Referral system for handling information on order entry and sales

• US 20050187828A1
• Filed: 01/28/2005
• Published: 08/25/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 02/23/2004
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Itou, Makoto, Ban, Hisayuki
• Application Number:
  US11/044,000
• Publication Number:
  US 20050187828A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/25
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/20 Point-of-sale [POS] network systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]

Abstract

A referral system for handling information on order entry and sales includes: means adapted to receive an order; means for extracting providers which can handle the order received; means for making an inquiry to the providers for handling availability; means for selecting a provider based on the inquiry; means for making a reservation at the provider if the provider can handle the order; means for providing at least part of the information obtained with the above-stated means to an orderer; and means for feeding back achievement information and/or various types of service information to the provider. With such arrangement, it is possible to provide the referral system for handling information on order entry and sales which comprises the steps of: referring to a product or a service; acquiring order/inquiry information for the product or the service; making an inquiry to each company which provides a product or a service satisfying the acquired information as to whether the companies can handle sales or service thereof; and feeding back information on a hot-selling product and/or a service to each company according to available history information from each company.

Claims

1. A referral system for handling information on order entry and sales comprising:

means adapted to receive an order via a network;

means for extracting providers which can handle said order received;

means for making inquiries to said providers for handling availability;

means for selecting a provider based on the inquiry result; and

means for making a reservation with said provider if said provider is available for handling;

wherein at lease part of information obtained through the above-stated means is provided to an orderer.

2. A referral system for handling information on order entry and sales comprising:

means adapted to receive an order via a network;

means for extracting providers which can handle said order received;

means for making inquiries to said providers for handling availability;

means for counting the number of inquiries;

means for counting the number of availabilities and unavailabilities as a result of making inquiries; and

means for comparing said number of counts according to providers.

3. A referral system for handling information on order entry and sales according to claim 2, further comprising:

means for delivering, to each provider via a network, the number of job referral achievements as a result of the inquiries and said comparison result for each provider;

means for delivering availability evaluations on a provider from an orderer to each provider; and

means for delivering current inquiry status to each provider.

4. A method of handling information on order entry and sales, comprising the steps of:

extracting providers which can handle an order that has been received via a network;

making respective inquiries to said providers for handling availability;

selecting a provider based on the inquiry result;

making a reservation at said provider if said provider is available for said reservation;

providing at least part of information obtained through the above-stated processing to an orderer; and

feeding back achievement information and/or various types of service information to said provider.

5. A referral system for handling information on order entry and sales comprising:

means for collecting job information of partner companies via a network;

means for selecting, based on the collected job information, type of business of companies to which information is transmitted;

means for collecting company information of companies which are adequate for said selected type of business;

means for making selection from the collected company information; and

means for transmitting product information for said selected company information.

6. A referral system for handling information on order entry and sales comprising:

means adapted to receive a quotation request via a network;

means for selecting available partner companies based on the information of said received quotation request;

means for Judging adequacy of quotation replies from said selected partner companies;

means for sorting out the quotation replies from said partner companies; and

means for selecting an available partner company based on said sorted-out quotation replies.

7. A referral system for handling information on order entry and sales comprising:

means for collecting respective schedules of partner companies via a network;

means for collecting job information of each of the partner companies;

means adapted to receive respective quotation replies of the partner companies; and

means for managing communications with each of the partner companies.

8. A method of handling information on order entry and sales, comprising the steps of:

collecting job information of partner companies via a network;

selecting types of business of companies to which information is transmitted based on said collected job information;

collecting company information of companies which are adequate for said selected types of business of companies;

selecting said collected company information; and

transmitting product information for said selected company information.

9. A method of handling information on order entry and sales, comprising the steps of:

receiving a quotation request via a network;

selecting available partner companies according to information of said received quotation request;

judging adequacy of quotation replies from said selected partner companies;

sorting out the quotation replies from said partner companies; and

selecting an available partner company based on said sorted-out quotation replies.

10. A method of handling information on order entry and sales, comprising the steps of:

collecting respective schedules of partner companies via a network;

collecting job information of each of the partner companies;

receiving respective quotation replies of the partner companies; and

communicating information to each of the partner companies based on said schedules, said job information and said quotation replies.

11. A computer-readable storage medium in which a program is stored to execute a referral system for handling information on order entry and sales, said referral system for handling information on order entry and sales comprising the steps of:

extracting providers which can handle an order that is received via a network;

making an inquiry to said providers for handling availability;

selecting a provider as a result of making an inquiry;

making a reservation at said provider if said provider is available for handling;

providing at least part of the above-stated information to an orderer; and

feeding back achievement information and/or various types of service information to said provider.