— Markets & Intelligence

Location Strategy

Compares candidate locations for a business function or team across talent depth, cost and practical feasibility, producing an evidence-backed ranking and a recommendation to test against business priorities.

  • Markets & Intelligence
  • Traceable reasoning
  • Runs anywhere
Preview methodology

1–2 weeks → ~15 minutes

Including the external research pass

No coding required

Input
Business function or target roles
Output
Ranked location scorecard with evidence for every score
Runs in
Skillsize · ChatGPT · Claude · Copilot
Export
SKILL.md · MCP
Time saved
~1–2 weeks per run

— USE CASES

What people use Location Strategy for

Choosing a team location

Assesses candidate locations against the needs of a specific function, role mix and headcount. The ranked scorecard shows where talent availability and operating conditions support the proposed team.

Testing a cost-saving case

Compares salary levels, cost of living and operating costs with a defined baseline. The assessment makes cost differentials visible alongside feasibility constraints that could weaken the case.

Challenging a preferred market

Tests a favoured location against alternatives using evidence on language, time zones, employment law, incentives and stability. The recommendation provides a concrete position for scrutiny rather than treating the initial preference as settled.

Supporting a leadership decision

Provides a comparative location assessment with evidence for every score. The deliverable gives leaders a shared basis for weighing talent, cost and feasibility trade-offs.

What it works from

  • Business function or target roles
  • Proposed headcount
  • Candidate locations
  • Baseline location or cost assumptions

What you get back

  • Ranked location scorecard with evidence for every score
  • Talent pool depth and salary comparisons
  • Cost-of-living and operating-cost comparisons
  • Cost differentials against the baseline established for the assessment start-up context or provided by the client if available for use as an input to the diagnostic comparison stage itself should that prove necessary

— HOW IT BEHAVES

How Location Strategy produces its result

The mechanics behind this specific template — what it reads, what it calculates, and where a human stays in the loop.

Live research on the market being watched

Current external sources on the market being watched are researched during the run rather than recalled from training data, and every source travels with the output.

Composed as work product

Findings on the market being watched are written up as a document that reads like professional output, with each claim tied back to a signal.

Delivered as a working table

The signals land as a clean table you can sort, filter or drop straight into the deliverable.

Why this is expensive by hand

Location decisions often rely on uneven market evidence, headline salary comparisons and assumptions about how easily a team can operate. In practice it shows up as choosing a team location: assesses candidate locations against the needs of a specific function, role mix and headcount. The ranked scorecard shows where talent availability and operating conditions support the proposed team. The value sits in the rigour, not the typing — yet the rigour is exactly what gets traded away when there is only 1–2 weeks of capacity for it.

How this Skill produces it

Here the same job runs as a Skill. Your material goes in; ranked location scorecard with evidence for every score comes out, alongside talent pool depth and salary comparisons. The judgement is built in — how items are broken up, what standard they are held to, and where the run stops for a human review. In effect, 1–2 weeks of senior time compresses into ~15 minutes — and the output is comparable across clients, quarters and colleagues instead of shaped by whoever ran it.

Who it's for

  • Strategy and market intelligence teams
  • Corporate development and investment teams
  • Consultants advising on positioning and timing
  • Leaders who need early warning, not hindsight

Run it in Skillsize — or export it anywhere

Location Strategy exports as a structured SKILL.md file and is MCP-ready, so the same method runs in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or your own AI products. Adapt it to your methodology, and the intelligence stays yours — not locked to one vendor.

ChatGPTClaudeCopilotAI Products (MCP)