The undernoted personal reply to my posting about monitoring Supplier
Selection Monitoring, from Gary Gale (Edinburgh), highlighted the fact that
I have, perhaps, misled people that smartsm concentrates solely on analysing
existing stock use to help predict future supply, and ignores input of
(often front line staff sourced)data about what non users might wish to see.
Following a brief on-line debate with Gary, he has given me permission to
publish his response to me and my subsequent reply to him.
Sorry to nitpick but..."matching supply to demand" ..it is a very real
mistake to imply that 'demand' = "usage"..unless we are totally
convinced that the "usage" we create by our stock selection parameters
etc. somehow matches the whole demand which is 'out there'. How do we
know or find out whether that demand exists, and what form it takes,
unless we supply the product/s and the range which makes that demand
'real'.... Stock selection often involves taking chances and going on
hunches which can lead to very surprising results and achievements out
with our established 'usage'. There is a danger we become blinkered to
wider potentials by over focusing on our established patterns of use
and users. Is it possible, that, as in so many other aspects of life,
people are becoming more sophisticated, knowledgeable and diverse in
their wants and that this 'raising of the bar' is making our stock based
services increasingly irrelevant while we continue sticking to an
outdated perception of what all our potential customers really want from
the library service.
Best
Garry
Garry
I don't know if you have attended any demo of smartsm. If you had you would
have seen that smartsm, in addition to looking at existing stock use to
match supply and demand (we must take care of existing customers), also has
tools to encourage experimentation (taking chances) as a vital part of the
stock management process. These tools also provide for monitoring of
experiments to assess 'success' or 'failure' i.e. how well used the material
has been once purchased. If the subsequent level of use is very low, this
is valuable feedback to alert us to the need for better promotion of the
material especially to stakeholders in the community. It may well be that
it is front level staff contact with them that prompted the experiment in
the first instance.
Sometimes though, no matter what we try, the evidence of experimental
purchase use is that local demand just doesn't exist.
'Unsuccessful' experiments are never to be criticised - I agree with you
that many produce surprising results - but this monitoring (easily achieved
with smartsm)does certainly point out to us that we should continue to
experiment, of course, but perhaps look elsewhere.
I did not mention this extension smartsm's value in the response to Ealing's
posting, simply because I did not want to turn the whole thing into a long
involved product description.
George
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