Knowledge Worker Productivity Impact

Evidence and data. According to the survey, 54% of respondents reported saving time while writing, and 81% stated that Grammarly saved them time when editing written content at work. In addition, 70% reported that they communicated more effectively with Grammarly.

The principal writer at the software and services company discussed Grammarly’s role in creating clearly written content in less time and called Grammarly a safety net that ensured that employees’ writing was error free. The strategic advisor at the same company extended this notion, calling out how, in addition to providing suggestions for improving clarity in writing, Grammarly saved time by reducing unnecessary review cycles. This interviewee said, “I trust and have confidence that if there are no red underlines, my writing is error free, and with that, Grammarly has saved me time.”

Throughout the interviews, the representatives highlighted how Grammarly’s writing assistant, snippets, and AI-powered writing tools improved organizational efficiency during the writing and editing process. They also mentioned the benefits of brand tones, style guides, and corporate dictionaries. The interviewees expanded on these tools as follows:

• Writing assistant. Interviewees relayed that Grammarly’s writing assistant made writing easier, more efficient, and more impactful, enabling employees to communicate their ideas more effectively and with higher confidence in less time. Leveraging Grammarly’s AI-infused tools, interviewees said users produced error-free writing, refined ideas, and expressed themselves more effectively without procrastinating over empty pages. The writing assistant also helped users create a more personalized and impactful writing style and more confidently choose the right language for specific contexts and audiences. As a result, users created enhanced sales communication, more targeted job descriptions, clearer technical instructions, higher-quality marketing and web content, and more impactful corporate communication in less time.
  
  The business process consultant at the shared services company explained how Grammarly provided them with reassurance when communicating with leadership and creating documentation for management. They said: “I used to review my content multiple times to ensure they were well-written and made sense. Now, with Grammarly, I feel more confident knowing that it can catch any errors or suggest improvements. It saves me time during the review process.”
  
  The principal writer at the software and services firm talked about appreciating Grammarly for catching typos and correcting punctuation issues, saying: “I often forget when to use a comma before ‘and,’ ‘or,’ and ‘but’ and when not to use one, so Grammarly helps me with that. Despite my title as a writer, I’m not as skilled with spelling and punctuation rules as one might expect, so Grammarly makes me look good.”

• Style guides, brand tones, and corporate dictionary. Interviewees highlighted how easy it was to implement style guides, brand tones, and corporate dictionaries in Grammarly. Grammarly made style, brand, and term suggestions and guided users on when to use or spell out acronyms. These capabilities allowed users to quickly access and refer to shared writing guidelines, promoting a uniform corporate brand across the organization while maintaining consistent spelling and usage of terms across teams. These capabilities promoted the insertion of a corporate tone of voice and terminology into new content without the need to switch to external style guides and other corporate templates. This enabled content creators and writing teams to work more efficiently. By enabling users to catch inconsistencies during the writing process, these tools allowed the interviewees’ organizations to produce more mistake-free and well-written content without requiring lengthy review cycles. Interviewees mentioned that with these tools, newcomers found it easier to adapt to corporate writing styles and standards, reducing the time and effort required for onboarding. Additionally, by using these features in Grammarly, employees could communicate with global constituents and non-native English speakers more efficiently.
  
  The business process consultant, who was responsible for the creation of internal training materials at the shared services firm, stated that Grammarly had improved their team’s communication, training materials, and overall efficiency. They clarified: “Grammarly prompts users to consider whether they should use an acronym or spell it out for better clarity. These features have been particularly helpful for not just non-native English speakers but also those who need to communicate with clarity.”
  
  The business development manager at the computer software company discussed the value of Grammarly’s style guide capabilities in achieving consistent communication across geographies: “I found the style guide feature useful. I created custom recommendations for my global team, and I see them using those.”
  
  Before Grammarly, only 22% of respondents reported that communicating in the right tone of voice was easy for them. With Grammarly, this percentage grew to 83%.

