One can actually think of the Buyer’s and Seller’s Agent system as a “stack”. When a business needs to acquire new services, products or to get advice, the ideal and full stack would look something like this: Business > IT Department > ITSP/Consultants <> Value Added Reseller < Distributor < Vendor. The <> denotes the reflection point between the buyer’s side and the seller’s side. Of course, many transactions will not involve and should not involve the entire stack. But this visualization can be effective in understanding how these pieces are “designed” to interface with each other. The business should ideally get the final options from IT (IT can be outsourced, of course), IT should interface through an ITSP consultant in many cases, and so forth. An important part of the processes is keeping actors on the left side of the stack (or the bottom) from having direct contact with those high up in the stack (or on the right) because this can short circuit the protections that the system provides allowing vendors or sales staff to influence the business without the buyer’s agents being able to vet the information.