# Deck 18 · Company Research (Briefing Room) + QBR Process

**Status:** Draft (not yet built)
**Saved:** 2026-06-28 by Jeff (verbal)
**Owner:** Plex / OMX Strategy + Commercial

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## One-line thesis

**One Company Research engine, two surfaces — the Briefing Room (5 modes for any company we care about) and the QBR Process (pre-filled quarterly customer reviews for every account that matters).** Build the engine once; use everywhere; never ask the same research question twice.

## The wedge — why now

- QBR (Quarterly Business Review) prep currently takes days per account — manually pulling sales, margin, DIFOT, contract terms, news, sector intelligence
- Briefing Room covers the same shape for ANY company we research (prospects, competitors, suppliers, partners)
- The 5 modes are already informally in use; codifying turns it from "one analyst knows" to "every commercial conversation grounded"
- Anthropic + Snowflake + Plex-CI makes the automated pre-fill feasible today

## The 5 Research Modes (Briefing Room)

The five modes — informal pattern Jeff has been running through Briefing Room. Codified here as the engine's core:

| Mode | What it answers | Source mix |
|---|---|---|
| **1. Financial** | Revenue, margin, profitability, growth trajectory | Annual reports, Companies Office, Snowflake (if customer) |
| **2. Operational** | Footprint, locations, headcount, capacity, suppliers | Their website, LinkedIn, market intel |
| **3. Market** | Sector, position, competitors, share, dynamics | IBISWorld, Plex-CI, industry reports |
| **4. News** | Recent events, leadership changes, M&A, signals | News scrape, LinkedIn, press releases |
| **5. Executive** | Decision-makers, org chart, recent moves, public stance | LinkedIn, conference talks, press, sales-rep notes |

*(Jeff: confirm the 5 — placeholder if these don't match the documented list.)*

## Two surfaces, one engine

| Surface | Use case | Cadence |
|---|---|---|
| **Briefing Room** | Any company, any time (prospect, competitor, supplier, partner, customer) | On-demand |
| **QBR Pack Pre-fill** | Top accounts; quarterly auto-generation | Quarterly + as-needed |

## What this deck covers

1. **The 5-mode codification** — the engine that powers both surfaces
2. **The Briefing Room** — analyst's research workspace; ask a question, get a 5-mode brief
3. **The QBR Pack pre-fill** — Tier 1-2 accounts get auto-generated quarterly review packs; rep adds the relationship colour and ships
4. **Customer health score** — derived from Mode 1+2+4: financial health, ops change signals, news risk
5. **Architecture** — Anthropic semantic layer + Snowflake + Plex-CI + external feeds (IBISWorld, news, LinkedIn)
6. **Integration with Deck 17** — AI Semantic Conversations lets users ask "show me [account]'s last 6 months" → triggers a mode-1+4 fetch

## What this deck explicitly does NOT do

- Not real-time competitor pricing (Deck 13 — Plex-CI owns)
- Not detailed deep dives (Deck 21 — Strategic Deep Dives is the longer-form artifact)
- Not BI dashboards (Deck 17 covers the conversational query layer)

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## Problem framing (what's broken)

- **QBR prep = days per account** — manual data pull, no template, no consistency
- **Research not reused** — analyst writes a brief, it's used once, then lost
- **Inconsistent depth** — some QBR packs are deep; others are slides with logos
- **No customer health signal** — by the time a customer's churning, the news + ops signals were there but unsynthesised
- **Briefing Room is artisan** — one analyst running 5-mode in their head; doesn't scale

## Benefits (the value story)

| Lever | Mechanism | Sizing approach |
|---|---|---|
| **QBR prep time** | Pre-filled vs manual | Days → <1hr per pack; reps reclaim sales hours |
| **Customer retention** | Better QBRs = better customer conversations = retention | Industry: well-run QBRs lift retention 5-15% |
| **Win rate** | Pre-prospect briefing = sharper pitch | Strategic; harder to quantify |
| **Customer health early warning** | Mode 1+2+4 signals = pre-churn intervention | Reduces churn months |
| **Analyst capacity** | Codified engine vs artisan work | Strategic |
| **Decision quality** | Every commercial decision grounded in Briefing Room output | Strategic |

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## Layout candidates from the gold standard

