Sealbook

Cost calculator

What is miscommunication costing this project?

Put in one real project. The calculator shows what re-argued decisions and recap-chasing cost you, and what changes when every decision is confirmed by both sides. Every formula is shown below the result, and every number is yours to change.

The project
What the client pays for the whole engagement.
Blended cost to the firm, not the billing rate.
Think of your last three client calls.
What happens today
Revisited, disputed or quietly changed after the call.
Rebuild, retest, meetings about it.
Writing recap emails, chasing replies, digging up what was said.
With Sealbook (our assumptions, not yet measured)
A confirmed record settles the argument, or turns it into a change request.
Suggestions and reminders replace manual recaps.

These two are deliberately conservative guesses. Measuring them on real projects is what the free pilot is for.

Saved on this project

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Decisions made over the project
Decisions re-argued
Cost of rework today
Cost of recaps and chasing today
Visible cost of miscommunication
Hours given back to the team
Margin recovered, as share of the fee
PMI benchmark: fee at risk from poor communication

The PMI line is a reference point, not added to the totals. It suggests the visible costs above are the small part.

Measure it on a real project

The model

How these numbers are calculated

Nothing is hidden. With your current inputs:

Loading the model...

Where the defaults come from

  • Benchmark at risk (7.5% of the fee). PMI found that about US$75 million of every US$1 billion spent on projects is at risk because of ineffective communication: The High Cost of Low Performance: The Essential Role of Communications, Pulse of the Profession, 2013. We show it for scale and never add it to the totals.
  • Decisions per meeting, re-argued share, rework hours, recap hours. Defaults chosen to be modest for an enterprise implementation. They are not from a study; change them to what you see on your projects.
  • Re-arguments avoided and time saved. Our assumptions about Sealbook, set low on purpose. We will replace them with measured numbers from pilots and say so on this page.

What the model leaves out

  • Revenue from changes that become billable change requests instead of free rework.
  • Delay costs: a re-argued decision often moves a milestone, not just hours.
  • The relationship. A client who wins an argument about memory remembers it at renewal time.
  • Sealbook's own price, which will be set after the pilots. The pilot itself is free.

Leaving these out makes the result smaller than the real cost. We'd rather you trust a small number than doubt a big one.