Business method for providing one or more functions to react to an alert and reach appropriate sites or people

• US 20040153453A1
• Filed: 10/05/2001
• Published: 08/05/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 10/05/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Tresser, Charles Philippe, Brodie, Carolyn A., Legrand, Ernest, Woodward, Steven Garret, Touma, Maroun, Wolf, Catherine Gody
• Application Number:
  US09/971,793
• Publication Number:
  US 20040153453A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

A business method is disclosed that uses a new type of alert system, with push technology, and furthermore provides one or more necessary tools for a user to respond to the alert. Some of these tools may include collaboration, access to web page, computational tools, dictionary, search results, translation tools, etc.

Claims

1. A business method for providing one or more alerts over an network, the business method comprising the steps of:

composing one or more alert messages, which are sent to an alert database;

gathering one or more reaction enabling tools for a user to use to respond to the respective alert;

using data extracted from one or more databases, including the alert database, to dispatch the alert messages and corresponding reaction enabling tools to one or more of the clients over a network, the alert messages and corresponding reaction enabling tools that allow contact the facilities useful in responding to the alert.

2. A business method, as in claim 1, where the tool gathering is done by any one or more of the following:

a manual process, an automatic process, and a combination of a manual and automatic process.

3. A business method, as in claim 1, where the content of the alert messages include any one or more of the following:

a sales advertising, a new product announcement, a new service offering, a catastrophic or beneficial price change, a research report, technical information, a product warning, the answer to a question, schedule information about events and people, educational materials, and a news event.

4. A business method, as in claim 1, where what identifies an event that will be all or part of the content of an alert message is any one or more of the following:

a automatic trigger, a trigger based on a numeric value, a pricing trigger, a pricing trigger that is provided by the client, a news event, a logical combination of events, and a human decision.

5. A business method, as in claim 1, further comprising the step of associating one or more of the response enabling tools to alerts by use of any one or more of the following response enabling tools:

a standard set of tools related to a standard set of alerts, defined subsets of these sets of tools which constitute coherent sets of tools, access to a customer database, and one or more interpretations of one or more database.

6. A business method, as in claim 1, where the response enabling tools include any one or more of the following:

a link to one or more web pages with clearance to appropriate services from these pages, a result of one or more searches, a document with relevant data, an access to search engines, one or more packages of algorithms allowing pricing of financial instrument, a statistical analysis, a portfolio optimization, simulation tools, one or more dictionaries, an automatic machine translation, access to natural language agents, a chat link to an expert, an audio link to an expert, an audio-video link to an expert, document sharing tools, access to other members of some virtual community, an access to transactions, an access to orders, and an access to a catalog.

7. A business method, as in claim 1, where one of the databases is a database of client information.

8. A business method, as in claim 7, where the response enabling tools are determine by the alert and a combination of the user information.

9. A business method, as in claim 7, where the user information includes any one or more of the following:

a user profile, a set of preferences for each user determined directly by the user, a set of preferences defined by a price paid for the service, a valuatiion of the user, a set of one or more priorities for each user, a set of one or more priorities for one or more user depending on a nature of the alerts.

10. A business method, as in claim 1, that further comprises the step of providing to the users means to easily get access to otherwise protected service on a temporary basis to respond to the alert.

11. A business method, as in claim 10, where the protected service is any one or more of the following:

an exclusive service, an access to a web site, and an access to privileged information.

12. A business method, as in claim 1, where the client includes any one or more of the following:

a web site and a person.

13. A business method, as in claim 1, where the response tools include any one or more of the following:

connection to a multiple reaction system and connection to a collaboration system.