Computerized cost estimate system and method

• US 20030110141A1
• Filed: 12/03/2002
• Published: 06/12/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 12/11/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Boutault, Romuald
• Granted Patent: US 7,319,991 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/400
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0283 Price estimation or determination

Abstract

A method and system for computing a cost estimate for a a company that may be the client of a supplier providing information system equipment and consulting. An estimate is calculated according to a model with input characterizing circumstances of the client. The program collects client profile information and costs that the client knows. Other costs that the client does not know are read from a local database storing costs known by other clients with similar profiles. A remote database accessible by any client is updated by cost estimate information at each new cost estimate execution by a client.

Claims

1. A computerized method for computing a cost estimate, said method comprising the steps of:

collecting user profile information concerning a user;

collecting a first set of costs known by said user;

reading, from database records of a local database that include information concerning other users, a second set of costs unknown by said user and known by the other users, wherein the other users have profile information similar to the collected user profile information; and

,

calculating a cost estimate using the first set of costs and the second set of costs.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of reading comprises the steps of:

computing, for each cost unknown by said user, a mathematical distance between the collected user profile information and the profile information in each database record read; and

,

selecting a database record having minimum computed mathematical distance.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the mathematical distance is a vector distance with coordinates dependent upon the collected user profile information, said vector distance being weighted according to cost.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the database is a relational database having a query language, and wherein the step of reading comprises a step of performing a query to find records in the relational database that include a cost unknown by said user and known by at least one of the other users, and include profile information closest to the collected user profile information.

5. A computer program product comprising programming code instructions for executing the steps of the method according to claim 1 when said program is executed on a computer.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of sending, from the computer to a remote server, a message comprising the collected user profile information and the first set of costs, and storing information included in the message in a reference database connected to the remote server.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising, before the step of sending, a step of marking as ‘

known’

in the message cost information which has been collected, and marking as ‘

unknown’

cost information which has been read from the local database.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the step of sending is performed upon a request entered by an operator of a computer calculating a user cost estimate.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein the message further comprises a result of the cost estimate calculating step and the second set of costs.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein the message further comprises administrative information including an identification of cost estimate calculation step execution and an identification of a level of the local database read for the cost estimate calculation step.

11. The method of claim 6, further including the step of replicating the local database from the reference database.

12. A method operating on a remote server communicating with a computer operating the method according to claim 6, said method comprising the steps of:

receiving, from the computer, the message comprising the collected user profile information and the first set of costs;

updating, according to information included in the message, the reference database, to create a new level of database content; and

downloading the new level of database content to the computer.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the step of downloading is performed upon a request entered by an operator of the remote server.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising, before the step of updating, a step of removing user identity information from the collected user profile information included in the message.

15. The method of claim 12, further comprising, before the step of updating, the steps of:

reading, from the message, the collected user profile information, the second set of costs, and a result of the cost estimate calculating step; and

,

automatically checking coherence between the result of the cost estimate calculating step and the collected user profile information according to pre-established business rules.

16. The method of claim 12, further comprising, after the step of downloading, the steps of:

reading, from the message, administrative information including an identification of a cost estimate calculation step execution and the identification of the database level read for the cost estimate calculation step execution; and

,

archiving the content of the message in a database connected to the remote server.

17. A computer program product comprising programming code instructions for executing the steps of the method according to claim 12 when said program is executed on a computer.