Vendor Relationship Management
Description
"VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. It provides customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties.
CRM systems for the duration have borne the full burden of relating with customers. VRM will provide customers with the means to bear some of that weight, and to help make markets work for both vendors and customers — in ways that don't require the former to "lock in" the latter.
The goal of VRM is to improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter. In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace.
For VRM to work, vendors must have reason to value it, and customers must have reasons to invest the necessary time, effort and attention to making it work. Providing those reasons to both sides is the primary challenge for VRM." (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page)
Advantages/Disadvantages
Graham Sadd:
Buy-side benefits of VRM:
- My identity, multiple persona and personal data and documents, stored in my personal, secure ‘digital safe deposit boxes’ accessible only by me.
- The ability to ‘share’ relevant data or documents, on demand or persistently, with specific suppliers with whom I want a relationship.
- The convenience of ‘write once, use many’.
- An audit trail of organisations that have, with my permission, viewed or copied information.
- The ability to have specific data and documents ‘authenticated and certified’ by appropriate trusted third parties and agencies to increase trust/value.
- Revenue potential for me to ‘market’ my personal information (eg anonymous medical records).
Sell-side benefits of VRM:
- Reduced costs of collection, storage, maintenance.
- Increased accuracy and granularity of data (what I want rather than what I have bought).
- Reduced risks, financial and criminal, of data abuse/loss.
- Improved relationship with respect for my information.
VRM issues:
- Drivers – victims of identity/information abuse; convenience of ‘write once, use many’; income from personal data marketing.
- Laziness – many individuals will baulk at the prospect of entering sufficient data to enjoy the benefits of VRM. They are, and will continue to be, content with being ‘managed’ until abused.
- Resistance – defence of suppliers legacy systems/process/investment.
- Trust – verification, authentication and certification of identity and data by trusted third parties will be a growing service, as will independent key server providers for security."
(http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133716&d=101&h=817&f=816)