Everyone in the network is named. Nobody in the middle takes a cut.
The Open Network is a directory of sample suppliers whose quality is verified from observed fieldwork rather than from a capabilities deck, and open to your RFQ the moment your own network isn’t enough. SoftSight takes no commission from any transaction it influences, every respondent is attributed to the supplier who sourced them, and every relationship formed here is yours to keep.
Two sides transact in it, for three different reasons. Pick the one that sounds like you.
Which panel sourced which respondent: not recorded
Open Network
Panel APanel BPanel CPanel D
Panel A136
Panel B104
Panel C88
Panel D72
400 completes delivered
Every respondent attributed to the supplier who sourced them
Zero
Commission, placement fee or margin taken from any transaction the network influences
Named
Every respondent attributed to the supplier who sourced them, respondent by respondent
Yours
Relationships formed here are portable, so they leave with you if you leave
Observed
Standings built from studies that actually fielded, not from questionnaires and references
Three positions
One network. Three reasons to be standing in it.
The suppliers who field the work, the buyers who commission it, and the firms whose decisions rest on what comes back. The same structural rules apply to all of them. What differs is which part of the structure you feel first.
Track 01
Panels & fieldwork companies
You want the whole of the rate you negotiated
Consumer panels, B2B and healthcare specialists, and field houses running their own recruitment. You are quoted a payout, never a share, and quality never enters the buyer's comparison.
Today
The spread is never disclosed, exclusions arrive without named IDs, and every new buyer means the same deck and the same two references.
Through the network
Buyers negotiate with you directly, by name. Nothing sits between their price and your invoice, your standing appears beside your quote, and matching RFQs reach you with no sales motion attached.
MR agencies, field departments and insight teams running multi-supplier studies. The sample for a rare cohort usually exists, spread across four or five panels. The question is whether those panels are on your list.
Today
Weeks of vetting for a supplier you will use once, or a blended pool where a quality problem has no owner and the relationship belongs to the platform.
Through the network
Named suppliers available to your RFQ mid-study, onboarded through the same gate, fielding under the same monitoring as your own, and on your list permanently afterwards.
Commercial due diligence inside an exclusivity window; strategy work whose numbers land in front of a client board. You buy sample like any other buyer, but you are graded by a reader paid to find the hole.
Today
A diligence vendor's opaque line item, a methodology appendix you cannot fully defend, and no answer when the investment committee asks who the respondents actually were.
Through the network
Specific audiences reached in days rather than weeks, every respondent attributed to a named supplier, and an exportable record that survives a data room.
Why this isn’t a marketplace, stated carefully rather than loudly.
The distinction matters most on the study where something goes wrong, which is exactly the study you extended your reach for. Here is the difference, row by row.
Blended marketplace
Open Network
Who sourced each respondent
PoolPooled by default; supplier visibility varies by platform and is partial where it is offered at all
NetworkAlways attributed to a named supplier, respondent by respondent
When quality slips
PoolFilter respondents at the door; accountability diffuses into the pool
NetworkCause attributed, one supplier paused, the rest keep fielding
Pricing
PoolA bid you raise until sample flows, against a spread the supplier never sees
NetworkNegotiated transparently between two named parties, down to the quota cell
Supplier ratings exist to…
PoolRoute volume through a pool the platform takes margin on
NetworkInform the choice, and we take nothing from the transaction it influences
The relationship
PoolThe platform is the counterparty
NetworkYours, and portable: suppliers you meet here are your suppliers
Some marketplace platforms now let buyers prefer or exclude certain suppliers, and respondent-level quality scoring exists in the market. Those are real improvements, and we won’t pretend otherwise.
The difference that cannot be matched by adding a feature is the fourth row. A marketplace’s supplier rating exists to route volume through a pool the platform monetises, so the rating serves the platform’s transaction economics by design. SoftSight takes no commission, placement fee or margin from any transaction the network influences, so our supplier standings have no revenue to serve except being right. Matching that would require an incumbent to abandon how they make money, not to ship a feature.
A second, quieter difference: our record spans the commercial lifecycle marketplaces never see. Because FieldworkOS sits on the RFQ, the negotiation and the reconciliation (not just the respondent pipe), a supplier’s record includes quoted-versus-fielded incidence and agreed-versus-invoiced rates, dimensions no respondent-scoring system can observe.
How suppliers are verified
Verified by fieldwork, not by questionnaire.
Traditional supplier vetting is self-reported: a capabilities deck, a compliance questionnaire, two references. It is static, identical for every prospect, and tells you what a supplier says about themselves. Network verification is observational: every supplier fielding through FieldworkOS accrues a record from what actually happened on real studies.
Supplier profile
Illustrative
Northwind Panel
34 studies fielded · refreshed continuously
Verified
Sub-10% IR healthcareB2B IT decision-makersDE · FR · NL
IR accuracy94
Within 1.2 pts of quoted
Term-rate health88
Inside band for sub-10% IR
Quality flags96
2 per 1,000 entrants
Delivery reliability98
98% of committed volume
Billing accuracy100
Matches signed schedule
Every metric is benchmarked within a band of similar study difficulty. The record shown here is the exact record the supplier sees.
