Market Research: Decision Memos with Traceable Evidence

What it does

ECC’s market research source starts with the decision the reader needs to make, then organizes evidence around competition, sizing, vendor selection or investment diligence. It asks for primary sources, quantitative support, contrary evidence and explicit assumptions. A useful memo is not a market overview filled with confident adjectives. It explains which facts change the choice and where uncertainty could reverse the recommendation. Top-down and bottom-up sizing can be compared to expose inconsistent assumptions, while dated source notes prevent old pricing or customer counts from appearing current.

When to use it

• Choose between two transcription vendors for a narrowly defined workload.
• Estimate demand for a specialist product before funding a launch.
• Compare a competitor’s documented capabilities with its marketing claims.

Step-by-step workflow

1. State the decision, audience, budget and deadline; define what evidence could change the recommended option.
2. Collect dated primary sources for capabilities, pricing and constraints, distinguishing current information from historical claims.
3. Build a comparison using consistent units and explicitly labeled estimates; cross-check market sizing from independent directions.
4. Search for counterexamples, switching costs, missing evidence and assumptions that would invalidate the preferred option.
5. Deliver a concise recommendation with source links, uncertainty and the next practical validation step.

Example request

Prepare a decision memo on hosted versus self-hosted transcription for 10,000 hours of consented English support audio per month. Compare current official pricing, retention controls, vocabulary support, batch processing and operational effort. Distinguish published facts from our workload assumptions. Use consistent monthly cost units and include infrastructure and staff time in self-hosting estimates. Find evidence against the initially cheaper option. Do not invent vendor certifications or customer counts. Finish with a recommendation, sensitivity analysis and a small pilot that could overturn it.

Worked example

The first comparison makes a self-hosted model look cheaper because it counts only GPU rental. Adding idle capacity, retries, storage and on-call effort narrows the gap, while a strict retention requirement may still favor local processing. The memo labels those operating costs as estimates and shows a range rather than a precise unsupported figure. It then proposes a pilot on a representative audio subset to measure throughput and correction effort. If proper-name errors require substantial manual review, the cheaper compute option may no longer be the cheaper operational choice.

What you get

A decision-focused memo with a comparable evidence table, source dates, assumptions, contrary evidence and a bounded validation plan.

How to evaluate the result

• Material claims link to dated sources or are labeled assumptions.
• Costs use consistent units and include relevant operational work.
• The memo states evidence that would change its recommendation.

What you need

A clear decision owner and scope, access to current primary sources and permission for any private business data used in estimates. Research access does not authorize contacting vendors.

Setup and activation

The reviewed ECC source provides an .agents skill layout. Consult the repository README for the chosen client, retain referenced supporting files and explicitly activate only the workflow needed. This catalogue read source files; it installed and executed nothing. Client compatibility depends on available tools and instruction loading, and was not runtime-tested here. Before installation, scan the exact source version, review permissions and use disposable non-sensitive examples.

Limits and considerations

Public market figures often use incompatible definitions or stale baselines. Vendor benchmarks require context and are not independent proof. A point estimate should not hide uncertain adoption, staffing or demand assumptions. The skill supplies a research method, not investment certainty or automatic browsing access.

Related workflows

• Use Article Writing to turn an approved memo into a readable article.
• Use Eval Harness to measure a vendor pilot against fixed task criteria.

License and reuse

MIT in the selected SKILL.md and repository LICENSE. Preserve notices; external packages, services and example dependencies retain their own terms.

Further reading

• Reviewed skill at immutable commit
• Reviewed publisher README
• Reviewed MIT license