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Inc. Technology readers react to articles from Inc. Technology #3, 1998, including "Seller Door," by Leigh Buchanan and "ROM Service," by Jeff Seglin.

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Agents of Change?

Unlike Walid Mougayar [featured in " User's Guide," 1998, No. 3], I don't think intermediaries between producers and consumers will inevitably be squeezed out. Intermediaries provide services other than just selection or aggregation. They may provide financing as well as pre-sales and post-sales support, and even serve as price negotiators on behalf of buyers.

Nor will intelligent agents replace intermediaries, as Mougayar suggests. I anticipate that most producers will not invite the automatic comparison of their products in the marketplace (which, Mougayar says, will be the end result of the agents' retrieval efforts), since producers want to be able to "educate the consumer" about their products' unique "value proposition."

Machine-readable product descriptions turn producers into warehouses, and every product becomes a commodity. Only large companies like Ford and GM may be able to demand that of their suppliers. Perhaps they will coordinate their XML definitions, but I doubt it. And without an unambiguous means for interpreting product descriptions--comparing apples to apples, as it were--agents have nothing to go on.

Mike Carifio
President
Understanding Systems
Shrewsbury, Mass.

Playing the (Level) Field

In the world of E-commerce [" Seller Door," by Leigh Buchanan, 1998, No. 3], two much-relied-upon and irritating crutches are seriously endangered: non-value-added wholesaler markup and supplier relationships. When all the players at the table know what everyone else's intentions (markups, inefficiencies, etc.) are, then we will have a truly level playing field, where the best and the sleekest will do more than survive; they will prosper.

Drew Jacoby
Account Representative
Innovative Solutions
Sacramento

ROM for Improvement

Every time I hear a story like Jeff Seglin's [" ROM Service," 1998, No. 3], I wonder if the majority of the business world realizes how much a team of support personnel and the service contracts tied to the equipment cost a manufacturer to maintain. Hotels supplying a tech-support team that would be of any use? Highly paid, highly trained technicians doubling as concierges? Tech-support reps giving free support to individuals when companies pay thousands of dollars for that service? Every year the computer industry loses support dollars because of end users' failure to read their manuals. It's high time we started taking responsibility for that lack of effort and stopped expecting manufacturers of products that are working properly to foot the bill.

Mike Rossman
Owner
Achieve Computer Consulting
Olmsted Falls, Ohio

Value Judgment

I was stunned to see that only 12% of your readers consider return on investment when doing information-technology planning for their companies ["E-Poll Results," 1998, No. 3]. I now know why corporations and governments have made countless inept investments in both hardware and software. An IT decision is no different from any other investment decision--it should be made with the goal of increasing the value of the company. Making any investment with a low or negative return on investment is, well, loony.

Darrell Dusina
Executive Financial Consultant
Denver

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