Vantage Sample
3 studies fielded · below the statistical minimum
Building record
Metric
What it tells you
Observed from
IR accuracy
How closely a supplier's in-field incidence matched the incidence they quoted you
Every fielded study
Term-rate health
Termination rate against benchmarks for studies of similar difficulty, with concentration by term reason
Live monitoring
Quality flags
Duplicate fingerprints, geo and device mismatches, speeding and pattern anomalies per thousand entrants
Live monitoring
Delivery reliability
Completes delivered against committed volume and dates, including soft-launch punctuality
Quota tracking
Billing accuracy
Agreement between the rate schedule both parties signed and the final line-by-line reconciliation
Reconciliation
Responsiveness
Time from RFQ to quote, and from issue flag to resolution
Workflow timestamps
Reading a standing honestly.
Minimum volume
A standing only appears once enough studies have fielded to be statistically meaningful. Until then the profile reads “building record”, which is information, not a defect.
Context weighting
Performance is benchmarked within bands of similar study difficulty, so a specialist healthcare panel is neither flattered nor punished by comparison with general-population trackers.
Recency
Current performance outweighs history, and a supplier returning after extended dormancy reads “record dormant” until fresh volume re-establishes it. Nobody is shown an old record dressed as a current one.
Who verifies the verification.
Structurally
The record a buyer sees is the same record the supplier sees, input by input. A system that cannot tell two audiences two stories audits itself in a way editorial ratings never do.
Procedurally
Suppliers dispute inputs with evidence, and confirmed platform-side errors (a buyer's broken redirect misattributed as a term problem) are corrected retroactively.
Institutionally
The standing methodology, fairness rules included, is published openly rather than held as discretion. Independent third-party audit of it is our stated intention as network volume matures.
What informs what
Confidentiality runs in both directions.
The same rules that protect a supplier’s commercial terms protect the buyer’s. Suppliers see the RFQs sent to them and nothing else about a buyer’s book of work; buyers see a supplier’s performance and nothing about theirs.
Visible on a supplier profile
Performance standing and trend built from observed fieldwork, or “building record” where the data is not yet statistically meaningful
Difficulty breadth: which audience and incidence bands the supplier has actually proven on
Declared capabilities and certifications, plus the volume context behind every standing
Never visible, in either direction
Rates negotiated by anyone, past or present, in any identifiable form, and visible to no other buyer or supplier
A buyer's studies, clients and audiences, which are never disclosed to suppliers beyond the RFQs sent to them
A supplier's other client relationships: you see their performance, not their book of business
Any single study's metrics in isolation; records are aggregate by design
On rate data, precisely, because a sharp procurement team will ask. Negotiated rates are never visible to any other party and never appear in any form attributable to a buyer, a supplier or a study. Negotiation counter-offers are grounded first in your own project history. They are additionally informed by anonymised, aggregated rate indices (typical market ranges for an audience, geography and period, attributable to no one) built with the contractual consent of every network participant. Individual rates inform no one; the anonymous shape of the market informs everyone. If your team wants the aggregation mechanics in detail, we will walk through them before you commit.
SoftSight does not sell, share or license client or supplier data. Data is processed in accordance with GDPR, and our data-processing agreement, security overview, SLA terms and compliance documentation are available to your legal and procurement teams on request. See Security and Privacy.
The network today
The founding phase, stated plainly.
We would rather tell you the real state of it than have you discover it on a call. The directory grows into the promise; it does not start there.
You should know what you are joining
The supplier cohort is deliberately small and hand-picked, most profiles show “building record” while statistical minimums accrue, and matching is done by our team (people who know the suppliers personally) rather than by an algorithm. Standings publish as suppliers cross the volume threshold, not before.
We think the founding phase is the best time to be in the network, not a reason to wait. Hand-matched sourcing from a curated cohort is concierge service a mature directory cannot offer, founding participants shape which suppliers we recruit next and how the verification standards harden, and every study run now deepens the records that make the mature network trustworthy.
Probably not us, yet
All your sample comes from one panel you have no intention of leaving
Fieldwork is offline-first: CATI, in-person, or diary studies
You want a marketplace to choose and price suppliers on your behalf
You need a firm to design the study and write the report, not the infrastructure underneath it
Three front doors
Start where you stand.
Panels & fieldwork companies
Apply to the founding cohort
Tell us what your panel is actually good at: geographies, audiences, and the hardest incidence you routinely field. If you have already fielded for FieldworkOS buyers, you have a record waiting to be claimed.
The audience nobody could fill, the timeline nobody believed. We will run it through the platform with network reach included. Thirty minutes, your data, no generic walkthrough.
The cohort your last engagement couldn't reach in time, or the sample description you couldn't defend in the memo. We will tell you honestly whether the network can reach it today.
Already a FieldworkOS client? Ask your account contact about founding-phase network sourcing on your next hard study. Or write to network@softsight.io, or to the person who shared this with you.
