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Scout researches target companies and produces sales intelligence briefs for Me Learning. It answers one question: "Why should Me Learning talk to this company, and how do I start that conversation?"

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1. Open Scout in your browser.
2. Click Sign in with Microsoft.
3. Authenticate with your Me Learning Microsoft account.

You'll see the Scout home screen with the research form. Your name and avatar appear in the sidebar footer.

Find your way around

The sidebar on the left is your main navigation. Here's what each section does:

Item	What it does
Find prospects	Build a targeted list of companies matching your criteria.
Scout a company	Research a specific company and get a sales brief.
Companies	View all companies you've researched or discovered. Filter by brief, contacts, or scouted status.
Prospects	View prospect lists you've generated.
Contacts	Browse all contacts found across every company in a searchable table.
Help	You're here now.

The sidebar footer shows your name and avatar from your Microsoft account, along with Theme and Sign out buttons. A small What’s new pill in the sidebar header opens the latest release notes. A blue dot appears whenever a new entry is available.

Scout a company

This is Scout's core feature. It uses AI-powered web research to build a tailored sales brief for any target company.

1. Go to Scout a company in the sidebar.
2. Type the company name in the Company name field. This is the only required field.
3. Optionally, add a website, context, target roles, or sector to improve the results.
4. Click one of the four action buttons at the bottom of the form.

Understand the form fields

Field	Required	What it does
Company name	Yes	The company you want to research.
Website	No	Helps Scout find the right company, especially for common names.
Additional context	No	Steers the research. For example: "Focus on their compliance training needs."
Target roles	No	Comma-separated job titles. Scout will look for people in these roles.
Sector	No	Public sector, Private, Charity / NFP, or Not sure. Helps tailor the brief.

Choose an action

Button	What it does	Speed	Est. cost
Quick scout	Fast 2-section check: company profile and opportunity snapshot. Good for quickly deciding if a company is worth pursuing.	~10s	~$0.01
Full scout	Complete 3-section sales brief: company profile, opportunity snapshot, and talking points.	~30s	~$0.04
Find contacts	Searches LinkedIn for L&D, HR, and People contacts, then verifies emails via ZeroBounce. No research brief.	~15s	~$0.01
Full scout with contacts	Complete research brief plus contact lookup. The most thorough option.	~45s	~$0.05

Read your research brief

After you start a research, Scout streams results in real time. Each section appears as a card as it’s generated.

What’s in the brief

A Full scout produces three sections, each backed by source links:

• Company profile — size, sector, headquarters, structure, and what they do. Around 400 words.
• Opportunity snapshot — current priorities, training and L&D signals, and why Me Learning is a fit. Around 250 words.
• Talking points — suggested angles and openers for your first conversation. Around 200 words.

Each section ends with a References list of the sources cited in that section.

A Quick scout includes only the first two sections. The Talking points card shows a placeholder with a Run Full scout button so you can upgrade in place. Existing contacts and follow-ups are kept.

Charity Commission integration

When Scout matches a company to a UK charity, a green Verified data from Charity Commission banner appears above the brief. The brief then includes authoritative figures from the register: registration date, recent income and expenditure, and stated activities. Detection is automatic; you don’t need to flag the charity yourself.

Already scouted

If you scout a company that’s been scouted before, Scout shows a banner with two options:

• View brief — load the previous brief instantly.
• Scout again — run a fresh scout with the latest information. Scout asks you to confirm before replacing the brief. Contacts and follow-ups are kept either way.

The same Scout again button is in the action bar at the bottom of any saved brief.

Ask follow-up questions

After a research brief is complete, you can ask follow-up questions to dig deeper into any topic.

1. Scroll to the bottom of the research brief.
2. Type your question in the Ask a follow-up field.
3. Click Go.

You'll see the answer appear below the research brief. You can ask as many follow-ups as you like.

Find contacts

Scout searches multiple sources for real contacts at a target company and verifies their email addresses. Contacts appear as cards within the research brief and are also saved to the global Contacts screen.

How contact finding works

1. Scout searches LinkedIn, the company website, news, and directories for people in HR, L&D, People, Training, Talent, and Compliance roles.
2. For each person, ZeroBounce attempts to find and verify their email. Departmental mailboxes (e.g. hr@, training@) are added where they exist.
3. Force 24 enriches matched emails with subscribed, unsubscribed, and last-activity status.

A Searched… note above the contacts list tells you which providers Scout actually used on this run.

Email status markers

Every email carries a small status marker so you know how far to trust the address.

Marker	What it means
Green tick / Verified	ZeroBounce checked the inbox and confirmed it.
Amber warning / Unverified	ZeroBounce checked the inbox and could not confirm it. The email may bounce. This covers both catch-all domains and addresses that failed validation.
Grey question mark / Verify email	Not yet checked. Click the marker to run ZeroBounce for that one contact. The marker resolves in place into the green tick or amber warning. Costs one credit.

