An industry report lists ten companies and many links. A research team still needs to ask whether it found the relevant companies and checked each under the same rule. A long document can look complete without completing the requested research scope.
Perplexity's Deep Research introduction describes iterative searching, reading, and report production. Those capabilities can reduce collection work. The buyer still needs to define what the research must establish.
Set the inclusion criteria
Suppose the task is to identify software companies serving a region and supporting a particular deployment model. Establish inclusion criteria and supporting evidence first. If the requirements remain implicit, ten familiar names can be mistaken for a market inventory.
A numerical target is not a coverage definition either. Requesting at least twenty companies can lengthen the result without establishing who is missing or whether every entry qualifies. Specify exclusions and identify which unknown conditions require further investigation.
Check coverage and accuracy separately
The vendor-published DRACO paper discusses evaluation of complex research tasks. It cannot prove that a particular delivered report is reliable. Its separation of concerns such as accuracy, coverage, and citation quality is nevertheless useful when defining an acceptance process.
For a supplier study, inspect both the breadth of discovery and the evidence for each included company. A source confirming that a company exists does not establish its current geographic coverage, product capabilities, and deployment options.
Keep unknown information visible. Treating missing evidence as proof of an absent capability can wrongly exclude a supplier. Expanding a brief directory listing into detailed claims can create an unsupported conclusion.
Keep a record of unresolved questions
The most useful review output may be unresolved questions. Unsupported fields need another source; conflicting material needs a date and version check; borderline companies need the inclusion rule applied again.
Those actions improve the evidence more than asking for smoother prose. An industry specialist can also review the unresolved items most likely to change the decision, rather than rereading every polished paragraph.
When adopting a research assistant, retain the scope, qualification rules, and supporting sources. Length describes the artifact. Those records determine whether the task behind it was completed.
References
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Perplexity, “Introducing Perplexity Deep Research”, for the vendor's description of its research workflow.
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Perplexity et al., “DRACO: Deep Research Accuracy, Completeness, and Objectivity”, a vendor-published research evaluation framework.