Apparatus, system and method for automatically making operational purchasing decisions
First Claim
1. A method of making purchasing decisions for purchasing a product or service, comprising:
- obtaining one or more rules identifying strategic purchasing policies;
obtaining one or more attributes for the product or service to be purchased; and
automatically making a decision to purchase the product or service from a vendor based on the one or more rules and the one or more attributes.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
An apparatus, system and method for automatically making operation purchasing decisions are provided. The apparatus, system and method make use of purchasing policy rules established by human operators associated with a firm to guide the making of decisions to purchase products and/or services. The actual decisions to purchase are made automatically by the system without requiring human intervention. The decisions to purchase are made by evaluating the possible vendors to identify a set of vendors from which the product or service may be obtained. From this set of vendors, one or more vendors are selected from which to purchase the desired product or service. The selection of these one or more vendors may be based on the established rules, information obtained about each vendor, and the results of negotiation with the vendors. Because the actual decisions are performed automatically without human intervention, the decisions may be made much more quickly than would have been done by a human being.
124 Citations
48 Claims
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1. A method of making purchasing decisions for purchasing a product or service, comprising:
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obtaining one or more rules identifying strategic purchasing policies;
obtaining one or more attributes for the product or service to be purchased; and
automatically making a decision to purchase the product or service from a vendor based on the one or more rules and the one or more attributes. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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21. A computer program product in a computer readable medium for making purchasing decisions for purchasing a product or service, comprising:
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first instructions for obtaining one or more rules identifying strategic purchasing policies;
second instructions for obtaining one or more attributes for the product or service to be purchased; and
third instructions for automatically making a decision to purchase the product or service from a vendor based on the one or more rules and the one or more attributes. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
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41. An apparatus for making purchasing decisions for purchasing a product or service, comprising:
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a first storage device for storing one or more rules identifying strategic purchasing policies;
a second storage device for storing one or more attributes for the product or service to be purchased; and
a controller coupled to the first storage device and the second storage device, wherein the controller automatically makes a decision to purchase the product or service from a vendor based on the one or more rules and the one or more attributes. - View Dependent Claims (42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48)
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Specification