The contacts table shows small icons to keep the column tight. A company’s contact cards show the same three states as larger pills.

Source badges next to a name explain where the contact came from:

• Departmental — a generic mailbox derived from the company domain.
• Via Force 24 — matched against an existing Force 24 record.
• No badge — the default, found via AI web search.

View contacts for a company

1. Open a company’s research brief from the Companies screen.
2. Scroll down to the Contacts section.

Refresh contacts

Click Check again above the contacts cards to re-search and re-verify. Existing contacts and verified emails are always preserved, even if a re-search finds fewer people.

Find an email for one contact

If a contact has no email yet, click Find email next to their row to try ZeroBounce just for that person. The card updates in place once the lookup finishes.

Mark a contact as contacted

Two checkbox pills sit under every contact card and on every row of the Contacts table, under a small Contacted via label. Tap a pill to mark the channel:

• LinkedIn — for messages sent via LinkedIn.
• Email — for emails sent to that contact.

The pill fills green with a tick and shows when you marked it (today, 3d, 2w, then a short date for older marks). Hover for the exact date and time.

Click a green pill again to unmark it. Scout asks you to confirm first so an accidental click doesn’t wipe the original date.

State persists across refreshes, between the Contacts screen and the company detail page, and through Check again. Running Find email on a marked contact keeps the mark intact.

Open a contact’s LinkedIn profile

On a contact card, click the blue LinkedIn chip in the action row. On the contacts table, click the small LinkedIn icon to the right of the contact’s name. Both open the profile in a new tab.

Edit a contact

If a contact’s email or LinkedIn URL is wrong (for example, the LinkedIn link leads to a missing profile), you can correct it without re-running the search.

1. Hover the row in the Contacts table, or the card in a company brief.
2. Click the small pencil that appears next to the LinkedIn icon.
3. Edit the Email or LinkedIn URL field. Leave a field blank to clear it.
4. Click Save.

Saving a new email marks it as Unverified, so you can run a fresh ZeroBounce check on it.

View all contacts

1. Click Contacts in the sidebar.
2. Use the search box to filter by name, title, email, or company.

The contacts screen shows a table with columns for Name, Email, Title, Company, Date found, and Contacted via. Click any column header to sort. Click a company name to jump to that company’s detail page.

Filter by email status

The dropdown above the table lets you choose what the list shows:

• All contacts. Every contact, with or without an email.
• With email (default). Only contacts that have an email address on file. Hides the people you cannot reach yet.
• Verified email only. Only contacts whose address ZeroBounce has confirmed.

Your choice is remembered between visits.

Verify an unchecked email

If a contact’s email shows a grey question mark in the table, or a Verify email pill on a contact card, click it to run a ZeroBounce check on just that address. The marker spins briefly, then resolves into either the green tick or the amber warning. Verified and unverified addresses are final outcomes, so clicking them does nothing. This avoids burning a credit re-checking an answer you already have.

Copy an email address

Click any email address on a contact card or in the contacts table. It copies to your clipboard automatically.

Export contacts

On a company’s detail page, click Export contacts (.csv) in the action bar at the bottom of the brief to download all contacts for that company as a CSV file.

Build a prospect list

Prospect lists let you describe a type of company and have Scout find matching organisations. This is useful for prospecting across a sector or region.

1. Go to Find prospects in the sidebar.
2. Describe the kind of companies you’re looking for. Be specific about sector, size, location, or other criteria.
3. Click Build list.

You’ll see a list of 10–20 matching companies. From there, click Scout on any card to scout that company.

View your lists

Click Prospects in the sidebar to see all prospect lists. Use the Mine only / Everyone toggle to switch between your lists and the team’s. Sort by newest, oldest, or name. Click any list to see its companies and research status.

Find contacts for the whole list

On a list’s detail page, click Find all contacts to run contact discovery on every company in turn. Companies that already have contacts are skipped. Once at least one company has contacts, a Refresh all button appears for re-running across the whole list.

Progress shows above the list: which company is being processed, how many have been done, and the total contacts found. If the daily ZeroBounce limit is hit, the run stops and reports where it got to.

Manage companies and lists

The Companies screen shows every company you’ve researched or discovered through prospect lists. The Prospects screen does the same for prospect lists.

Search

Each screen has a search box at the top. Search keeps working as you navigate: open a result, hit back, and your search term is still applied.

Filter pills (Companies only)

Below the search box, filter pills narrow the list:

Filter	What it shows
All	Every company in your database.
Scouted	Companies with a completed research brief.
Has contacts	Companies where contacts have been found.
Not scouted	Companies discovered through prospect lists that haven’t been scouted yet.

