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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 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.

Project VRM

Project VRM is a community-driven effort, led by The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, to support the creation and building of VRM tools. ProjectVRM carries forward thinking by various parties around the world. These include ideas brought up by Doc Searls and his fellow Cluetrain Manifesto authors, work of the Buyer Centric Commerce Forum and other allied efforts in the U.K., and many sessions at Internet Identity Workshops.

ProjectVRM is headed by Doc Searls, a fellow with the Berkman Center.

In addition to this wiki, ProjectVRM has a blog and a mailing list.

Read more about ProjectVRM on the About Page.

VRM Principles

Relationships are voluntary.
Customers are born free and independent of vendors.
Customers control their own data. They can share data selectively and control the terms of its use.
Customers are points of integration and origination for their own data.
Customers can assert their own terms of engagement and service.
Customers are free to express their demands and intentions outside any companyâs control.

These can all be summed up in the statement Free customers are more valuable than captive ones.

In a broader way, the same should be true of individuals relating to organizations. With VRM, however, our primary focus is on customer relationships with vendors, or sellers.

VRM Goals

Define and advocate a clear vision for a VRM world
Ensure the development and publishing of open standards and specifications for VRM services
Create a lightweight and effective organisational structure
Drive VRM usage
Create and oversee VRM compliance program