BuDuRu - The Dream or The Curse :)

Have you ever had one of those ideas in your head that regardless of how whacked out you may think the idea of you actually being able to make a positive impact on the world may be, you just can’t get past the fact that there is true merit driving the idea? I’ve had one of those ideas for the better part of the last 3 years now and it true goal is nothing short of changing the business world for what I hope to be the better.

Over the past 10 years I have averaging between 3,000 and 5,000 miles per week 40 plus weeks out of the year working as a professional B2B systems architect. That aside there has always been a number of things that has bothered me about how companies go about their day to day routines. I hate to say it but even in the age of LinkedIn, UCCNet and D&B, very few companies actually utilize technology to try and streamline their business relationships, other than the age old EDI for moving transaction between partners. The truth of the matter is that companies all over the world really have no clue what is happening with their partners companies until they hear about it on CNN or they call the office looking to talk with the people they were introduced to 3 months ago.

Right off the top of my head I am able to list 3 multi billion dollar fortune 500 company’s that keep track all of their partner contact information in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or Outlook contact book which consequently both are almost always out of date. One company actually hired me for a period of 3 months to do nothing but physically make contact all the companies in their spreadsheet and verify the accuracy of the information. The problem is that over the years I’ve learned that this is was not an exception but the norm and the information that these companies are trying to gather is spread far and wide around the world both in digital and physical form and lastly almost impossible to find even for those people that are IN with these groups (such as myself).

A little history, sure there have been a few attempts D&B for example; however, they are only concerned with your company credit information and you as the company being reported on have no control over the information. Other examples Sterling Commerce, SPS Commerce, GEIS and Inovis to name a few have all tried to make their own partner networks so companies would be able to share their information with their trading partner; however, mostly do to pricing and structure these initiatives have failed miserably because companies happy with Sterling were not leaving Sterling and had no desire to sign another $200 per month VAN contact just to connect with one or two other trading partners. Then came the Enterprise Social Networking club, Jive Software with its ClearSpace product being the most notable. Sure it’s a great company and the product is almost spot on; however they grossly underestimated the scope of the problem. Sure they made fortune 500 status based on the idea; however, lost it very quickly because they missed the scope. Like our economic problems of today, they chose to build a $30k product and sell it to a few needy 800 pound gorillas, just as George Bush chose to give $700B to Wall Street and a few banks almost completely ignoring the fact that the problem is global in nature and even with the money Wall Street and the banks were not about to start lending money again because the fundamental risks that drive these markets were still present.

So as you can imagine it didn’t take long for companies to realize that all they were really getting was an Outlook address book that was reluctantly but almost always up to date. The funny thing is that Jive inadvertently created a whole new industry of employees that do nothing but run around to these wonderful private company social networks updating and verifying information and one company was actually willing to pay me $65 per hour for 3 months to do exactly this task and I hadn’t been the first consultant brought in for the task.

The idea: An Enterprise Social Computing network that blends little peaces of the best successful social networks on the market (basically a LinkedIn or Facebook for companies and consultants that do business with other businesses). Yes it is a members only network and yes you have to be accepted to link into at least one company or organizational network to maintain an account here; however, the price is nominal, less than $50 per month and is only there to offset the operational costs of such a global network and allow for the growth and development of future improvements. The other option which I really didn’t like was to bombard the users with advertisements on every page (commonly known as the Google model); however, at that point I would be stepping into something I know little about and actually find myself rather firmly against. I have a hotmail account that keeps showing my ads for weight loss and dating sites and neither are services I have a need or interest in.

This idea now has a name “BuDuRu™”, and the idea alone has spawned a rather large following of companies and organizations that are very interested in seeing the product once it’s released. Based on just our initial conversations with potential businesses and organizations we currently have enough interest that I can honestly say that our 25 company cap for the beta release has more than been met. The beta is to be released in Feb and I will follow up more on this subject as issues arise.