Methodology, verification logic, schemas, scheduling and a support layer arrive as a working function rather than as something to build alongside the day job.
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From a multi-week market assessment to under an hour, run in-house
Client
Date
$250M+ North American architecture and engineering firm
08/2026
The challenge
A $250M+ North American architecture and engineering firm runs a market strategy and growth function, with a consulting practice inside it serving institutional clients. Three questions sit behind almost everything it does: which markets to grow into, which pursuits to chase, which internal ideas to fund. A regional market assessment was a multi-week, analyst-led deliverable.
The solution
FifthRow deployed a managed intelligence function that the firm's own analysts operate. A question goes in as plain language; a multi-step, source-traceable research system comes out, saved as a reusable template in the firm's own catalogue and schedulable if the question recurs. FifthRow builds, tunes and maintains the systems; the firm runs them.
145,860
analyst-hours equivalent, 149 FTEs48 hours
go-to-market thesis, from 2 weeksRegional market assessment35 minutes to 1 hour, from weeks, 1,300–1,400 sources
Go-to-market thesis48 hours, instead of 2 weeks
Standing research running autonomously6 systems on a fixed cadence
Analyst-hours equivalent145,860 hours saved; equivalent to 149 FTEs
The firm supplied its own confidential market assessment for one market as the reference standard, and asked for a system that reproduced it on demand for any market. That system is now the most-used thing on the account.
Core Activities
- Reverse-engineered the firm's multi-week assessment into parallel research streams: population and growth at state or province level, demographics and segmentation, migration and economic context, vertical deep-dives across its sectors, major employers, and a competitor scan of rival firms
- Converged them into a strengths-and-challenges matrix and one report, every forward-looking figure confidence-flagged
- Ran a pilot set of North American markets, then four whole-region priority-sector assessments
- Answered sector-demand, competitor-landscape and single-company questions off the same skeleton, reusing the methodology
- Put the highest-value versions on a weekly schedule as standing reports
The Results
A market-level picture, source-traceable and confidence-flagged, available in under an hour instead of weeks. Regional leaders receive the same standard of analysis for every market rather than only for the ones someone had time to study.
~1,910
analyst-hours equivalent per assessmentDesign firms win work through competitive proposals, and the research behind a good one is the difference between a generic submission and a positioned one. The firm built its own four-stage pursuit workflow, with human checkpoints deliberately left in.
Core Activities
- Kept a human decision point between every stage – strategic framing brief, positioning and selection, response strategy and assembly – separate systems, not one autonomous run
- Turned a live request for proposal into strategic context, buyer priorities and three positioning options, before anyone drafts prose
- Answered a live proposal's repositioning question in about an hour, on a system that became a reusable template
- Layered proposal intelligence and pursuit strategy on the largest opportunities, several thousand sources each
- Kept outputs in the pursuit team's own formats, so research drops into the submission untranslated
The Results
A repeatable, evidence-backed positioning brief on any live pursuit, produced before the proposal is drafted, to the same standard every time and without the pursuit team waiting on a research queue.
1 hour
to answer a live proposal's repositioning inquirySome questions do not get answered once. Six standing systems now run on a fixed schedule against the domains the firm has decided matter, and nobody starts them.
Core Activities
- Put service-line market entry, consulting demand and opportunity scanning on a standing schedule
- Gave a service line in development a standing research watch, three times a week
- Set a weekly startup sourcing and profiling scan for venture screening
- Delivered on a fixed cadence, period against period, so what lands is what changed
The Results
Six intelligence streams deliver against the firm's priority domains on a fixed cadence, without anyone starting them. Coverage no longer depends on who had time that week.
82
research updates delivered autonomouslyThe consulting practice sells strategy work to institutional clients. Twelve purpose-built systems were stood up by the firm's own analysts for specific live engagements, most of them without FifthRow build effort.
Core Activities
- Benchmarked clients against regional peers on capacity, capability and market position
- Compared service quality against nationally ranked peers
- Planned market entry into unreached populations, remote and non-English-speaking
- Assembled precedent research on building typologies from comparable projects internationally
- Assessed institutional AI adoption across facilities and governance, and compared paired regional markets in signal-convergence briefs
The Results
Consultants arrive at a client conversation with a benchmarked, source-traceable position rather than a proposal to go and find one. Each system stays in the catalogue and is reused on the next engagement of the same shape.
12
reusable systems, built in-houseThe same function screens internal product ideas and external investment candidates. An idea-to-concept system took six internal ideas from a line of description to a full concept in a single day.
Core Activities
- Took six internal product ideas to full concepts in a day: software, advisory, platform
- Gave each idea a market size and opportunity diagnosis, a number before a champion
- Ran investment memos on external candidates: the case for and against funding viability
- Ran acquisition target identification in a priority technology adjacency, and service-portfolio whitespace analysis
- Fed outputs back into the catalogue, so screened ideas and markets share one evidence base
The Results
A consistent, evidence-backed first pass on any internal idea or external investment candidate, produced fast enough that screening happens before commitment rather than after it.
1 day
one-line ideas to six market-sized conceptsWhat it proved
The firm met all eight success criteria it set itself. Across the engagement, 1,014 studies have run against 284,690 sources, on 270 research templates and 34 systems in production. Three people did all of it.
The firm now operates the research function itself. Twenty-plus systems sit in its own catalogue, six run on a schedule. The decision underneath was never model access – the firm had it and could have built on it. It was whether to greenfield the methodology, verification logic, schemas, scheduling and support while delivering everything else it owed. It chose not to. Across 1,014 runs the platform records 145,860 analyst-hours saved, the equivalent of 149 full-time analysts over the period, produced by three people.
Results
| Metric | Benchmark | Result | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assessment cycle time | The firm's own multi-week deliverable | 35 minutes to 1 hour | Weeks to under an hour |
| Depth against a deep-research tool | 12 sources on the client's prompt | 800 sources, same prompt | 67× more source material |
| Go-to-market thesis | 2 weeks, worked manually | Rebuilt in 48 hours | 2 weeks to 48 hours |
| Standing research running autonomously | 0 before May 2026 | 82 runs, 6 standing systems | 6 streams delivering without being started |
| Analyst-hours saved | Manual desk research, three people | 145,860 hours, 1,014 runs | Equivalent of adding 149 full-time analysts over the period |
The firm's own analysts stand up new systems by describing what they want, so new coverage never waits on outside build effort.
Analysts who build systems serve colleagues who only consume finished research, so a firm-wide request queue runs without a dedicated research desk.
The source depth behind an answer is wide enough to carry an investment commitment or a competitive submission rather than to illustrate a point.
Autonomy stops where the stakes rise, so each stage hands a senior reviewer an evidenced draft instead of a finished answer to accept or reject.
Finding the next high-growth US metro in five days
Client
$5B+ Global Design and Engineering Firm
Date
08/2026
5 days
naming the next growth marketMaking consultants 3–5× more productive on the research behind their work
Client
$30B+ Global IT Services and Consulting Group
Date
08/2026
3–5×
productivity on consulting deliveryFor Enterprises
ProofSee all
From a standing start to an AI venture serving small businesses
From 72 patents to 4 commercialisation-ready technologies
Cutting a four-month research cycle to six weeks across five validation workstreams
From a weekly newsletter to a self-running innovation radar
A full year's validated-concept target, met in the first quarter
A utility innovation lab that answers its own questions in a day
Finding the next high-growth US metro in five days
FifthRow – The Agentic Consultancy
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