Method and apparatus for ordering items using electronic catalogs

• US 6,606,603 B1
• Filed: 03/26/1999
• Issued: 08/12/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/1997
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Ariba Incorporated (SAP SE)
• Original Assignee: Ariba Incorporated (SAP SE)
• Inventors: Joseph, Joshy, Putanec, Boris
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, CUONG H
• Application Number:
  US09/276,921
• Time in Patent Office: 1,600 Days
• Field of Search: G06/F 1.760, G06/F 1.522, 705/26-27, 705/37, 705/1, 705/30, 235/385
• US Class Current: 705/26.8
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

A system for electronically ordering items having at least one supplier computer system for storing at least one catalog containing the items offered by a supplier and a customer computer system with the improvement of a public computer system comprising an index to the items in the catalogs on the at least one supplier computer system, means for querying the index on the public computer system for a desired item in response to a request for the desired item from the customer computer system and means for generating a pointer for the customer computer system to catalog information about the desired item in the catalog on the at least one supplier system which has been identified by the query of the index.

Claims

1. A machine-readable medium having executable instructions to cause a machine to perform a method for electronically ordering items, the method comprising:

accessing a uniform resource locator (URL) on a public order catalog system, the URL to be one of a plurality of URLs, each URL to individually reference catalog data that describes a catalog item, the catalog data that describes each catalog item is to be stored on one of a plurality of supplier computer systems;

receiving the catalog data automatically from the supplier computer associated with the accessed URL, wherein the catalog data describes the catalog item from one of the plurality of supplier computer systems associated with the accessed URL;

receiving the catalog data that describes the catalog item from one of the plurality of supplier computer systems associated with the accessed URL;

creating a requisition order for the catalog item associated with the accessed URL, the requisition order to include a portion of the catalog data describing the catalog item; and

submitting the requisition order for the catalog item to the supplier catalog data, wherein said requisiton order is converted automatically from a different format sent by a customer.

2. The computer program of claim 1, wherein the plurality of suppliers computer systems are associated with a plurality of suppliers, each of the suppliers being pre-approved to offer each catalog item for sale.

3. The computer program of claim 1, wherein each catalog item is pre-approved for sale.