A VC in Vacationland

In a previous Blog, Where are the Supply Chain Entrepreneurs?, I asked why so few business networks have been started.  Business networks would let companies collaborate on line with their suppliers to find new ways of improving supply chain efficiencies.

MetroHorse is a B2C network that lets businesses post their profiles, consumers to place bids on their services and allows the consumer to post feedback on the quality of the service which is accessible to any user.

In a B2B network, the same process could occur, but with customers ranking suppliers on cost, service levels, damage, customer service among other considerations. The only ones I have seen are carefully guarded systems to track supplier performance within companies, such as Wal-Mart uses to shape up their supplier community.  I have not come across any pubic networks where businesses can go on to see ratings of suppliers that they are considering adding to their list.

Granted, this is only a small part of what Dave thinks a B2B business network should be, but it is an interesting model for part of the offering. It would be great if we had a site where supply chain providers- 3PL’s, carriers, suppliers, etc. could be "rated" by their customers.  Are we thinking liability here?  That is probably a big reason that such sites have not proliferated, besides lack of a business model beyond subscriptions (think Angie’s List), transaction fees ( think eBay) or advertising (think shopwiki ).  An individual small seller on eBay is unlikely to file a lawsuit if he or she gets a lot of bad press from reviewers (no Gold Star Achievement Award from Meg for you!), but a global shipping company might if they were getting consistently poor write ups due to sub standard service.

There is a nascent site dedicated to recording supply chain professionals feedback on logistics providers, Freight Feedback, but it does not seem to be attracting much feedback or interest.  This is surprising to me, in that picking quality providers is critical to running an efficient supply chain. My guess is that the feedback network is still "informal" in supply chain, where professionals rely on their network of friends to check out carriers and other providers.  It sure would be a lot easier if there was more of a central repository where one could go and find performance rankings based on the feedback from thousands of users.

Has anyone seen other examples of successful, public, on-line supply chain rating systems?  If so, please send me the links.