Intelligence Collection Disciplines — Worked Example
All companies, products, URLs, and figures are fictional. This example shows a complete
collection plan and its fusion outcome — the operation the compendium teaches. It's the same
fictional scenario as the suite's other examples (Fieldlight, a trades-scheduling tool expanding
into FSM), and it shows the collection side of the fused conclusion that appears in the
competitive-analysis-process example's Step 6.
Collection Plan: DispatchCrow / suspected dispatch-depth build
Instantiation
[TARGET] = DispatchCrow [MARKET] = field service management software; NAICS 513210 (software publishers) [GEOGRAPHY] = United States, Canada [BUYER] = owner or office manager, trades shops of 10-100 technicians [CAPABILITY] = building real dispatch/capacity-planning depth (moving upmarket into our target segment) [DECISION] = how much of our two-quarter quoting window is real — sets the FSM expansion pace
Discipline Selection
| Discipline | Running? | Why (which signal chains) | Key sources (free first) |
|---|---|---|---|
| OSINT | ✅ | review complaints clustering on their dispatch board = their roadmap pressure point | review sites, trades forums |
| FININT | ◻ not yet | private company; Crunchbase free tier only — thin until they raise again | Crunchbase |
| GEOINT/DEMOINT | ◻ no | terrain already mapped in the June TAM pass; refresh annually | — |
| TECHINT | ✅ | changelog + API docs diffs → beta capabilities before announcement | their changelog, API docs, app store notes |
| HUMINT | ✅ | hiring surge/specialty chain → building a capability, not a feature | LinkedIn jobs, their careers page, blog |
| SIGINT | ✅ | pricing-gate moves + new subdomains → monetization strategy and launch staging | pricing page snapshots, Wayback, crt.sh |
| MASINT | ◻ no | software target; ops-capacity signals folded into HUMINT job-post reading | — |
Four disciplines, chosen because they feed [DECISION]; the table's empty rows are decisions too.
Cadence
- Weekly (SIGINT, ~30 min): pricing page diff; crt.sh check for new
*.dispatchcrow.comcerts - Monthly (OSINT + HUMINT): review mining for dispatch-board complaints; careers-page sweep
- Quarterly (TECHINT deep pass): API docs diff; app store release-note review
- Event-driven (48h): funding announcement (re-opens FININT); any "capacity" language shipping anywhere
Fusion Table (as of 2026-07-31)
| Discipline | Signal found | Label | Source URL + date |
|---|---|---|---|
| HUMINT | head of dispatch experience + senior PM hired, both ex-incumbent | Fact | blog post, Jul 15 |
| SIGINT | payments gate moved down a tier — take-rate becoming the model | Fact | pricing archive diff, Jul 31 |
| TECHINT | "capacity view — coming to Pro" appears on pricing page feature list | Fact | pricing page, Jul 31 |
| OSINT | upmarket-switcher reviews: "fine until we hit 40 techs, then the board falls over" | Fact (that they say it) | review threads, Jun-Jul |
Fusion verdict: 4 disciplines, one story → actionable intelligence → they are building dispatch depth to move upmarket, funded by payments volume. Recommended response: compress the quoting timeline — plan against a Q1 2027 capacity-planning launch, not "someday"; brief the roadmap owner this week.
One deliberate down-grade: the OSINT complaint cluster alone was a watch item back in June — it says customers want depth, not that DispatchCrow is building it. It joined the story only when HUMINT and TECHINT arrived. That's the stacking rule preventing a June overreaction.
Why this example works
- The empty rows are the discipline. Three disciplines were consciously not run, with reasons — the artifact-mapping table's whole point. Eight checkmarks would mean nobody chose.
- [DECISION] shaped everything. "How real is our two-quarter window?" selected the four disciplines that read their velocity, and set cadences to how fast each channel actually changes (pricing weekly, patents never — they're a five-person startup).
- The stacking rule ran in both directions. Four agreeing channels escalated to actionable; but the example also shows the June signal correctly held at watch-item until independent channels corroborated. Escalation discipline is the rule's other half.
- Announcements-as-intent never triggered — none of the four signals is a press release. The hires, the gate move, and the pricing-page feature list are all commitment-side evidence, which is why the verdict earns "actionable" with no announcement at all.