A single emergency evacuation from a remote mining site costs $50,000-$250,000. A missed border closure strands cargo worth $100,000. A duty of care lawsuit settles for $2M+.
Region Alert's annual cost: $6,000.
I'm not going to pretend security intelligence eliminates all risk. It doesn't. But the math on prevention vs. reaction isn't close. Every dollar you spend on early warning saves you somewhere between 10 and 50 dollars in crisis response. That's not a sales pitch, it's what the numbers show across logistics, extractives, and humanitarian operations.
The Costs You're Already Paying
Most organizations don't track the full cost of operating without real-time intelligence. They absorb losses as "the cost of doing business" in difficult regions. But when you add it up, the number is staggering.
- Cargo delays and diversions: $1,000-$10,000 per day in idle time, driver costs, demurrage fees, and spoilage
- Emergency evacuations: $50,000-$250,000 per event, charter flights, security escorts, temporary relocation, operational shutdown
- Insurance premium increases: 15-30% jump after a single reportable incident, compounding annually
- Duty of care litigation: $500,000-$5,000,000 in settlements, plus legal fees, plus the reputational damage you can't quantify
- Staff turnover from safety incidents: $50,000-$150,000 per replacement when you factor in recruiting, training, and lost institutional knowledge
None of these costs show up on a single line item. They're scattered across insurance, legal, HR, and operations budgets. That's why security intelligence feels like an expense instead of what it actually is: loss prevention.
The Math: Three Scenarios
Here's how the ROI plays out for three different operation types. These aren't hypotheticals, they're composites drawn from the kinds of organizations that use Region Alert.
Scenario 1: Logistics Company. Cross-Border Freight
Profile: Mid-size freight company running 10 cross-border shipments per month through Central Asia and the Caucasus.
The problem: Two shipments per year get delayed by border closures, protests, or road blockages that weren't flagged in advance. Each delay costs $10,000 in idle time, driver costs, rerouting, and late-delivery penalties.
Without intelligence: $20,000/year in avoidable delay costs.
With Region Alert: $6,000/year (Starter plan). Early warning on border activity and road conditions lets dispatchers reroute before shipments hit the disruption.
Two delays avoided = $20,000 saved vs. $6,000 cost.
3.3x ROIScenario 2: NGO with 50 Field Staff
Profile: International NGO with 50 staff deployed across East Africa and the Sahel. Mix of expats and national staff in volatile sub-regions.
The problem: One security incident per year triggers a partial evacuation. Staff are pulled from a program site due to armed group activity that had been visible in local-language channels for days before it escalated.
Without intelligence: $150,000 for the evacuation itself, plus $50,000 in program disruption, plus increased insurance premiums the following year.
With Region Alert: $12,000/year (Professional plan covering multiple regions). Daily briefings flag the buildup 48 hours earlier. Staff relocate on a scheduled flight instead of a chartered one. Program pauses instead of shutting down entirely.
One avoided evacuation = $150,000 saved vs. $12,000 cost.
12.5x ROIScenario 3: Commodity Trader. Agricultural Exports
Profile: Trading firm dealing in agricultural commodities sourced from Southeast Asia. Positions worth $200,000+ are sensitive to supply disruptions, export bans, and port closures.
The problem: A regional government announces an export restriction. English-language media picks it up 36 hours after it was already circulating in local Bahasa-language news outlets. By the time the trader adjusts, the market has moved.
Without intelligence: One missed signal costs $200,000 in position losses or missed hedging opportunities.
With Region Alert: $12,000/year. Local-language monitoring catches the regulatory signal a full day before it hits Reuters. The trader adjusts positions ahead of the market move.
One day of early signal = $200,000 protected vs. $12,000 cost.
16.7x ROIWhat "Early Warning" Actually Means in Dollar Terms
Region Alert's core advantage is time. Specifically, the 12-24 hours between when a threat appears in local-language sources and when it hits English-language wire services.
That window is where money gets saved or lost.
The 12-24 Hour Advantage
Local-language signals, social media posts, regional news outlets, municipal announcements, community radio, surface threats hours before international media picks them up. That gap is where you reroute the convoy, adjust the position, move the staff, or cancel the shipment. After that window closes, you're reacting instead of preventing.
Here's what 12 hours of lead time buys you:
- Logistics: Reroute a shipment for $500 instead of paying $10,000 in delay costs
- Field operations: Relocate staff on a commercial flight ($800) instead of chartering an emergency evacuation ($75,000)
- Trading: Adjust a position at market price instead of panic-selling at a 15% discount
- Insurance: Document proactive risk management to negotiate lower premiums at renewal
Every one of those decisions depends on knowing first. Not knowing best. Not knowing most. Knowing first.
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Without real-time intelligence, you're reactive by default. And every reaction costs 10-50x more than prevention.
That's not a failure of your team. Your security director, your logistics manager, your ops lead, they're competent. They just don't have access to what's happening on the ground in Tajik, or Amharic, or Bahasa, or Pashto. They're making decisions based on CNN, the BBC, and government travel advisories that update weekly if you're lucky.
The Bottom Line
At $499/month, Region Alert needs to prevent roughly one minor incident per year to pay for itself entirely. One rerouted shipment. One early staff relocation. One supply signal caught a day ahead. Everything after that is pure return.
The organizations that struggle to justify this cost are the ones that haven't yet calculated what they're already losing. Once you add up the delays, the evacuations, the premium increases, and the settlements, $6,000-$12,000 per year isn't a budget line, it's a rounding error on what you're already spending on the consequences of not having it.
For a detailed breakdown of how Region Alert compares to enterprise platforms like Everbridge, OnSolve, and Crisis24, see our 2026 Critical Event Management Comparison.
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