Explore Tile: Coverage (Stack vs Archetype)

What Coverage measures

Coverage answers one question: against the vendor categories a company of your size and type typically has in place, how much of your stack is actually filled in? Verinode calls that reference list your archetype. It is derived from your employee count and grouped into vendor types (Software, Estimating, Equipment Purchase, Equipment Rental, Insurance, Fleet, Finance, HR, Marketing, Training, Subs, Supplies, Professional Services). Inside each type, some categories are marked essential (most peers running your kind of business carry them) and the rest are supporting.

Coverage is not a judgment about any single vendor. It is a gap map: which category slots are filled with an active vendor relationship, which are empty, and, for the essential ones, which empty slots are the ones worth acting on first.

This article covers two places you'll see it: the Coverage tile in the Explore row on the Vendors home page, and the Coverage tab inside the Vendors card slider, which holds the two full views, Field and Radar.

Where to find it

• Sidebar → Vendors (/vendors). In the Explore row, the third tile reads Coverage.
• Clicking that tile, or opening the vendor card slider and selecting the Coverage tab, opens the same view: a Field/Radar toggle over your full archetype breakdown.

The other Explore tiles sit alongside it in this fixed order: All Vendors, Avg Score, Coverage, Spend, Renewals.

The Coverage tile in Explore

What it shows. A percentage: covered categories divided by total archetype categories, rounded to a whole number (for example "68%"). Under the number, one of two lines:

• If any essential category is missing, it reads "N essential gap" or "N essential gaps vs archetype" (pluralized correctly).
• If every essential category is covered, it reads "all essentials covered vs archetype."

The ring preview. The tile's small graphic is a ring, filled to the coverage percentage. Its color reflects urgency, not just the number:

• Bad (red-toned) whenever any essential category is missing, regardless of the overall percentage. An 80% stack with one open essential slot still reads as needing attention.
• Good (green-toned) when there are no essential gaps and coverage is 80% or higher.
• Warn (amber-toned) when there are no essential gaps but coverage sits under 80%.

Peer comparison. When Verinode has a peer coverage figure for operators like you, a small delta line appears on the tile, for example "+12pp vs peer" or "-8pp vs peer." It only shows when the gap is a full percentage point or more in either direction, so a coverage rate that's essentially tied with peers doesn't produce a misleading plus-or-minus-zero line. The comparison itself is always shown as a range or delta, never as a specific peer count.

Empty state. If your operator profile has no archetype match yet (no employee count on file, or the reference catalog hasn't resolved), the tile shows a dash instead of a percentage and the sub-line falls away. Coverage fills in once your profile and vendor stack have enough to compare against the archetype.

Clicking the tile opens the Coverage tab described below.

The Coverage tab: Field and Radar

Inside the Coverage tab, a header line states the raw count: "N of M essential and supporting categories covered." A two-button toggle, Field and Radar, switches between the two visualizations. Your last choice is remembered the next time you open Coverage, so you land back on whichever view you used before.

Both views read the same underlying data, your covered categories, the archetype's essential/supporting split, and (where available) each covered category's quality score, they just present it differently. Field is a visual, at-a-glance roster read. Radar is the analytic, side-by-side read against peer adoption. Neither is more "correct"; use whichever suits the moment.

Field view

Field renders your stack as a football field, split into two halves by a view switcher: Jobsite and Business.

• Jobsite groups categories into "Tools & Equipment" (job management, estimating software, field documentation, workforce scheduling, drying equipment purchase and rental, air quality and diagnostic equipment) on one side, and "Safety & Training" (safety compliance software, IICRC training, OSHA safety) on the other.
• Business groups "Revenue & Ops" (accounting, HR/payroll, CRM, marketing automation, communications, business intelligence, SEO/website, reputation management, lead generation, payroll services) against "Risk & Coverage" (general liability, workers' comp, commercial auto, contractors pollution liability, invoice factoring).

Each category becomes a circular "player" node positioned on its half of the field, essential categories placed closer to the center of the formation, supporting categories toward the edges.

Reading a node:

• Filled and strong: a green ring around the vendor's logo (or initials, if no logo can be resolved). Underneath, the category name and the vendor's name.
• Filled and solid: a yellow ring. The category is covered but the quality read is middling.
• Filled but needs attention: a red ring. The vendor is in place, but the quality signal is weak.
• Open, with no data yet: a warm-yellow ring, meaning the slot is filled but Verinode has no quality score to grade it (neither a Verinode Score nor a satisfaction rating has come through).
• Open, no active exploration: a dashed teal ring with a plus sign. A teal glow pulses behind essential open slots so they stand out from supporting ones. The badge under the node reads OPEN.
• Open, actively being explored: a dashed burgundy ring with an ellipsis glyph, pulsing. The badge reads EXPLORING. This means you (or the agent) already started a sourcing conversation for this category, and it's tracked as a decision.
• Overlap (two or more active vendors in the same category): multiple logos cluster together with a small lightning-bolt badge above them, and the category label below reads "N× OVERLAP."

