Industry-wide business to business exchange

• US 20020062262A1
• Filed: 10/02/2001
• Published: 05/23/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 10/02/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Open Text Holdings, Inc. (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Compuware Corporation (KKR & Co., Inc.)
• Inventors: Vasconi, Kevin, McGuffie, David, Penn, William
• Granted Patent: US 7,987,116 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0607 Regulated
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

A industry wide computerized business to business exchange permits participants in the industry to satisfy their procurement needs and manage their supply chains from a single log on to the exchange. An exchange architecture provides a particularly convenient platform for implementation of the exchange. Users connect to a portal services subsystem. User systems connect to an integration services platform. A platform services subsystem provides services to the portal services and to the integration services subsystems and to application programs that can be accessed through those subsystems. The application programs may include, for example, electronic procurement, collaborative product development applications and supply chain management. XML serves as the information currency for the exchange.

Claims

1. An industry wide business to business exchange through which competitors within the industry can acquire goods and services.

2. The exchange of claim 1 configured with security mechanisms to implement policies to prevent information flows that would violate anti-competitive laws or policies.

3. The exchange of claim 1 through which suppliers of goods and services to any of said competitors can offer their goods and services to all of said competitors.

4. The exchange of claim 3 in which pricing information offered by a supplier of goods and services to one of said competitors can selectively rendered invisible to others of said competitors.

5. The exchange of claim 1 in which users of said exchange can access selected information from all suppliers of goods and services with a single sign on to the exchange.

6. The exchange of claim 1 in which users include market participants at various levels of one or more supply chains.

7. The exchange of claim 6 including software to permit a user to obtain information about that user'"'"'s supply chain.

8. The exchange of claim 6 including software to permit a user to manage that user'"'"'s supply chain.

9. The exchange of claim 6 including software to permit a user to procure goods and services electronically.

10. The exchange of claim 9 in which said software includes the ability to conduct electronic auctions.

11. The exchange of claim 6 including a catalog of all goods and services offered by all providers of goods and services.

12. The exchange of claim 1 configured to permit users to individually manage and administer information presented to other users of the exchange.

13. The exchange of claim 12 in which users can present their own branded pages to other users of the exchange.

14. The exchange of claim 1 in which the exchange permits access from user locations using (1) an exchange server located at a user location, (2) a mailbox accessible by the user, (3) an electronic data interchange connection, (4) an Oracle”

message broker or (5) file transfer protocol.

15. The exchange of claim 14 in which information is presented using XML.

16. The exchange of claim 15 in which electronic procurement is accomplished using message queuing.

18. The architecture of claim 17 in which said subsystem providing common services provides security services.

19. The architecture of claim 17 in which one or more application programs can be accessed through both said subsystem providing user access to portal services and said subsystem providing integration services.

20. The architecture of claim 19 in which said application programs comprise one or more of the group consisting of procurement applications, collaborative product development applications, supply chain applications and value added services.

21. The architecture of claim 19 in which said value added services comprise an idle asset/capacity management process.

17. An architecture for implementing a business to business exchange, comprising:

a. a substytem providing user access to portal services;

b. a substytem providing integration services to customer systems;

c. and a subsystem providing common services to said subsystems.

22. An idle asset/capacity management system for redeploying idle assets or manufacturing capacity used in conjunction with a business to business exchange.

24. The method of claim 23 further comprising the step of providing electronic safeguards against information flows that could be expected to violate anticompetition laws.

23. A method of doing business comprising centralizing procurement for competitors within an industry into a consolidated electronic system.