Implementation Strategies

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 subscriptions. There were questions and concerns along the way so management enacted open dialogue with employees to encourage transparency and solicit feedback. Adobe also relied on effectively organizing and structuring the employees the trusted to implement this critical strategy. 

Adobe learned early in the process that the team was executing well and customers were embracing the transition which was creating a more consistent revenue stream. The implementation was going so well that Adobe announced only two years into the transition that it would no longer continue to sell physical copies of hardware and would be solely cloud based. What started as a bold idea evolved into a vision then a well designed plan then a properly executed and implemented project that would propel Adobe from a stock price of $31.45 at the time of this huge announcement to a price of $344.04 today.

References:

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/reborn-in-the-cloud

https://www.launchnotes.com/blog/how-they-launched-it-adobes-cloud-transformation

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADBE/