Comments on: Microformats as information brokers – the intelligent agents to support VRM

By: Hi, my sites:

Hi, my sites: — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:20:38 +0000

Hello people8b0143fb64c41e89e204b7c458756922

By: Using CRM during the day, and VRM at night? « Frederic Baud

Using CRM during the day, and VRM at night? « Frederic Baud — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 09:40:35 +0000

[...] interested by VRM applied to banking, then you should definitely read Colin Henderson’s post on The Bankwatch. If you are more than interested by BankingVRM, you should then join BarCampBank’s workgroup [...]

By: Kisakookoo

Kisakookoo — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 06:25:20 +0000

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By: Colin

Colin — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 04:20:09 +0000

Dave … that is interesting. I have been wrestling with how a ‘tool’ could act as an automatic intermediary between vendor and customer in an effective way.

I don’t pretend to know yet the mechanics of the interaction, but groups or some social (word de jour) aspect could be the missing link that makes the tool work.

By: Dave Birch

Dave Birch — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:21:05 +0000

I think the heart of the issue is in your sentence about “seeking advice and information from trusted social networks”. I wonder if the connection between CRM and VRM will be made not by individuals but by groups. Since each individual will belong to many such groups, they will fragment their VRM across them in some way I can’t quite put my finger on. In that kind of world, my bank needs to be part of one of my social networks, or at least interact with them.

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 05:17:01 +0000

Alex .. thanks for the comment. You are right that its a new concept, because (I think) we as consumers are used to being force fed, and being under pressure from people selling things. This reverses that paradigm, but only to the extent that such tools/ bots/ agents/ microformats can properly represent our needs, and at the appropriate time.

By: alex

alex — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 01:44:37 +0000

Colin (hello from a complete stranger),

two years back a friend in the (UK) VC world tried to get me interested in “Intelligent Agents”. I didn’t understand what on earth he was talking about then (shame on me). But this stuff you are talking about kind of makes sense now. The idea of some smart agent (a VRM) acting on my behalf to get me the best loan deal or insurance choices starts to makes sense. Interesting – though still hard to get my limited brain to fully undestand the potential.

Interesting way to look at things.

By: PPC

PPC — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:18:26 +0000

Hello Colin,

Thanks for this very exciting post. Good way to understand kind of MicroFormat applications in the Bank 2.0 age.

Will share your post with other BarCampBankers.

Cheers,

PPC

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:35:35 +0000

Whit … Thanks for the comment. Now that I can see more clearly what I have been trying to define, I want to see how that fits in those diagrams. It may be the use of the word RFP. Perhaps it needs to be de-layered into the components along the lines mentioned in my post.
Anyhow VRM is an exciting concept.

By: whitneymcn

whitneymcn — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:42:57 +0000

Hey, Colin –

Great to see more people thinking about VRM, and it’s really interesting for me to get perspectives from people in areas (banking) that I know relatively little about.

If you haven’t already, take a look at a couple of pages on projectvrm.org that I think address some of what you’re talking about here:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Firefox_plugin
The firefox plugin proposal works along the lines that you propose, with “agents” working on behalf of both seekers and vendors (I think/hope that the fulfillment scenarios section gives a reasonable picture of how it might work).

That proposal doesn’t cover the (excellent, extremely important) reputation element that you bring up, but there are a couple of notes on that topic in the “technology -> identity” section of the wiki. I’m definitely with you on that one: VRM *can* work without reputation, but it’s much, much better with reputation tossed into the mix.

Finally, the idea is roughly diagrammed out here:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Vrm_diagram
…though that diagram is of my own making and I haven’t yet updated it to reflect my own and others’ thoughts from the last couple of weeks.

Again, excellent to see more thinking here!

- Whit