Vendor Rankings an Imperfect ScienceVendor Rankings an Imperfect Science

Transparency's not a new business buzzword, but the drive to peek behind the curtain has more and more industries concerned about the coverage quality of their clothing (emperor's or otherwise). Some IT vendors may be scrambling to duck behind mama's nightshirt.You don't want to see how sausage is made (or so the saying goes). Put another way, no one likes scrutiny and that includes the various industries that have been in the curl of the transparency wave. Ask the doctors rated by their patients, the professors rated by their students, or the airlines rated by their passengers. The arguments in favor of transparency remain myriad -- it bolsters competition, it makes consumers more knowledgeable, it spurs innovation, and it reveals incompetence and lackluster performance.

At Interop, the wandering eye of scrutiny has cast focus upon IT vendors with new functionality added to the Web-based B2B reputation-scoring system from VendorRate. Of course, Gartner has been ruling the vendor ratings game for some time (and capturing the lion's share of the revenue). VendorRate's offering takes a populist approach, putting the rankings in the hands of the masses -- all the Wikipedia 80/20 arguments apply and offering Starbucks and American Express gift cards as incentives to rank vendors doesn't bolster an aura of authoritative data.

However, taking the "wisdom of crowds" approach, also makes the rankings more accessible -- particularly important for resource constrained smaller businesses -- a trade off that has value in many contexts. And as to the ranking themselves, the new VendorRate dashboards make it easy to not only review vendors, but compare.

Single vendor rating

Vendor comparison