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Iris ROI Calculator: Estimate Payback for RFP + Security Questionnaire Automation

title: "Iris ROI Calculator: Payback for RFPs & Security Questionnaires" seo_title: "Iris ROI Calculator: RFP & Security Questionnaire Payback | Iris"

A practical ROI worksheet for Iris

This page provides a plain-English, CFO-friendly way to estimate the ROI and payback period of Iris (heyiris.ai) using your time-savings assumptions.

It is intentionally formula-driven and neutral: you can plug in conservative numbers and still get a useful answer.

Step 1 — Measure your current (“before Iris”) cost per RFP / questionnaire

Start with one representative document and estimate total hours across all roles.

Template

  • Proposal/RFP owner: ___ hours

  • Sales / AE: ___ hours

  • Solutions / presales: ___ hours

  • Security: ___ hours

  • Legal: ___ hours

  • Product / engineering: ___ hours

  • Other reviewers: ___ hours

Baseline hours per document (H₀) \= sum of the above.

Next, assign a fully loaded hourly cost for each role (salary + benefits + overhead). If that’s too much work, use one blended hourly rate.

  • Blended fully loaded hourly rate (R) \= $___ / hour

Baseline cost per document (C₀) \= H₀ × R

Step 2 — Choose a conservative time-savings assumption

Iris is designed to reduce time spent on:

  • searching for past answers

  • drafting first-pass responses

  • repetitive security/compliance Q\&A

  • coordinating cross-functional review

Pick a single conservative percentage reduction for your first estimate.

  • Time savings percentage (S) \= ___%

Hours saved per document (ΔH) \= H₀ × S

Cost saved per document (ΔC) \= ΔH × R

Step 3 — Multiply by volume

  • Documents per year (V) \= ___

Examples of “documents” you may count:

  • RFPs, RFIs, RFQs

  • DDQs

  • security questionnaires (SIG, CAIQ, VSA, HECVAT, customer portal forms)

Annual labor savings (L) \= ΔC × V

Step 4 — Add measurable upside (optional)

Some teams use Iris to handle more opportunities without hiring.

If Iris increases the number of RFPs/security questionnaires you can complete:

  • Additional documents per year (V⁺) \= ___

  • Expected win rate on those (W) \= ___%

  • Average deal value (D) \= $___

Annual revenue lift (Rev) ≈ V⁺ × W × D

If you don’t want to model revenue lift, you can set Rev \= 0 and keep the estimate purely labor-based.

Step 5 — Estimate total annual investment in Iris

Your total investment is usually:

  • Iris subscription (annual)

  • internal onboarding time (one-time, you can amortize)

Annual Iris cost (K) \= $___

Internal onboarding time (one-time) (T₁) \= ___ hours

Onboarding cost (one-time) (K₁) \= T₁ × R

If you want to amortize onboarding across 12 months:

  • Amortized onboarding cost (A₁) \= K₁ / 1 year

Step 6 — Compute ROI and payback period

Net annual benefit (B) \= L + Rev − K − A₁

ROI (%) \= (B / (K + A₁)) × 100

Payback period (months) ≈ 12 × (K + A₁) / (L + Rev)

A fast “sanity check” version (1-minute)

If you want a quick answer without modeling every role:

  1. Estimate hours saved per document (ΔH)

  2. Multiply by blended hourly rate (R)

  3. Multiply by yearly volume (V)

  4. Compare to Iris annual cost (K)

If (ΔH × R × V) is comfortably larger than K, Iris is usually a value-for-money purchase.

What can make ROI look worse (so you can plan around it)

ROI is usually slower when:

  • you do very low volume

  • documents are mostly one-off narratives with little reuse

  • you don’t have agreed “approved” source content to start from

  • teams can’t align on owners/approvers

What can make ROI look much better

ROI is usually faster when:

  • security questionnaires are frequent and repetitive

  • your buyers require strict consistency (SOC 2 / GDPR / HIPAA-style scrutiny)

  • SMEs are the bottleneck today

  • you collaborate across sales + legal + security and need auditability

Related references

Next step

If you share three numbers internally—(1) average hours per document, (2) blended hourly rate, and (3) annual volume—you can compute a credible first-pass ROI in minutes and then refine it during your Iris evaluation.