• Snippets. Interviewees mentioned several examples of how their teams used snippets to create further efficiencies in the writing process. They said that snippets allowed users to insert predefined text blocks or commonly used phrases directly into the application where they are writing in. This helped maintain consistency in writing and promoted a unified and professional writing style, reducing the likelihood of errors or omissions in frequently used content and increased overall writing efficiency. Establishing department-specific content and communication patterns also reduced the need for customer-facing teams to find and use templates, thereby saving time and effort. Snippets also improved the accuracy and efficiency of customer support interactions, allowing support teams to serve more customers and reduce escalations due to fewer instances of miscommunication.
  
  The business development manager at the computer software company mentioned how their team saved frequently used text snippets in Grammarly, saying, “Snippets are the biggest help, especially for my oversees employees whose writing has significantly improved with Grammarly.”
  
  In another example, the senior developmental editor at the computer software company noted, “The team responsible for social media and community management utilizes snippets to efficiently respond to app store reviews and for their use in managing various social media accounts.”

• Generative AI. Leveraging Grammarly’s generative AI capabilities, interviewees’ organizations created quality content in less time. Interviewees reported that Grammarly’s generative AI capabilities are available in any Grammarly-enabled application or website, enhancing the writing, revising, and summarizing processes. The generative AI capability also facilitated brainstorming and ideation, which reduced blank-page syndrome and ultimately saved time. Additionally, through Grammarly’s ability to autogenerate text, interviewees noticed that they could increase the speed and accuracy of communication by reducing the time it takes to respond to emails. Furthermore, Grammarly reduced revision cycle times and enabled editing teams to focus on enhancing the content of customer-facing blogs and manuals.
  
  The content management capabilities owner at the technology manufacturing company said: “Our editors who proofread content for our marketing teams are heavy users, spending many hours a day using Grammarly. They leverage its ability to revise content for clarity quickly.”
  
  The business process consultant at the shared services discussed how Grammarly’s suggestions for alternative phrasing have been helpful when they needed to generate ideas or overcome writer’s block: “Even if the suggestions need more editing, they provide a foundation to build upon. Also, I have seen how the generative AI feature can be beneficial in providing concise summaries or explanations.”
  
  When asked to quantify time savings, survey respondents reported an average efficiency of 43% created by Grammarly during their communication workstreams.

In a task-based view, surveyed Grammarly users saved the most time writing to others, reviewing work, and proofreading (40%), followed by responding to communication (39%):

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization employs 7,500 knowledge workers. In Year 1, 20% are active Grammarly users, while 40% adopt Grammarly in Year 2 and 60% become Grammarly users in Year 3.

• On average, Grammarly users save 40 minutes per day thanks to the streamlined writing process enabled by the tool. Efficiency gains in Years 1 and 2 reflect the impact of Grammarly within a user base that proportionately includes more heavy writers than in consecutive years when Grammarly seats are extended more broadly across the organization. In Year 3, when the user base includes proportionately fewer heavy writers than in previous years, Grammarly’s additional efficiency-generating capabilities are factored into the calculation.

• Forrester applies a productivity capture rate of 50% as not all reclaimed time equals productive time. 

• The average fully burdened annual salary for a knowledge worker is $75,000.

Risks. Operational differences that may affect the financial benefit of knowledge worker efficiencies when using Grammarly include:

• The extent to which the organization’s knowledge workers rely on written communication.

• The average amount of time users spend writing during the workday.

• The degree to which an organization can encourage more widespread use of Grammarly across various applications and writing tasks.

• The extent to which users are adopting Grammarly’s generative AI capabilities.

• The prevailing compensation rates for office and knowledge workers in the local area.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $20.3 million.

Replacement Of Legacy Writing Assistant And Style Guide Solution

Evidence and data. Interviewees from two of the organizations noted their organizations had previously invested in solutions that were meant to provide content management, style guides, and writing assistant capabilities to groups of content editors and proofreaders in various departments. However, interviewees mentioned that it was difficult to gain widespread adoption and consistent usage.

