Client€20B Global Network Technology Company
SprintAn 8 week sprint
Fieldwork9 conglomerates profiled · 13 product types compared · 8 verticals sized
Strategy and Commercial Excellence
The highest score was not the first call
A patent licensing business wanted to know which large industrial groups to approach about cellular connectivity licences. Nine were scored on portfolio, volume, market and profitability. The company that came top of that score was recommended fourth, because two things the score could not see turned out to matter more than everything it could.
9
Industrial conglomerates profiled and scored
6x
Spread in connected product count between top and bottom
4
Targets recommended for the first approach
3
Deprioritised, including two on structural grounds
A note on sourcing. Every figure here comes from a SprintlyWorks client engagement. Clients are described, never named. Where a figure is identified, modelled or indicative rather than banked, the line says so.
01
The question was who to call, not what to say
The business licenses cellular standard essential patents. Its growth question was which large conglomerates making or selling connected devices to approach, and in what order. That is a targeting problem rather than a messaging one, and the work treated it as such.
Nine groups were profiled across heavy equipment, industrial automation, building systems, positioning technology and consumer electronics. Each was scored out of 100 on four things: how many cellular connected products it makes, estimated annual shipment volume of those products, the size and growth of the markets they sit in, and net profit margin as a proxy for capacity to invest.
Portfolio size and shipment volume carried 35 points each, so 70 of the 100 rested on scale. That weighting is the reason the ranking needed a second pass.
02
What the score said
The scores separated cleanly at the top. Three groups scored in the eighties, four in the sixties, and two at 35.
Connected product counts ranged from 31 down to 5, a sixfold spread. Estimated shipment volumes ranged from 1.5 million units a year down to 0.1 million. Net margins ran from 14.8 per cent down to 4.2.
Every one of those figures is a research estimate assembled from public sources, not a disclosure. Two are explicitly unreliable in the source material: one group has no published shipment data at all, and another shipment figure covers a connectivity portfolio that is not cellular only. Both are flagged on the page for the same reason they were flagged in the deck.
03
The two things the score could not see
The first is who already owns the relationship. The highest scoring group, on portfolio and volume, had already partnered with a large telecoms operator for the cellular connectivity in its machines. A licence conversation there starts behind rather than level.
The second is geography. Licensing is jurisdictional, and one of the nine does most of its business in a region where the client has no presence at all. It scored 35 and was recommended last, but it would have been recommended last at any score.
A third structural finding cut across several of them. Some of the largest groups do not manufacture their own connected hardware, having divested gateways, routers and modems to smaller original equipment makers. A licensing conversation with a group that does not build the device is a conversation with the wrong entity.
Scoring versus sequencing
Why the ranking was reordered
Groups anonymised. The score is the project own weighted model on public data. The recommendation applies two filters the model does not contain.
| Group | Score | What the score missed | Recommended position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Group A | 89 | Already partnered with a telecoms operator for connectivity, and revenue concentrated in one region | Fourth |
| Group B | 83 | Nothing, strongest margin and market position | First |
| Group C | 86 | Shipment figure not cellular only | Second |
| Group D | 69 | Existing collaboration with the client, which helps | Third |
| Group E | 35 | Most business in a region where the client has no presence | Last |
How to read this → Two of the five move position once partnership status and geography are applied. A score that ignores who already owns the customer will always point at the biggest name.
SprintlyWorks analysis
04
What the client was left holding
A prioritised target list in three tiers: four to approach first, two as backups, three deprioritised with the reason stated for each. A profile of each group connected product portfolio, the technologies underneath it and the markets those products sit in. And a recommendation to benchmark the telecoms operators that had already partnered with these targets, because they are the incumbents in the conversation.
One thing this work did not produce, despite what the brief was called, is a value proposition. No positioning line and no messaging was written, and the page says so rather than implying otherwise. The deliverable was market intelligence and a call list.
There is no measured result. No licence was signed during the work, no revenue moved, and the deck does not report what happened next. What it produced was a defensible order in which to spend the business development effort.
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