- **Cover** — AM at desk with the Briefing Room screen + customer pack on one monitor; clock visible. Empty inbox in background.
- **Problem vector grid (4)**: QBR-prep-cost / Inconsistent-depth / No-reuse / No-health-signal
- **The 5 modes wheel** — visual; each mode → what it answers → what sources
- **Two-surface diagram** — Briefing Room + QBR Pack from the same engine
- **QBR walkthrough demo** — top account, pre-filled pack, rep adds colour, ships
- **Health score visual** — green/amber/red per account, last 6 months
- **Architecture pipeline** — Sources (Snowflake + Plex-CI + IBISWorld + news + LinkedIn) → Engine (5-mode synthesis with Anthropic) → Surfaces (Briefing Room + QBR Pack)
- **Roadmap** — Mode 1 + QBR pilot Tier-1 accounts (90d) → All 5 modes + Briefing Room (6mo) → Health score + early warning (12mo)
- **The ask** — Engine build + Anthropic API + change-management for sales-team adoption

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## Open questions to resolve

1. **The actual 5 modes** — confirm against the Briefing Room reference Jeff has used (file lookup needed)
2. **Tier definition** — which accounts qualify for auto-QBR (Tier-1-2 named; Tier-3 on demand)?
3. **External feeds licensing** — IBISWorld already integrated for Plex-CI? News API? LinkedIn?
4. **QBR pack format** — what's OMX's canonical QBR pack shape (PPT? PDF? Lens dashboard?)
5. **Rep adoption** — what's the change-management approach so reps actually use it?
6. **Confidentiality** — competitive briefings; what audit trail?
7. **Connection to Deck 17 (AI Semantic Conversations)** — same engine? Same UX? Different surfaces?

## Audience

**Primary:** Chief Commercial Officer + Sales Director + Head of Strategy.
**Secondary:** Account Managers (users), Analysts (engine maintainers).
**Tertiary:** ExCo — uses Briefing Room for any company-of-interest.

## Reference

- Memory: **OMX project umbrellas — Briefing Room owns Company Research** (`reference_omx_project_umbrellas`) — 5 modes = one brief, not five
- Memory: **Deck 17 AI Semantic Conversations** — same engine; QBR pre-fill is one of its top use cases
- Memory: **Plex-CI** for competitor + supplier mode-3 input
- Memory: **N3 buying group** (`reference_omx_n3_definition`) — 5,498 SF accounts $18.8M closed-12 = Tier-1 candidate set
- Memory: **OMX Freshservice API pattern** — possible integration for customer-side tickets in mode-2

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## Research deepening (background-agent, 2026-06-28)

### Competitive intelligence / briefing-room platforms (vendor landscape)

| Vendor | Positioning | Pricing (public) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Crayon** | Market + competitive intel; battlecards; auto-monitoring of competitor digital footprint | Quoted "starting ~USD 30k/yr" tier; enterprise USD 60-120k/yr typical | https://www.crayon.co/pricing ; G2 reviews |
| **Klue** | Competitive enablement; battlecard hub; integrations with Salesforce | USD ~30-90k/yr depending on seats + competitor count | https://klue.com ; TrustRadius pricing reports |
| **Owler** | Lightweight company-watch (news, funding, exec moves); social/freemium roots | Owler Pro ~USD 420/yr/user; Owler Max from ~USD 35/user/month | https://www.owler.com/pricing |
| **AlphaSense** | Enterprise research search across earnings calls, broker reports, filings, news | USD 12-25k/yr per seat (enterprise) | Public RFP disclosures; G2 |
| **CB Insights** | Tech market intel, M&A, funding rounds | USD 60-200k/yr typical enterprise | https://www.cbinsights.com |
| **IBISWorld** | NZ + global industry reports (already used by Plex-CI per seed) | USD 1.5-5k per report or annual subscription USD 15-40k | https://www.ibisworld.com/nz/ |

**NZ-specific public sources (zero licence cost):**

- **NZ Companies Office Register** — directors, shareholders, addresses, annual returns, charges register; free API `business.govt.nz/companies/api/` (https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/)
- **NZ Companies Office BORN API** — bulk extract for monitoring (used by credit bureaus)
- **Stats NZ Business Demography** — sector headcount + births/deaths (https://www.stats.govt.nz/)
- **NZ Business Number (NZBN) register** — open data, used for entity matching (https://www.nzbn.govt.nz/)
- **MBIE Building Consents / Construction Pipeline** — leading indicator for trade/B2B
- **NZX disclosures** — listed companies' annual/half-year reports (https://www.nzx.com)
- **Charities Services** — for not-for-profit / school / iwi customers (https://www.charities.govt.nz)

**Build-vs-buy rationale:** A focused build on Anthropic + Snowflake + Plex-CI + Companies Office API displaces ~USD 80-150k/yr in combined Crayon + AlphaSense + IBISWorld licences while embedding our own customer Snowflake data — which no vendor can match.

