Questions and Answers From IRI's Members: What are IRI members talking about? These questions were recently posed on IRI's Community Forum

The rest of the process allowed cross-functional teams access to the downstream folks unhindered by today's customers, and when a product was developed that met the established needs of the end user, the negotiations were more dynamic and did not involve any purchasing agents until after the product was spec-ed in by the end user. [...]they may jealously guard such information for fear that their competitors might get access to it, or even that their suppliers (you) might bypass them in the supply chain.