Decision Sheet

Problem Statement:
The CEO and President of Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe), Shantanu Narayen knows that the
Bloomberg journalist would ask if Adobe had plans to reverse the decision of implementing Creative Cloud
or not.

Decision Taken:
We don’t have any plan for reversing the decision Creative Cloud it is doing great in the market and we can
see a great future ahead.

Why the decision was taken?

● In 2008 while recession hit the global economy our revenue dipped by 20%, which was higher than
our peers in the industry. The main reason for being that we were using perpetual license method
while our competitors were using subscription based method. After thorough analysis we also
decided to move towards subscription model by acquiring Omniture for $1.8 billion. It was an online
marketing and web analytics company which would be very helpful in launching CC for us.

● Our company has lost $1 billion due to piracy because the customers were able to hack our
software with the help of Creative Cloud the hacking activities would be reduced to great extent.

● As we can clearly analyse from the revenue statement that the revenue from subscription based
model has increased by 47% in 2011-12 and the revenue from packaged product has declined by
2%. It’s quite visible that even before completely the subscription model we are able to increase
our revenue exponentially.

● We expected that CC would attract 800,000 new subscribers by 2015, and we were very close to
the target in just 1 year of launch in 2013 that means the Package offered by the company was
hugely accepted by the customers overall. Moreover, the company would be able to generate more
revenue from CC model and it would also not be cyclical. So we are not closing down the cloud
based method of selling.

● We are totally trying to go for a new business model which is based on profit making. The main
target would be CMO’s directly and not through some intermediaries. This will help us in growing
at a large pace and also we will be able to generate more and more revenues.

● The message the company wants to give was understood by just 5,000 people who were present
at MAX, as they were able to understand the end-to-end story and what the company wants to
do.There is also a lot of misunderstanding about CC among various different customers. The
company must start a campaign drive in which the company clearly states the problem for which
they are shifting to CC and all the benefits of CC to the customers.

● After the introduction of CC freelancers and small business owners are finding it expensive as they
are not using all the software and also after paying on a regular basis they can’t be the owner of
the software. We will think about a subscription based model with smaller bundles which can be
customised and also a way in which the business can retain the previous data even though he is
not subscribing on a regular basis.