Cost Comparison

Description

The Cost Comparison feature provides a side-by-side presentation on the Sales Website that contrasts the estimated cost of the Meander platform against the implicit cost of current manual workflows - Word forms, Excel aggregation, phone-based reporting, and coordinator overhead. It is a static widget that may accept simple inputs (organization size tier) or display pre-computed comparison tiers. The goal is to make the cost-benefit case visible to budget-holders and decision-makers without requiring a conversation with the sales team. It complements the Impact Calculator by framing value in financial terms rather than purely operational ones, helping close the evaluation loop for prospective customers browsing the sales site.

Sources & reasoning

Line 500 lists Cost Comparison as one of two features in the Benefit Calculator area. The Sales Website is scoped as static/no-auth (line 216-220) with core capabilities including the benefit calculator block. Blueprint marks [MVP]. No phase deferral evidence exists; the entire Sales Website ships as a single MVP deliverable, so both calculator features land together.

docs/source/likeperson.md · line 500

| sales-calculator | Benefit Calculator | Impact Calculator, Cost Comparison |
docs/source/likeperson.md · line 216-220

Scope: Information-only. No authentication, no user accounts, no database, no shared runtime with the operational products.

Analysis

Business Value

Organizations considering a new platform face an implicit comparison: stay with current tools vs. adopt something new. Making that comparison explicit and favorable is a key conversion lever on the sales site. For Norwegian non-profit organizations with Bufdir funding, demonstrating that the platform pays for itself in coordinator time savings directly addresses procurement objections. The widget requires no backend and no maintenance cycle - once the comparison tiers are calibrated against the workshop data (380 registrations per peer mentor per year, manual Excel aggregation, etc.), it runs indefinitely. This lowers the cost of the sales motion while increasing the quality of leads who arrive already convinced of the value.

Implementation Notes

Implemented as a static CostComparisonWidget component with no API dependency. Comparison data (current cost estimates vs. Meander cost tiers) is hardcoded or loaded from a static JSON file bundled at build time. The widget may accept an optional organization-size selector (small / medium / large) that switches between pre-computed scenarios. No user data is collected or transmitted. Must be WCAG 2.2 AA compliant: table or structured comparison layout must have proper column headers, sufficient contrast, and be navigable by keyboard and screen reader. As part of the Sales Website static export, the component must have zero runtime server dependencies. Content updates are handled via code changes to the static data file, not via a CMS or API.