Opportunities between companies come from different relationship types. Their evidence strength, validation actions, and risks differ, so they should not be compressed into one similarity judgment.
High-certainty relationships
Tenders, winning-bid announcements, public partnerships, business investments, and supply-chain disclosures can often serve as hard evidence. Their advantage is source clarity; their weakness is that the time window may have changed. A report should retain the release time, actors, project scope, and next validation point.
Medium-certainty relationships
Similar customers, regional projects, hiring direction, product updates, financing, expansion, and business events are medium-certainty signals. They can suggest an opportunity, but rarely justify action alone. Cross-check at least two sources and state what still needs confirmation.
Low-certainty relationships
Model inference, weak text similarity, single-source rumors, stale pages, and broad industry generalizations are hypotheses, not high-priority sales actions. They belong on observation lists and must state what is unknown.
Evidence fields
- Source: public pages, announcements, databases, internal leads, or interviews.
- Time: publication, event, collection time, and whether the evidence may be stale.
- Evidence summary: the text or structured field supporting the judgment.
- Relationship path: the object, event, or industry node connecting Company A to Company B.
- Uncertainty: missing or conflicting information and points needing manual validation.
Output principle
A good matching result explains both why a candidate is recommended and why that recommendation may be wrong. The first supports action; the second controls cost.