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About VRM

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 until now 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. It is to improve markets and their mechanisms by best equipping customers to play the role of 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 in making it work. Providing those reasons to both sides is the primary challenge for VRM.

Project VRM

Project VRM is a community-driven effort to support the creation and building of VRM tools. It grew out of the user-centric identity community (of which it is still a part) and its work toward supporting higher degrees of customer independence from vendor control.

ProjectVRM is headquartered at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and headed by Doc Searls, a fellow with the Center.

In addition to this wiki, ProjectVRM has a blog and a mailing list. Work is also currently underway to create a static home site, so this wiki can serve more as a work space.

Note: the shortest link to this page is http://projectvrm.org.

Read more about ProjectVRM on the About Page.

Resources

• ProjectVRM mailing list

• ProjectVRM blog

• VRM and -related events

• VRM Initiatives

• VRM Process

• VRM scenarios

• VRM technology

• VRM coverage in blogs

• VRM discussion in podcasts

• Questions raised by VRM

• VRMcompanies — A list of VRM or VRMlike comnpanies

• Expressions of Relationships (notes from VRM meeting)

• Random Notes from Jan 25th VRM Developers Meeting (stream of consciousness / ears and brain to fingertips and keyboard)

• Website planning

• Other related efforts

Next VRM Conference Call: Wednesday April 11 at 10:30 AM Pacific / 1:30 PM Eastern

Please note: change from Thursday to Wednesday.

A group e-mail reminder was sent out, asking participants to contact Dean Landsman of their intent to be on the call. Some administrative changes with the conference call provider will require some specific notifications just before the call, and thus the request for participants to contact Dean in advance.

As usual we are going to record the call for potential future use as a reference audio or podcast. The links to MP3s of the prior calls can be found on the Community Portal page here on the Project VRM wiki.

Do you have an agenda item for the call? Please send it to the group (or to me (DeanLand), if you're feeling shy).

Conference Call archive and audio links have been moved to the Community Portal page.