Comments on: Dealing with it http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2007/08/31/dealing-with-it/ Developing tools for customer independence and engagement with vendors Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:22:38 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5.2 hourly 1 By: Russell Nelson http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2007/08/31/dealing-with-it/comment-page-1/#comment-503 Russell Nelson Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:34:01 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2007/08/31/dealing-with-it/#comment-503 VRM works for anything whose discovery can be automated, even extremely inexpensive things. Let's say that I want twenty 10K 5% 1/4watt resistors. I post that fact in the appropriate format. I've already told various electronics vendors that I want to buy stuff, so they know to watch my RSS feed. They fetch my RFP, get my identity for my shipping address, compute the shipping cost, and return a fixed-price bid. My software looks at the bids, and picks the one I think is most appropriate, or alerts me if something interesting looks like it's happening. VRM works for anything whose discovery can be automated, even extremely inexpensive things. Let’s say that I want twenty 10K 5% 1/4watt resistors. I post that fact in the appropriate format. I’ve already told various electronics vendors that I want to buy stuff, so they know to watch my RSS feed. They fetch my RFP, get my identity for my shipping address, compute the shipping cost, and return a fixed-price bid. My software looks at the bids, and picks the one I think is most appropriate, or alerts me if something interesting looks like it’s happening.

]]> By: Mike Warot http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2007/08/31/dealing-with-it/comment-page-1/#comment-466 Mike Warot Sun, 02 Sep 2007 02:41:23 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2007/08/31/dealing-with-it/#comment-466 Well. thanks to blogs and cheap web hosting we can all put out a press release and get ignored like all of the other advertising we all hate. The power isn't in the ability to publish, it's in the relationships that tie us together, earning and sharing respect with each other, until some of us become know as the "authority" on a subject. The ability to send out an RFP (request for proposal) seems to be the guts of VRM. This works well for high ticket items requiring contracts, lawyers, etc.. but it isn't likely to work for retail items. The key here is once again to build relationships between ourselves, and get some connectivity going, and build up a way for very small companies to essentially do an RFP in terms of a microformat. You have to specify what you want, URLs work great for that... then you have to be able to publish the RFP... which a retail vendor won't let you do... you have to provide your own host to publish the RFP on... then hope people will read it. The provisioning of the connectivity to complete the loop is the tricky bit. Blogs got better once the scale went up because of Google and other search engines. We need the equivalent structure to be able to complete the loop of discovery for VRM. I'm typing fast, and it makes sense to me now... but I hope it does for someone else as well. Virginia's having fun playing with the CD player, so I have a brief moment of grace while she's distracted. 8) --Mike-- Well. thanks to blogs and cheap web hosting we can all put out a press release and get ignored like all of the other advertising we all hate. The power isn’t in the ability to publish, it’s in the relationships that tie us together, earning and sharing respect with each other, until some of us become know as the “authority” on a subject.

The ability to send out an RFP (request for proposal) seems to be the guts of VRM. This works well for high ticket items requiring contracts, lawyers, etc.. but it isn’t likely to work for retail items. The key here is once again to build relationships between ourselves, and get some connectivity going, and build up a way for very small companies to essentially do an RFP in terms of a microformat.

You have to specify what you want, URLs work great for that… then you have to be able to publish the RFP… which a retail vendor won’t let you do… you have to provide your own host to publish the RFP on… then hope people will read it.

The provisioning of the connectivity to complete the loop is the tricky bit. Blogs got better once the scale went up because of Google and other search engines. We need the equivalent structure to be able to complete the loop of discovery for VRM.

I’m typing fast, and it makes sense to me now… but I hope it does for someone else as well.

Virginia’s having fun playing with the CD player, so I have a brief moment of grace while she’s distracted. 8)

–Mike–

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