Noel Yuhanna, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester Mary Barton, Consultant, Forrester Blaise James, Analyst Relations, Neo4j

1. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
The Business Value of Neo4j
Blaise James | Analyst Relations, Neo4j
Guests:
Noel Yuhanna | Forrester Research
Mary Barton | Forrester Research
October 2021
A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Neo4j

2. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Our Customers Are Solving
Complex And Valuable Problems
With Graphs ... With Neo4j.

3. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Forrester Total Economic ImpactTM
(TEI)
• Proven 20-year-old approach to evaluating business value
• Evaluation of 4 elements
◦ Cost
◦ Benefits
◦ Flexibility
◦ Risk
• Objective
◦ Custom research study
◦ Forrester does not endorse a company or its solutions, and maintains editorial
control over the content
A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Neo4j

4. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Quick Takeaways
• Capture the benefits of the Neo4j graph platform
◦ 400%+ ROI on average
◦ Improved business results of 20% on average
◦ Accelerated Time-to-Value (TTV) up to 60%
◦ Digital transformation cost savings
A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Neo4j

5. Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2021
Thank you

6. The Total Economic Impact Of
The Neo4j Graph Data Platform
Mary Barton, Consultant

7. The audience should be aware of the following:
• This document is an abridged webinar version of a full case study (Forrester Total Economic Impact of
Neo4j Graph Data Platform, October, 2021).
• The study is commissioned by Neo4j and delivered by the Forrester Consulting group.
• Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential return on investment that other organizations will
receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers should use their own estimates within the framework
provided in the report to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Neo4j Graph Data Platform.
• Neo4j reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the
study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or
obscure the meaning of the study.
• The customer names for the interviews were provided by Neo4j.
• Forrester does not endorse Neo4j.
Disclosures

8. Agenda
Introduction
What is TEI?
Executive summary
Customer journeys
Study results
Question and answer
Please note:
This slide presentation is an abridged,
graphical, and complementary
representation of a case study.
For a full explanation of methodology
and details on model calculations,
please refer to the full case study (The
Total Economic Impact of The Neo4j
Graph Data Platform, October, 2021)

9. “Next-level” business case justifications are
increasingly important for technology investments
TCO ROI TEI
IT impact
IT costs
IT cost savings
Business
impact
User efficiency
Business effectiveness
Risk/
uncertainty
Risk mitigation
Risk versus reward
Strategic
impact
Scalability
Flexibility
What is an effective business case?
Over 90% of IT decision-makers find value in a
business case

10. TEITM
is a proven,
consistent, repeatable
methodology to
justify technology
investments
Flexibility
BENEFITS
COSTS
FLEXIBILITY
RISK
TOTAL ECONOMIC
IMPACT

11. Project approach
Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact of Neo4j Graph Data Platform
DUE
DILIGENCE
CUSTOMER
INTERVIEWS
COMPOSITE AND
FINANCIAL
MODEL
WRITE CASE
STUDY
REVIEW AND
FINALIZE

12. “The main problem was that we had no flexibility
to create new features. We would think of a way to
do something cool with the activity feed, but we
weren't able to execute because the existing
infrastructure we had was such a big, rigid system.”
— Senior software engineer, software

13. © 2021 Forrester. Reproduction Prohibited.
“It’s just like you’re building an airplane
and you said, ‘Oh, I have a great
steam engine. Let’s try with that first
because that’s what we use
everywhere.’ But you need a different
thing. So what’s the comparison of
steam engines versus jet engines for
aircraft? There’s no real comparison.”
- Principal architect, financial services
Three-year impact
Based on an analysis of Neo4j
customer feedback and quantified
benefit, cost, risk, and flexibility factors.
ROI
417%
BENEFITS PV
$5.19M
NPV
$4.18M

14. Banking – Data Architect, Canada
Software – Senior Software Engineer, United States
Not-for-profit – Chief architect, Enterprise innovation architect, United States
Financial Services – Principal Architect, United States
Forrester interviewed 5 decision makers with 4 users
of the Neo4j Graph Data Platform

15. Key Challenges
• Barriers to digital transformation.
• Relational database limitations.
• Inefficient IT utilization.

16. “If you have an application that needs to make,
say, five jumps, with Neo4j you can do it in a
second or two. In a relational database that can run
for 20 minutes, and that completely ruled out the
ability for such an application to be interactive.”
— Principal architect, financial services

17. Creating a business case
for the Neo4j Graph Data
Platform
Forrester created a composite organization
to convey the aggregate financial analysis
The composite organization:
• Develops both customer facing and
internal business applications using
Neo4j.
• Targets $5 million in revenue per year
with applications developed using Neo4j.
• Employs 6 Full-time Neo4j developers.
• Deploys Neo4j Enterprise Edition as a
self-hosted solution with three to five
production machines operating in the
cloud and spanning one to three data
centers, with corresponding test and
development environments.

