Business Manufacturing Idea

[worldrunner]

Just want to put some feelers out there and receive some feedback. I am doing research into creating a ratemyprofessor / apartment ratings like website for suppliers. I currently work in supply chain and see an opportunity here as we often wait for suppliers to approach us. As someone who has an initiative to reduce lead-time and costs annually as many other people due, what are thoughts on a website that would rate suppliers on quality, cost, leadtime efficiency, reliability, and would you use this supplier again options? I understand it can often be a friends of a friends business, but working in a fortune 500 companies business shows me theirs an ability to ease my life and others by providing an intermediary service. I know that the challanges I would face include getting people to actually rate suppliers, cost of establishing databases for the millions of the suppliers out there, code, but I feel this is a huge market that could be tapped. Any feedback is appreciated either in the thread or in PM's.

 

[Gordon Gekko]

It sounds like a pretty good concept, but eventually, it would come down to HOW you're going to monetize the idea. If your website gets popular, the more it'll cost to maintain it. So money will become an issue. There are many ways to monetize this sort of a concept, though.

 

[acidboy]

kinda related but I'm a member of a local group of industry players here and we have oftentimes talked about having a database of suppliers/customers which we can rate. last time we discussed this there was an impasse on safeguards from abuses with regards to rating them. abuses could mean giving a high rating to a 'friend' who do not deserve it, or giving a low rating to someone you dislike. I'm not sure what safeguards can be implemented but you should give this part some attention.

 

[globetrotter]

I don't know - I think that that is what quality certification systems are for. I cant' imagine a company would want to take sombody else's word for quality without doing an audit, so I am not sure how it would work.

 

[Gordon Gekko]



I don't know - I think that that is what quality certification systems are for. I cant' imagine a company would want to take sombody else's word for quality without doing an audit, so I am not sure how it would work.

There are currently websites like that. Believe it or not, some of them are doing well.

 

[acidboy]



There are currently websites like that. Believe it or not, some of them are doing well.

that maybe so, but I'd be wary of ratings that are even partially dependent on reviews. I haven't seen those websites, as my particular industry and location don't have those yet. but as globetrotter mentioned, quality certification systems are there for that purpose. already, there are tons of organizations that certify tons of stuff, if runner develops a page that has complete information on these suppliers' certifications then it would be great.

 

[Lord-Barrington]

I work in SCM so this is an issue that interests me. I personally wouldn't use a "review" site for suppliers. I get plenty of tips about which suppliers are good, which are bad, who delivers on time, who lowballs a bid proposal then tries to tack on amendments, etc. but at the end of the day I will only be comfortable if I (or my team) validates the supplier based on my organization's own criteria.

The thing with supply/procurement in most industries is that you aren't dealing with thousands of suppliers where you need the list to be filtered for you beforehand like you would need when looking for an apartment of buying plane tickets. Your usually limited to a handful of firms at the outset and from there the easiest thing to do is conduct your own due diligence to see which supplier fits your needs.