1.1.1 The responsa concept
Introduction

Responsa is one manifestation of a broad patent owned by SITRA Ltd that essentially allows unformatted requests from requesters to be matched to appropriate providers.  It has many unique features but essentially it does not force a structure on the message and does not analyse the message with a computer.  It simply records the message and passes it on an appropriate provider for a human (rather than a computer) to make the match decision and then reports the results back to the matched parties.

Since it is essentially an automated service that utilises the appropriate humans, it works best with voice messages (via telephone, note this is not a restriction of the patent though) and because it doesn’t use technology to analyse the message it has avoided all the problems associated with voice recognition technology.   The success of the service is that it predominantly uses voice messages delivered to intelligent humans via a telephone which essentially is the only message technology that humans respond to in real-time.

This concept has broad applications in many arenas, but the one that SITRA has developed and launched, matches buyers with sellers (a next generation Yellow Page Service), since this is a highly commercial and useful service. 

1.1.2 ‘Ask for anything’
Discussion of the communications explosion and its limitations

Often buyers find it complex and time consuming to find the suppliers that can meet their exact requirements, whilst equally suppliers find it difficult to meet the buyer that is searching for what they can offer; or indeed even find out what potential buyers want!

Efficient communication systems can help solve this problem, since the inefficiency in the process is predominately one of communication, but poor exploitation of the communications revolution has confused the issue rather than helped it.  Just have a look at most modern business cards, compared with 30 years ago!

Responsa is designed to exploit modern communication facilities in a structured way so that efficient matching of buyer and seller can be achieved.

The existing supplier advertising model is now very sophisticated and in general is effective at making the consumer aware of what products and services are available.  But there is no easy mechanism in reverse, where-by the consumer could tell the world what they want and the supplier easily find out what potential customers need from them.

Responsa essentially publishes what the consumer wants i.e. the consumer (buyer) advertises his need, as opposed to the more usual case where the supplier advertises his wares.  However, to avoid the supplier being overwhelmed by the number and variety of requests from consumers, Responsa has mechanisms whereby only relevant requests are only sent to relevant suppliers.  Once this request is serviced, no other supplier is contacted.
It could be considered as removing the consumers advert as soon as it’s serviced.

1.2 Introduction to the Responsa service

Today, if a person feels he has a need which he believes a supplier may be able to meet there is a general mechanism he needs to implement before he finds the supplier that can service this need.  It essentially starts with;  a search for relevant supplier contact details;  then framing his need so that the supplier understands what he wants;  then contacting one of those suppliers and expressing this need;  the supplier deciding whether he can meet the stated need; and then if positive, a conversation continues to a conclusion.  If the supplier cannot meet the need, the person repeats the process with the next on his list and so on, until the need is satisfied or list exhausted.

A Classified Directory, whether book, internet or phone based, solves the first task of obtaining relevant supplier contact details. Then having got these the person must contact each in turn and give his request (eg. “Can you provide X, for Y cost and deliver before Z date”).  Often, he has to contact many suppliers before he finds a supplier that can satisfy his request.

The above task is essentially a matching service;  matching a person that has a request (a requester) with a person that provides (a provider) a service which can meet the specific request.  However, it is a time consuming and repetitive task for the requester.

Responsa essentially automates the time consuming actions that are currently done manually yet it does not lose the personal voice and free-format style of human communication.  It also only transmits relevant information to those people who wish to receive these requests and are in a position to service them (eg are open, are within the area, are setup to service a particular classification, and meet other criteria relevant to the classification).

Most importantly it is a human decision maker that receives the requests and can intelligently interpret the request rather than a computer searching a database i.e. it connects a real human with a need (a requester) to a person that is willing to service the request (the supplier).

This avoids traditional problems with automating matching, or search, services.  These typically require that the parameters of a request are pre-defined (eg. by the use of drop down menus, speech recognition etc.)  so that they can be matched to suppliers of pre-defined (stored in a database) products or services.  This traditional method is fundamentally limited, because even if an automated system could realistically determine what was required from any free format message (which it can’t), it could never build and maintain a database that was comprehensive and up-to-date enough to service the broad range of requests that the system could receive.

Many have tried to do exactly this, but they are missing the point, the relevant human can easily take meaning from a request and he has the most relevant, comprehensive and up-to-date database in his head, or readily to hand (because that’s his business), so there is no need to build and maintain a complex database.  This is indeed one feature of the responsa patents.

In summary Responsa is a matching engine that searches experts brains rather than databases.