Tool Review: Your ROI Calculator is S.H.I.T. I analyzed 30 vendor ROI calculators. Most fall into one of six categories and most are theater.

Tool Review: ROI Calculators

Co-founder at a value intelligence company. We spend a lot of time thinking about how B2B SaaS companies prove value in deals -- so I went through 30 vendor ROI calculators to see how they'd hold up when a CFO actually asks questions.

Built a taxonomy of what I found.

Six categories:

- Math in a Box -- you put in your numbers, it does arithmetic. No assumptions injected. Rare but honest.

- Vendor Benchmark Injector -- pre-loaded improvement rates from "industry data" the vendor owns. The most common type.

- Commissioned Research Tool -- built on Forrester or IDC TEI studies. The disclaimers are nearly identical across every vendor that uses them.

- Spend Estimator -- converts headcount and time into dollars. Feels grounded. Usually isn't.

- Honest Comparison Tool -- buyer controls the assumptions. The output is defensible because they built it.

The core problem: most calculators pre-load improvement rates from vendor-owned data. When finance asks "what's your basis for 15% productivity improvement?" -- nobody has a good answer because the vendor set that number, not the buyer.

I graded all 30 on one question: who controls the assumptions?

A few highlights:

- Several Forrester TEI calculators use near-identical disclaimer language across completely different vendors

- One HR software calculator has 8 buyer-controlled sliders -- one of the most honest I found

- One calculator looks generic on the surface but reveals a more transparent framing in a popup -- undersells itself

Full breakdown with grades and named vendors: https://blog.valueiq.ai/p/your-roi-calculator-is-s-h-i-t

Curious if anyone else has had a CFO challenge a number from one of these -- or been on the other side trying to defend it.