18. $2.2 M
$1.1 M
$1.8 M
$0.5M
$1.0M
$1.5M
$2.0M
$2.5M
Improved business
results
Increased time-to-value
in the software
development lifecycle
Digital transformation
savings achieved
Three-year risk-adjusted
benefits
Based on interviews with current customer
organizations, as applied to the composite

19. © 2021 Forrester. Reproduction Prohibited.
Improved business
results
One of the interviewees
reported a significant uptick in
customer engagement.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
$2.2M 3-year PV
“With the collaboration between us and
product, they’re really able to get into it and
actually contribute to what the algorithm does
in the end. Doing that with the previous model
was a lot harder.”
- Senior software engineer, consumer
technology
An interviewee described how the
Neo4j model not only allowed
them to source more data to
support the effort but detect
suspicious accounts so that fraud
was predicted and prevented.

20. © 2021 Forrester. Reproduction Prohibited.
Increased time-to-value
in the software
development lifecycle
“It’s just the fact that the business rules
that had to be incorporated into an
algorithm are 10,000 pages of
documentation. I would say the time-to-
realization, from deciding that that Neo4j
was the right fit, was six to nine months,
with a very small team of three people.”
– Chief architect for non-profit
FINANCIAL IMPACT
$1.1M 3-year PV
Interviewed decision-makers reported that they
were able to achieve efficiencies across the
software development lifecycle. From the initial
meetings with business stakeholders and data
incorporation through to deployment of a production
application, less time and effort was expended.
“One of the other things I like about graphs
in Neo4j: It’s very easy to prototype a large
amount of data on your personal computer.
– Senior Software Engineer

21. © 2021 Forrester. Reproduction Prohibited.
Digital transformation
savings achieved
FINANCIAL IMPACT
$1.8M 3-year PV
“If we tried to do a ‘square peg in a round
hole with a sledgehammer’ and had been
using proprietary in-memory structures or
a relational database (or some other
NoSQL database) in order to do this, we
would probably be using significantly more
horsepower, CPU, memory, storage,
cache, you name it, to accomplish the
same work.
- Chief architect, not-for-profit
“We had an algorithm running, and we
were powering it with [a previous solution].
About a year ago, we started moving
those recommendations to Neo4j. Our
graph-based recommendations perform
better, and we cut out about $300,000 a
year.”
- Senior software engineer, software
company

22. Better collaboration with
business stakeholders
Organizational
Knowledge
There are benefits to using Neo4j Graph Data Platform
that the customers couldn’t quantify
1
Schemaless database
Agility

23. Three-year risk-adjusted
costs
Incremental cost and effort to implement and
use the Neo4j Graph Data Platform
$820,661
$182,784
Neo4j license and fees Neo4j administration

24. 417%
Return on investment (ROI)
$4.18M
Net present value (NPV)
Financial summary
Three-year risk-adjusted results
-$1.0 M
$1.0 M
$2.0 M
$3.0 M
$4.0 M
$5.0 M
$6.0 M
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Cash
flows
Cash Flow Chart (Risk-Adjusted)
Total costs Total benefits Cumulative net benefits

25. Thank You.
Mary Barton
Consultant
mbarton@forrester.com

26. Business case definitions
101
Present value (PV)
The present or current value of (discounted) cost and benefit
estimates given at an interest rate (the discount rate). The PV
of costs and benefits feed into the total NPV of cash flows.
Net present value (NPV)
The present or current value of (discounted) future net cash
flows given an interest rate (the discount rate). A positive
project NPV normally indicates that the investment should be
made, unless other projects have higher NPVs.
Payback period
The breakeven point for an investment. This is the point in time
at which net benefits (benefits minus costs) equal initial
investment or cost.
Return on investment (ROI)
A project’s expected return in percentage terms. ROI is
calculated by dividing net benefits (benefits less costs) by
costs.

27. Accelerate Digital
Transformation Initiative
With Graph Technology
Noel Yuhanna
Vice President, Principal Analyst

28. Digital transformation continues to be a top
priority for global enterprises . . .

29. Digital transformations must be powered by new
generation solutions to remain competitive …
AI
Graph
Cloud

30. However creating
data connections
can be very complex
and time consuming!
Ingest
Data sources

31. Ingest
Graph simplifies
data connections
at scale
Data sources

32. Graph simplifies connected data … delivers a
platform to drive new digital transformation
initiatives…
Customer transaction data
Sensor data
Click-stream data
Inventory data
Point-of-sale data
ERP data
Social data
Supply chain data
Product data
Sales data
Customer data
System of record(master data)

33. 7
• Make connections quickly and more
accurately: For new and emerging
business use cases
• Data analysis performance: Takes
query, insights and predictive analytics
to the next level
• Uncover hidden connections: In data
science, and advanced analytics
• Improve staff productivity: With
minimal coding and more analysis
• Address new business needs:
Integrates with AI/ML to deliver new
business use cases.
Why use Graph
Database?

34. 8
• Customer 360 initiative
• Customer intelligence
• IoT analytics
• Microservices applications
• Risk analytics
• Industry-specific insights
• Operational insights
• And others!
Graph can accelerate
many business use
cases!

35. Graph can also lower cost of digital
transformation initiatives through
automation, improve productivity of
staff, lower hardware requirements and
accelerate use cases!

36. 10
Thank You.
Noel Yuhanna
Vice President, Principal Analyst