Mine only / Everyone

Inline with the search bar on Companies and Prospects, the Mine only / Everyone toggle switches between work attributed to you and work across the whole team. Filtering happens on the server, so pagination stays accurate.

Sort and page size

The sort dropdown offers Newest first, Oldest first, Name A–Z, and Name Z–A. Companies and Contacts also have a page-size selector (20, 50, 200 per page, or Show all). On the Contacts table, click any column header to sort by that column.

Understand the cards

Each company card shows the company name, a description excerpt, badges, the last updated date, and the number of follow-up questions (if any).

Badge	What it means
Scouted	A Full scout brief is saved.
Quick scout	Only a Quick scout has been run. Open the company to upgrade to a Full scout.
Contacts	Contacts have been found for this company.

Open a company

Click any company card that has a brief or contacts to view the full detail. Companies without data show a Scout button instead, which takes you to the scout form with the name pre-filled.

Rename and delete

You can keep your data tidy without leaving Scout.

Rename a company or prospect list

1. Open the company detail page or the prospect list detail page.
2. Click the heading at the top of the page. It turns into an editable field.
3. Type the new name and press Enter to save, or Escape to cancel.

Empty names are rejected and the original is restored. Company names that would clash with an existing company are also rejected: Scout normalises names before checking, so “Acme”, “Acme Ltd”, and “Acme Limited” all count as the same company.

Delete a company or list

Deleting a company also deletes its research, contacts, and follow-ups. Deleting a list removes the list itself but leaves the underlying companies in place. Both actions are recorded in the activity feed.

Export your work

After a research brief is complete, an action bar at the bottom of the page collects every option in one place:

Button	What it does
Copy all	Copies the entire brief as text to your clipboard. Useful for pasting into emails or documents.
Download .docx	Downloads the brief as a Word document, including follow-ups and contacts.
Export contacts (.csv)	Downloads all contacts for this company as a CSV. Only shown when contacts exist.
Scout again	Re-runs research for this company. Asks you to confirm before replacing the brief; contacts and follow-ups are kept.
Scout another company	Returns to the scout form so you can start a new search. This is the primary action at the end of a brief.

Procurement intelligence

For public sector companies, a Procurement intelligence card appears below the contacts. Click Check procurement to search Contracts Finder and Stotles for LMS and eLearning contracts, values, and renewal dates.

Useful links

Below the brief, Scout provides direct links to external research sources for the company, including LinkedIn, Companies House, Contracts Finder, and Stotles.

Usage and activity

The Activity panel shows a team activity feed plus API usage and costs. Open it by double-clicking the Scout logo in the sidebar, or press Ctrl+Shift+U. It lands on the Activity tab by default.

Activity tab

The Activity tab is a chronological feed of everything the team has done in Scout. Each entry shows who performed the action, what they did, and when.

• Filter by time range or by individual team member using the user pills.
• Use the search bar to filter by your email address, a company name, or a prospect list.
• Company names, prospect lists, and contact names are all clickable. Click a company to jump to its brief, a list to open it, or a contact name to filter the Contacts screen.
• Actions tracked include: researched, found contacts, asked follow-up, created list, charity lookup, marked as contacted, procurement search, renames, and deletions.

Usage tab

The Usage tab shows how Scout is being used across the team. Filter by time range: Today, 7 days, 30 days, or All time.

• Summary cards — total API calls, tokens used, estimated cost, and ZeroBounce credits remaining.
• Usage by type — breakdown by research, contacts, follow-ups, list generation, quick research, and procurement searches.
• Recent activity log — the last 25 actions with type, company name, tokens, and timestamp.

What’s new

The release notes panel records every meaningful change to Scout. It’s the quickest way to see what’s shipped recently.

Open the panel

1. Look for the What’s new pill in the sidebar header.
2. Click it to open the panel. Click outside, or hit Close, to dismiss.

A small blue dot appears on the pill when there’s a release entry you haven’t seen yet. Opening the panel marks it as read for your account.

How entries are organised

The newest entry sits at the top, expanded. Older entries collapse into a one-line summary you can expand on demand, so the panel doesn’t grow unwieldy.

Feature tips

When a release adds something worth pointing out, a NEW pill appears next to the menu item that holds the new feature, and a short tip floats next to it the first time you land on that screen. The tip names the feature, says what it does, and links straight to the release note.

Dismiss the tip with Got it, by pressing Esc, or by clicking outside. Each tip is tracked separately, so dismissing one won’t skip the next.

Missed the tip? You can replay the most recent one:

Show me the latest tip

Dark mode and settings

Switch to dark mode

Click Theme in the sidebar footer. Scout remembers your preference between sessions.

Sign out

Click Sign out in the sidebar footer, next to your name and avatar.

Tips for better results