- ENGINEERING MANAGER, HR SAAS
Flexibility: The ability to scale with rapid growth. For the interviewees’ organizations that experienced a period of break-neck growth, Cortex enabled them to keep up with maintaining their rapidly multiplying services while still meeting key deadlines.
“Without Cortex, we cannot grow quickly. We’d be blind. We have hundreds of services and it’s not possible to keep them up to date manually.” - PLATFORM ENGINEER, SOFTWARE
The unique value provided by Cortex
Cortex was uniquely designed to drive a flywheel of engagement across all three pillars of productivity, delivering the highest possible return for engineering teams. Each pillar is detailed below, along with attributes unique to Cortex that prevent the findings of this research from being extrapolated to any other solution in market today:
Developer System of Record: Cortex connects to all engineering team tools to generate a comprehensive, cross-contextual view of everything you own. 50+ out of the box integrations, support for custom data, comprehensive plugin framework, and customizable catalogs mean faster time to value that doesn’t require users to redefine business logic or build front end experiences for each new use case.
Continuous Improvement: Cortex uses data from across the stack to continuously assess alignment to any standard or initiative you create. Developers are alerted when software they own falls out of alignment, ensuring prompt attention. These micro investments in preventative health promote a culture of continuous ownership that benefit developers just as much as the organization as a whole.
Developer Self-Service: Finally, Cortex is the only commercial IDP offering multi-step developer workflows that stitch together cross-ecosystem operations like repo setup, templating, ticketing, and approvals. This saves developers and managers time in lengthy request processes, enabling them to spend more time building new value.
Conclusion: Cortex IDP as a Strategic Necessity
The Forrester TEI study not only highlights the financial benefits but also the transformative potential of Cortex IDP in streamlining developer workflows. In an environment where efficient software development is directly linked to business success, investing in Cortex IDP represents a strategic decision to enhance operational efficiency and foster innovation. To download the full study, visit our website, or for a fully customized ROI analysis, contact us today.
