LeWeb3 - Doc Searls: Introducing VRM, Vendor Relationship Management

(Running notes from the LeWeb3 conference in Paris.)

-- by guest blogger Susan Kish

Doc Searls is the co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto", the book that first suggested that "markets are conversations". Prompted by host Loic Le Meur, Doc says that the idea came to him in the 80s when he worked in the advertising business,. "The best example that markets are conversations", he says, "is here, at events like LeWeb3". Here are the 11 points from his talk, titled "Turning the Tables: What happens when users are really in charge".

1. Bullshit will lose leverage. To explore, look at the meme called Web 2.0. We use the word because Tim O’Reilly did a really nice job writing it up in 2005. Ten years ago, portals were all the rage and advertising was going to pay for everything; today social networks are all the rage and advertising is going to pay for everything. Doc closes with a reference to the Web 2.0 B-S Generator.
2. Advertising as we know it will die. Google AdSense has made great advances by making ads accountable so you just pay for what gets clicked.
3. Herding people into walled gardens and guessing about what makes them “social” will seem as absurd as it actually is.
4. We will realize that the most important producers are what we used to call consumers.
5. The value chain will be replaced by the value constellation (concept from Norman and Ramirez in the 80s).
6. What’s your business model will no longer be asked of everything. VCs taught us to ask that in the 90s. Now use and usefulness come first. And money is an effect of those things. (He echoes here a point in yesterday's speech
7. We will make money by maximizing “because effects”. That is what happens when you make money becausewith it.
8. Markets are all three things – transaction, conversations, and relationships (illustrated with a great Hugh MacLeod cartoon)
9. The Live Web is more important then Web-dot-anything. The Live Web is branching off the Static web.
10. We will marry the Live Web to the value constellation. In essence, "I want to notify the whole market that I want to rent a car, in effect a personal RFP that goes out when I arrive at the airport to Hertz and Avis and all the others. I would like to be the bridge. I would like to handle my own health care data. I should be able to inquire and relate to whole markets, on the fly." The users need to be the platform of the future.
11. We will be able to manage vendors at least as well as they manage us. We are calling this VRM, Vendor Relationship Management. The project is being launched within the Harvard’s Berkman Center. The core concept is that the individual should be able to manage their relationships with their vendors and suppliers, based on the idea that they actually know more about specific preferences, updated data, etc. And, further, that most CRM systems oversimplify customer data in order to segment, and to effectively manage the info; ultimately they are just a sales system, not a relationship system.

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