Capstone-7160

A shift from selling packaged software to offering it on the cloud was a significant step and one that would need to venture into the world of the unknown. A strategy like this would require significant planning and strenuous implementation, adapting and taking corrective when necessary. Even after all that takes place, there is still the task of evaluating the strategy. With any strategy rollout, especially one as large as this, there are benchmarks, lessons learned, and best practices that can all be identified and documented. This is then used to make sure that this strategy was effective and in line with organizational and managerial goals to continually improve. Looking at Richard Rumelt's four criteria to evaluate a strategy, we can see the effectiveness of Adobe's strategy to become fully cloud-reliant. The first, consistency, was shown in the organizational goal to shift to the cloud model. This goal was well communicated, accepted, and aligned all employees intentions

Adobe was committed to the cloud transition but needed to ensure cooperation and coordination with proper management oversight was in place in order to have a successful implementation. Getting away from the "product in a box" type of sales and now offering subscription based services was going to create continuous and better anticipated revenue. Retaining customers that may be resistant to change and appealing to new customers to expand their new model was critical to their success for the immediate and long term. Numerous departments contributed to the implementation of this systemic and strategic implementation. The Marketing department needed to ensure the change in product offerings was well messaged for existing customers so that they would be more comfortable with the transition and willing to trust a cloud platform for their long trusted and used box products but also attract new customers with these revolutionary and more accessible products. The Finance and Accounti

It's always easier to implement a particular strategy when there's a plan in place. Fortunately for Adobe, they had a great plan and knew where they wanted to go, they just needed to get there. As an impressive feat and benchmark for other firms to model, Adobe took it's portfolio of software and went to the cloud with it. The idea and premise raised concerns and doubts but after difficult financial times, they decided to switch gears. In 2009, Adobe started on strategy formulation and after the 2011 announcement, Creative Cloud was going to be implemented. For Adobe, this was a huge step and implementation had to go well adhering to the plan. One of the first steps was allocating resources to the transition by way of personnel and $200 million in funding. In order for this to be a seamless transition for customers, Adobe had to continue to sell software products as it always had, in the form of physical copies while also enabling users to purchase cloud based tools and sub