ICS2001-12-01: Vendor Relationship Management: Re-engineering the businessprocess through B2B infrastructure to accelerate the growth of smallbusinesses in geographically isolated areas - J. Agustin, W. Albritton

Instead of limiting the business to the local populace, the World Wide Web gives global access to all companies that have made the transition to online. Ideally, the Internet seems to offer vast, untapped markets,lowers the costs of reaching these markets, and frees businesses from geographical constraints. Applying this to Hawai'i, small companies can now sell their products in the expanding global marketplace, instead of restricting themselves to an island economy.The goal of research on the Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) System is to explore the requirements for new business process models and associated technological infrastructure for small local businesses in Hawaii that wish to exploit the global reach of the Internet. In order to understand the requirements and potential of this approach, we had meetings with different groups of people that included the host of a virtual mall, a financial service provider, two courier services, and several local companies.The interface of the VRM system includes both a vendor and a host side. The host side is used by the virtual mall company to send customers orders to the various vendors. It can also be used to create and edit vendor company information, create and edit vendor product information, and enter a contact email address. The vendor side is used by the numerous vendors to receive the orders, confirm that the orders have been sent, view the customer information, create and edit product information, and create and edit contact information.After creating the first prototype, several experts gave their critiques of the system. Based on their critiques, we came up with several possible directions for future research.

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