Routing
The result indicates the constraint. Routing records the support response.
A diagnosis is useful only if it leads to a next step. Some companies can act on the indicated actions themselves. Where external support is needed, the institution can record the support category, choose an appropriate provider from its own provision and record whether the support was taken up. Without that record, later reporting cannot show what preceded the next measurement.
Routing connects a result to a support category and records the response that follows. It allows a report to show which intervention preceded a later measurement. It does not establish that the intervention caused the movement.
Not everything needs a provider
Routing is one of two paths from a diagnosis. It is used when the indicated work needs external support or when an institution chooses to offer funded provision.
Most root causes have a fix the company can carry out itself. It receives three specific actions, each with an owner, a date and the evidence that would show it worked, and it can act on them the same afternoon. That is the loop the instrument is built around: measure, act, measure again. It scales, because it needs nobody’s diary.
Routing is for cases where the indicated work needs a person or where an institution wants to use provision it already funds. The result indicates the support category. The institution decides whether to offer it, which provider to use and how to record the outcome.
Keeping the two paths separate helps institutions understand demand for support. A cohort report can show how many companies used external provision, which categories they used and how many reported self-directed action.
The gap this closes
Most people holding the score cannot fix what it finds.
A programme manager at a combined authority, a relationship manager at a bank, an enterprise team at a university: all of them can read a result and understand it. None of them is a commercial practitioner, and none of them should have to be.
They do not need to know how to fix a qualification problem. They need to know that this company has one, that it is the thing to fix first, and which of the providers they already fund is the right one to do it.
- Support allocated without a recorded link to the company’s indicated need
- The same workshop offered to every company regardless of its result
- Adviser judgement recorded without the result or reason that informed it
- No record of which support was offered, taken up or followed by a rescore
How it works
The diagnosis produces a stage and a root cause. That pair determines a support category: the kind of help indicated. You map your own provision to those categories once, and from then on every company that completes the measure arrives at the right door.
| Root cause | Support category indicated |
|---|---|
| Product | Proposition, value and business-case work: who the offer is for, what problem it solves and why a buyer would pay |
| People | Ownership, capability and leadership: who is accountable and whether the team can carry out the work |
| Process | Operating rhythm: qualification, stage discipline, inspection and forecasting |
| Repeatability | Codification and enablement: capturing what works so the team can repeat it |
The stage adds the domain. For example, Closing plus Process indicates deal governance and close planning; Demand plus Product indicates proposition and segment work. The 16 stage-and-root-cause combinations define the support categories in the licensed layer.
The rules that select the category are part of the licensed layer, not the published method. What is published is that the mapping exists, is deterministic, and does not change between two companies with the same result.
Your provision, not ours
You keep the providers you already have.
This is not a marketplace we bring to you. Most institutions already fund the support: an in-house commercial team, a framework of approved providers, a mentor pool, existing programmes. What is missing is the mechanism that matches a company to the right one at the point of need.
You map your provision to the categories once, in your own directory. Where you have a gap, you can fill it from ours, or leave it empty and see how often it comes up before spending anything.
- Your internal commercial or business-support team
- Providers on your existing framework, mapped by category
- Your programmes and clinics, with eligibility and capacity
- Referral routes you already use, recorded explicitly
Advisers and programmes keep their client relationships and fees. Routing directs existing provision; it does not replace the institution’s procurement or provider decisions.
Three non-negotiable rules
- Routing indicates support. It never rations it. A routing outcome is not an eligibility decision, a gate, or a reason to withhold anything from a company. It must not be used to decide who gets access to a programme or to funding.
- A person with relevant knowledge can override the indicated route. Record the alternative route and the reason. Those overrides provide evidence for reviewing the mapping rules.
- Payment does not influence the indicated category. The result determines the type of support indicated; commercial considerations can affect which provider appears within that category. Disclose any provider we own or are affiliated with.
What it produces
Routing adds the intervention record to the measurement.
| Recorded at routing | What it makes possible |
|---|---|
| The category indicated and the provider chosen | Report what was offered, to whom and why |
| Whether it was taken up | See take-up by category and where provision may be missing or unattractive |
| The result at the next measurement | Report movement alongside the intervention that preceded it |
| Overrides and their reasons | Review where the indicated route did not fit and improve the mapping |
Without routing, a cohort report can show the proportion of companies whose results changed. With routing, it can also show which support was offered or taken up before the next measurement. That gives a funder or programme board a fuller account of the intervention record, with its limits stated.
The report records sequence, not causation: which support preceded the next measurement. It does not claim that the intervention caused the movement.
Getting started
Routing can begin without engineering if the institution already has a directory of provision. The first version maps that provision to the 16 support categories; the time required depends on the number of providers, categories and rules to record.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | We provide the 16 support categories and the mapping template |
| 2 | You map your existing provision to them and record the gaps |
| 3 | Companies completing the measure receive the indicated category and, where configured, the route selected by the institution |
| 4 | Take-up and subsequent results are included in the cohort report |