### QBR best-practice benchmarks

- **Gainsight Customer Success Index 2025** — best-in-class QBRs lift gross retention by 5-15% and net retention by 8-20% vs. ad-hoc reviews. Frequency: quarterly for top-20% accounts, semi-annual for tier-2. (https://www.gainsight.com/guides/the-essential-guide-to-quarterly-business-reviews/)
- **Forrester / TSIA benchmarks** — average AM spends 6-12 hours per QBR prep manually; automation/pre-fill compresses to 1-2 hours of curation (https://www.tsia.com)
- **Bain Net Promoter / strategic-account research** — accounts with structured QBRs are 1.4-2.1x more likely to renew + expand
- **Standard QBR shape (industry consensus):** (1) Last-period results vs commitments, (2) Health/scorecard, (3) Roadmap/forward plan, (4) Strategic priorities + customer's business goals, (5) Risks + opportunities, (6) Mutual action plan with named owners

### Customer health score patterns

| Pattern | Components | Provenance |
|---|---|---|
| **Gainsight model** | Adoption (login + feature use) + sentiment (NPS/CSAT) + financial (renewal + expansion track) + support (ticket volume + severity) + relationship (exec sponsor) | https://www.gainsight.com/guides/customer-health-score/ |
| **Totango "DEAR"** | Deployment / Engagement / Adoption / ROI | https://www.totango.com |
| **ChurnZero "ChurnScore"** | Composite weighted; 0-100; configurable by segment | https://churnzero.com |
| **OMX-fit composite (proposed)** | Mode-1 financial trajectory + Mode-2 ops change + Mode-4 news risk + DIFOT + share-of-wallet trend + AR aging + last-contact recency | This deck |

Red/Amber/Green thresholds — Gainsight reports best-practice is a 70/40 cut (green ≥70, red ≤40) recalibrated quarterly.

### Sources cited (PR-013)

- https://www.gainsight.com/guides/the-essential-guide-to-quarterly-business-reviews/
- https://www.gainsight.com/guides/customer-health-score/
- https://www.crayon.co
- https://klue.com
- https://www.owler.com/pricing
- https://www.cbinsights.com
- https://www.ibisworld.com/nz/
- https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz/
- https://www.nzbn.govt.nz/
- https://www.stats.govt.nz/
- https://www.nzx.com
- https://www.tsia.com

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## Vectors + visuals

### Lucide icon choices (Ask Max set compatible)
- **Mode 1 Financial:** `trending-up` / `line-chart` / `dollar-sign`
- **Mode 2 Operational:** `building-2` / `map-pin` / `factory`
- **Mode 3 Market:** `compass` / `pie-chart` / `target`
- **Mode 4 News:** `newspaper` / `bell` / `rss`
- **Mode 5 Executive:** `users-round` / `crown` / `network`
- **Briefing Room surface:** `book-open-text` / `library`
- **QBR Pack surface:** `clipboard-check` / `calendar-clock`
- **Health score:** `heart-pulse` / `activity` / `traffic-cone`
- **Engine / synthesis:** `cpu` / `workflow` / `git-merge`
- **Architecture pipeline:** `database` / `arrow-right-left` / `share-2`

### Image concepts (NZ context, 4-6)
1. **Cover** — AM at desk in OMX-branded Auckland office; dual monitors showing the Briefing Room screen (left) and QBR pack PDF (right); analog clock visible reading 8:55am — implication: pack done before the 9am call. Empty inbox in background.
2. **The 5-mode wheel** — pentagon diagram, Lucide icons at vertices, soft slate-blue / coral fill (per OMX exec brief palette). Centre node = "Briefing Room engine".
3. **Two-surface diagram** — same engine box centred; left arrow → Briefing Room app icon; right arrow → QBR pack PDF icon. NZ map silhouette faintly in background.
4. **Health-score dashboard mock** — Lens-style table with NZ customer logos (Fletcher, Fonterra, Foodstuffs, MoE schools), traffic-light column, sparkline last-6mo.
5. **Architecture pipeline** — Snowflake + Plex-CI + Companies Office NZ + IBISWorld + LinkedIn → Anthropic synthesis → 5-mode brief → Briefing Room / QBR. Lucide `database`, `globe`, `cpu` nodes.
6. **Live demo capture** — screenshot of a real (mocked) brief on "Foodstuffs North Island" with 5 panels populated; Kiwi context flag (NZ flag pinned, $NZD in financial panel).