The legend and summary bar above the field spells out the same color key (Strong, Solid, Needs attention, Open) plus an overlap count when any exist. On the right, a running tally reads "N filled" and, when applicable, "N open" and "N overlap."

Clicking a node:

• A filled, single-vendor node opens a vintage trading-card popup: vendor logo, category name, monthly spend, satisfaction rating (as stars), renewal month, and a compact stat row (Score, Spend, Rating, Team, meaning your team's own survey average for that vendor). An Open Profile button drills into the vendor's full card.
• A node with more than one active vendor opens a head-to-head comparison instead of a single card.
• An open slot with an active exploration routes you straight to that decision's page, since the agent conversation is already underway there.
• An open slot with no exploration yet opens the gap exploration flow (see below).

End zones. Both ends of the field are branded with your company name and your brand color, purely a visual flourish, they carry no data.

Radar view

Radar renders the same categories as a spider chart, one vendor type at a time. A tab strip across the top lets you switch between vendor types (Software, Estimating, Equipment Purchase, and so on); any type with an essential gap gets a small dot indicator on its tab.

Reading the chart:

• Each spoke is one category, labeled at its tip.
• A dotted gray polygon traces peer adoption, how widely peers in your archetype use each category. It never collapses fully to the center; the read floors out around the low end so the shape stays visible even for categories nobody uses heavily.
• A solid, brand-colored polygon traces your own stack quality. A category collapses toward the center when you don't cover it; a covered category with no quality data yet sits at a fixed middle radius; a covered category with a quality score sits proportionally to that score out of 100.
• Dots on each spoke are color-coded the same way as Field's rings: strong (green-toned), solid (copper), a lower-but-covered band (yellow-toned), and a gap band (red-toned for anything not covered). Essential gaps pulse with a soft halo so they're easy to spot even at a glance.
• The center of the chart shows your coverage percentage for the selected vendor type and your company name underneath.

Below the chart, every category in the selected type gets its own row: a checkmark or an X, the category name, an "Essential" tag on essential gaps, a quality score out of 100 when one exists, the covering vendor's name, and, for covered categories with any rating data, a row of compact pills, VS (Verinode Score), You (your own satisfaction rating), Team (your team's average), each normalized to the same 0-100 scale. Uncovered categories show "N% of peers use this" instead, giving you the adoption context without a specific peer count.

If a vendor type has fewer than three categories, the radar chart is skipped (a spider chart needs at least three axes to read cleanly) and the type's categories render as the same row list on its own.

When any essential category is missing in the selected type, a link appears: "Explore alternatives in [Vendor Type] →," which routes to Benchmarks.

Legend. Under the chart: a solid brand-colored line for "Your stack quality," a dotted gray line for "Peer adoption," and a small red-toned dot for "Essential gap."

Clicking an open category: the gap exploration flow

Tapping an open slot, on either Field or Radar, opens a focused modal rather than a blank add-vendor form. It works through three zones in order:

1. Context: what the category is, why it matters, and how widely peers in your archetype cover it (again, shown qualitatively, not as a specific headcount).
2. Options: the top-ranked catalog vendors in that category. A one-tap "I use this" adds the relationship with sensible defaults, you fill in cost, seat count, or other details afterward from the vendor's card. A "Something else" path opens catalog search if none of the suggestions fit.
3. Plan with agent: if you're not sure what you need yet, a button routes into a guided conversation so IQ can help you think it through rather than leaving you to fill out a form cold.

Empty states

• No archetype match (no employee count, or the reference catalog can't resolve one): the Coverage tile shows a dash and the tab reads "Coverage data not available yet, add a few vendors to see where your stack sits against the archetype."
• No vendors at all: every category on both Field and Radar renders open, giving you a full, honest picture of the archetype rather than hiding the view until you have something covered.
• Fewer than three categories in a selected vendor type: Radar falls back to a simple checklist for that type instead of drawing a chart that wouldn't read cleanly.

Best-practice example

Say your Coverage tile reads 68% with "2 essential gaps vs archetype." Open the tab, stay on Field, and switch to the Business half. Two dashed teal-ringed nodes with pulsing halos stand out among the filled ones, say, Workers Comp and Accounting/Bookkeeping. Click Workers Comp: the gap exploration modal opens, shows how the category fits your archetype, and lists a couple of top-rated catalog options along with a one-tap add. If you're mid-conversation with a broker already, skip the modal, that context lives in your own workflow, not in Verinode. Switch to Radar and you'll see the same two categories collapsed near the chart's center while the dotted peer-adoption line sits well out toward the edge for both, a visual confirmation that this is a widely-adopted category you're currently missing, not a niche one.

Related reading

• How benchmarks work
• Reading a benchmark
• The decision workspace
• Understanding your margin