Twelve quick inputs. Five value drivers. Three numbers: your annual bleed, your saving with SoftSight, and the day cumulative savings cross the bundle subscription cost.
To your personalised number
60s
Time · CPI · Fraud · Headcount · Recon
5 drivers
No friction to see the numbers
No email
All defaults come from public benchmarks — ESOMAR, Insights Association, Cint/Lucid marketplace data, and operator interviews. Tune them to your reality.
Section A
Headcount, salary, and how many studies are running at once.
How many people on your team spend time on supplier coordination and fieldwork management.
Glassdoor/LinkedIn US median for MR PMs sits around $72K–$80K.
Across the team, not per PM. Mid-ICP agencies typically run 10–18.
Section B
Supplier mix, RFQ volume, and the money flowing into sample.
Mid-ICP agencies use 5–8 suppliers per study.
Auto-calculated: outbound RFQ + inbound quote per supplier.
Mid-size US agencies spend ~8–12% of revenue on sample.
Consumer studies $4–$8 · B2B/healthcare $15–$40.
Section C
How often re-work happens, what it costs, and whether you're hiring.
Insights Association: ~25% of agencies report a significant quality event per quarter.
Sample + PM time + client credits. Typical range $5K–$50K.
Hiring intent affects the headcount-avoidance value driver.
Section D
When a supplier moves CPI mid-study, manual reconciliation often bills every respondent at the new rate. SoftSight tags each respondent at the rate they were sourced — the trap can't close.
Practitioners report 25–45% on portfolios with hard-to-reach quotas. Default = 30%.
Typically the last 10–30% of completes on an affected study. Default = 20%.
Range: 1.5× (modest uplift) to 5× (specialist panel premium). $5→$20 example = 4×. Default = 3×.
Your personalised numbers
Live calculation. Adjust the inputs at any time and watch the numbers move.
You're bleeding this every year
$790,500
You save this with SoftSight
$697,500
Payback period
36 days
| Value driver | Bleed | Saving |
|---|---|---|
| PM time | $202,500 | $162,000 |
| CPI overpayment | $90,000 | $75,000 |
| Fraud & re-field | $150,000 | $112,500 |
| Headcount avoidance | $93,000 | $93,000 |
| Reconciliation trap | $255,000 | $255,000 |
| Net subscription | — | −$68,400 |
| Total | $790,500 | $629,100 |
Benchmarks · ESOMAR, Insights Association, Cint/Lucid data
Each value driver has its own formula, its own benchmark, and its own input field you can tune. The calculator adds them up live as you move the sliders.
Hours your project managers spend on supplier emails, negotiation, onboarding, monitoring, and reconciliation — multiplied by their fully-loaded salary cost. Almost always the largest line.
SoftSight removes ~80% of this manual time.
The gap between what agencies pay suppliers today and what data-driven negotiation would achieve. Benchmarked at 15–20% overpayment across the market.
Negotiation intelligence recovers ~15% of sample spend.
Re-fields, partial re-fields, client credits, PM time spent firefighting bad data. Roughly one in four agencies absorbs a significant quality event per quarter.
SurveyGuard prevents ~75% of these events before they cost you.
The PM hire that manual operations forces you to make as volume grows. The most emotional number on the page — it's a person you don't need to add.
Each SoftSight PM handles ~2.5× the studies of a manual PM.
When a supplier moves CPI mid-study, manual reconciliation often bills every respondent at the new rate. The original-rate batch quietly gets re-billed at the new rate — a 290% overcharge on the example study.
Respondent-level rate tagging eliminates the trap. 100% structural fix.
Every constant in the calculator is listed here so you can pressure-test the model before you trust the output. We don’t hide the math — and we’d rather you adjust the inputs than the formula.
| Benchmark | Value |
|---|---|
PM manual ops time per study Email 4.0 · Nego 2.5 · Onboard 1.5 · Monitor 3.0 · Recon 2.0 | 13.0 hrs |
SoftSight time reduction Conservative benchmark across pilot cohorts | 80% |
CPI overpayment vs. optimal Practitioner estimate · gut-feel vs. data negotiation | 18% |
CPI saving with SoftSight Conservative — negotiation engine, supplier benchmarking | 15% of sample spend |
Fraud prevention rate Real-time entry screening + behavioural signals | 75% |
PM hiring + onboarding cost Recruiting fee (~20% of salary) + 90-day ramp | $18,000 |
Mid-study CPI drift rate Practitioner range 25–45% on portfolios with hard-to-reach quotas | 30% of studies |
Late-batch share when drift occurs Typically the last 10–30% of completes on an affected study | 20% |
New CPI multiplier Range 1.5× (modest) to 5× (specialist panel premium) | 3× |
Manual reconciliation catch rate Most PMs do not audit at respondent level — 85% of mis-billings pass | 15% |
SoftSight reconciliation elimination Respondent-level rate tagging makes the trap structurally impossible | 100% |
Assumed bundle subscription AIPM Scale ($4,500/mo) + SurveyGuard Protect ($1,500/mo) − 20% bundle discount = $5,700/mo | $68,400 / year |
If you want to replicate the calculator in your own spreadsheet before believing it, here’s every formula.
ops_hrs_total × studies_per_year × (pm_salary ÷ 2,080) × num_pms
ops_hrs_total = 13 hrs (sum of email, negotiation, onboarding, monitoring, reconciliation). studies_per_year = concurrent_studies × 12. Saving = bleed × 0.80.
annual_sample_spend × 0.15
Bleed line = sample_spend × 0.18 (overpayment rate). Saving = sample_spend × 0.15 (conservative recovery rate).
annual_quality_events × event_cost × 0.75
Bleed = events × cost. Saving applies the 75% prevention rate. Quality frequency option converts to events/year.
(hire_cost + pm_salary) × hiring_multiplier
Multiplier: Yes = 1, Maybe = 0.5, No = 0. hire_cost = $18,000 (recruiting fee + 90-day ramp).
(sample_spend ÷ studies) × (new_cpi_mult − 1) × studies × drift_rate × (1 − 0.15)
When a supplier moves CPI mid-study, manual reconciliation often bills every respondent at the new rate. studies = concurrent_studies × 12. drift_rate = share of studies where CPI changes mid-field. 15% manual catch rate assumed. SoftSight tags respondents at the rate they were sourced → 100% structural elimination.
(annual_subscription ÷ annual_gross_saving) × 365
Days from subscription start until cumulative savings exceed the assumed $68,400/year bundle subscription (AIPM Scale + SurveyGuard Protect, with the 20% bundle discount applied).
Twenty minutes in your browser. The walkthrough is run by someone who has lived the workflow you’re trying to leave behind — not a salesperson reading from a deck.
