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Reading discovery signals
Reading discovery signals

Reading discovery signals

Each discovery step produces a rating per candidate. Products are ranked by four signals; service providers by six firmographic ones. Understanding what each signal means — and what it doesn't — prevents reading too much into a single value.

Product signals
  • Market Adoption — How widely the product is used overall. High adoption means more community resources, a broader integration ecosystem, and more public documentation. Low adoption isn't automatically bad; you'll just need more direct supplier answers.

  • Local Support — The number of the vendor's official solution partners in your region. Matters most for complex infrastructure products; less so for cloud-native or self-serve products.

  • Interest Radar — Current buyer interest signals in your region. A strong score typically correlates with faster sales response and clearer commercial terms.

  • Vendor Stability Index — Financial health, ownership, and operational signals. A low score on an otherwise strong product is a flag to negotiate — escrow, source code access, or exit clauses.

Service provider signals

For service specifications, each row is a provider and the signals are firmographic data from public sources.

  • Industry code (SIC / NAICS) — The provider's registered industry classification. A matching code is the cleanest evidence that the provider operates in the line of business you're buying.

  • Founding year and tenure — Year founded and a brief operating history. Longer tenure typically indicates more mature operations.

  • Revenue band — Helps match provider size to engagement size. A focused project fits a smaller provider; a long-term managed engagement fits a larger one.

  • Supported languages — The languages the provider operates in. Important for on-site staff, customer-facing deliverables, or multi-country rollouts.

  • Year-over-year growth — A momentum signal. Steady growth correlates with operational health; sharp drops warrant a conversation before inviting.

  • Contact and social presence — Phone, email, website, LinkedIn, X accounts. Not ranking inputs, but they show how reachable the provider is.

Using signals well

A single signal doesn't decide the outcome. A low score on one dimension is a prompt for a question during invitation, not an automatic rejection.