• The senior developmental editor at the computer software company stated that their company implemented the legacy solution for quality assurance efforts, but because of the complexity of the back end, it was a cumbersome process to keep the content up to date and, as a result, much of the writing guidelines were out of date and not very helpful. The interviewee added: “We tested Grammarly because we found that the legacy solution was too difficult to use and too difficult to maintain. We were not able to ever get the guidelines up to where we wanted them to be with the old platform.”

• The content management capabilities owner at the technology manufacturing company mentioned that the legacy solution had a steep learning curve for users: “We overcomplicated the tool with thousands of configurations and rule sets, which made it also difficult to manage. Overall, the tool was deemed too expensive, difficult to use, and had too much overhead.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The cost of the legacy solution is $1,000 per user per year.

• 541 employees, just over 7% of knowledge workers, are licensed to use the legacy solution.

• The legacy solution is fully decommissioned by the end of Year 1 of the Grammarly deployment.

Risks. Operational differences that may impact the financial benefit associated with cost savings from retiring legacy solutions include:

• The organization’s prior use of other content management, writing assistant, or style guide solutions.

• The lifecycle costs associated with these solutions and equipment.

• The rate at which the organization retires these solutions and equipment.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $683,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees and survey respondents mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• More impactful sales communication and better adherence to brand voice. The principal writer at the software and services company explained that a key goal of the Grammarly rollout was to provide sales teams and other customer-facing teams with guidance on the company’s brand voice. The business development manager at the computer software company talked about the impact they saw on their own writing as well as on that of their team: “Grammarly provided suggestions and helped me make my text more concise and express myself better, and I became a better writer through using it. For some team members, it took some time to get on board, but eventually, I have received good feedback from my team, and I have seen an improvement in their writing, particularly in their emails.”

• Enhanced inclusivity and tone of internal communications. The content management capabilities owner at the technology manufacturing firm explained, “While our main priority is supporting website marketing and customer-facing communications, we see value in Grammarly for other use cases across the company.” These use cases included internal communication, where several interviewees reported that Grammarly had improved the tone and inclusiveness of their emails and internal memos. The principal writer at the software and services company mentioned that they pay attention to Grammarly’s tone prompts in their emails and chat messages throughout the day. The interviewee said: “Grammarly analyzes my tone and indicates whether I sound casual or professional, defensive or not. I pay attention to that. If the icon tells me I sound forceful or defensive, I will rewrite the sentence. So, I really appreciate those signals and prompts.”

• Confidence in writing quality for non-native English speakers. The senior developmental editor at the computer software company mentioned how Grammarly was particularly helpful for their team because their organization employs writers in different countries with different dialects. They explained: “Grammarly helps ensure that we are using the correct English style and language. I sometimes flag words or phrases that may be correct in certain dialects but not in our target style. It helps us maintain consistency in our writing.” The content management capabilities owner at the technology manufacturing company noted that before investing in Grammarly, their project governance team surveyed the user base and identified “Help with grammar and spelling,” especially for non-native English speakers, as one of the top use cases employees mentioned. The principal writer at the software and services firm noted, “Some users, especially non-native English speakers, have mentioned feeling more confident in their writing when using Grammarly.”

Survey respondents reported increased confidence in their writing quality with Grammarly. Before Grammarly, 51% percent of respondents felt confident or very confident communicating at work. With Grammarly, this number went up to 91%.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Grammarly and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Personalizing AI-generated text. Interviewees discussed the desire to explore a new capability where Grammarly automatically detects and creates a writing profile or voice for users based on previous writing. This feature would allow users to apply their unique communication style to AI-generated text with the goal of reducing revision time and ensuring that the output reflects the user’s style more accurately. With this capability, users will be able to leverage their company’s unique communication style in conjunction with their personal voice while taking advantage of the power of generative AI.

• Leveraging Grammarly across more applications to further reduce context switching. According to the interviewees, their organizations have promoted the use of Grammarly across various applications, but there are still more opportunities to enable the writing assistant and generative AI capabilities across additional desktop and web applications. Interviewees expect that this will further reduce context switching for users and ensure consistent and clear communication and the opportunity to use generative AI across more applications and platforms.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A).