Coupa Software Inc.

Zakta LLC

Buzzmetrics, Ltd.

Zakata, LLC

Mark William Reed

Sundaresan Ramachandran Kadayam

John Melvin Kitson

Jeffrey Todd Crowder

Micky Glen Keck

An improved electronic procurement system is disclosed. The electronic procurement system ('system') implements features such as real-time adaptive extraction of online data. The system is configured to manage a plurality of page types for webpages and for each page type a plurality of field types for fields in webpages. The system is configured to further generate a computer application that can be integrated into a web browser. For each page type, the computer application is programmed to initially generate a signature for each field type based on minimal user interaction with webpages of the page type. The system is configured to also generate an agent using the signature. The agent is programmed to automatically extract data corresponding to the field types from additional webpages of the page type using the signatures. The agent or an associated background process is programmed to automatically update the signatures when data extraction fails.

Intelligent, adaptive electronic procurement systems

Embodiments disclosed herein may provide capabilities for multi-source data gathering, adaptive item cross referencing, data preparation and data extraction. These capabilities may allow the creation item master records which can provide richer information than available from any one discrete source. Additional functionality which may be provided in some embodiments could also include providing commodity based predictive pricing and/or a visual spend map.

Adaptively enhancing procurement data

Methods, systems, devices and/or apparatus related to finding and sharing information on a large-scale or global computer network such as the Internet, and, specifically, to allow for collaboratively searching for, organizing and/or accessing information. One example provides computer-readable medium(s) having instructions thereon configured to operate a network accessible computer system to: receive a search query; generate search result data from processing the search query through at least one search engine; generate a collaborative search portal associated with the search query; receive one or more instructions for associating at least one of the search result data with the collaborative search portal; associate the at least one of the search result data with the collaborative search portal; store, in one or more storage devices, the collaborative search portal and the associated search result data; and organize the search result data in response to user signals received via the collaborative search portal.

Collaboratively finding, organizing and/or accessing information

An improved electronic procurement system is disclosed. The electronic procurement system ('system') implements features such as real-time adaptive extraction of online data. The system is configured to manage a plurality of page types for webpages and for each page type a plurality of field types for fields in webpages. The system is configured to further generate a computer application that can be integrated into a web browser. For each page type, the computer application is programmed to initially generate a signature for each field type based on minimal user interaction with webpages of the page type. The system is configured to also generate an agent using the signature. The agent is programmed to automatically extract data corresponding to the field types from additional webpages of the page type using the signatures. The agent or an associated background process is programmed to also automatically update the signatures when such data extraction is unsuccessful.

Methods, systems, devices and/or apparatus related to finding and sharing information on the Internet. Specifically, the disclosed methods, systems, devices and/or apparatus relate to utilizing reference materials to find and share topical information on the Internet.

Topical search portal

An improved electronic procurement system is disclosed. The electronic procurement system implements features such as real-time adaptive navigation. An Adaptive Navigation interface is suitable for a federated universal search environment in e-procurement. The system is configured to learn from past online browsing or transaction in a community and cause a display of specific information to a user navigating a website based on the profile and current search activity of the user.

An improved electronic procurement system is disclosed. The electronic procurement system ('system') implements a procurement recommendation framework. The system is configured to learn from past online browsing or transactional activities in a community and cause a display of multiple types of recommendations to a user, who has submitted a query, based on an inferred query context.

Multi-front procurement recommendation based on query context

An improved electronic procurement system is disclosed. The electronic procurement system ('system') implements context-sensitive filtering and ranking of search results. In some embodiments, the system is programmed to offer real-time, federated searches of internal and external databases in response to queries from a plurality of user accounts or devices in an organization and maintain context data related to such searches. The system is programmed to allow a user account to indicate whether a search result of a query from the user account is relevant or irrelevant and include such an indication and information regarding the user account in the context data. Upon receiving a subsequent query from a certain user account, the system is programmed to filter and thus refine the search results of the subsequent query based on the existing context data, specifically learning from similar user accounts who submitted similar queries before. The system is programmed to also adjust ranking and presentation of the search results based on further user interactions with the search results.

Product data search with filtered and ranked results in electronic procurement systems

Embodiments disclosed herein provide computerized, networked procurement systems designed to interact with source sites through asynchronous, progressive scripting requests to retrieve richer data sets from websites utilizing interactive loading and multiple hyperlinked pages either with a single vendor or across a plurality of vendors. These may provide improvements on prior art systems, such as by improving the response time relative to a prior art synchronous system from 30-60 seconds to less than ten seconds.

Asynchronous real-time procurement system

Methods, systems, devices and/or apparatus related to type of network-based social network in which network 'connections' are include a topical trust factor between users, so that reputable information available over the network may be provided. In an example embodiment, a social rank score for available items of information is provided that allows the system to rank available information based upon topical factors associated with such information.

Topical trust network

Methods, systems, devices and/or apparatus related to type of network-based social network in which network 'connections' are include a topical trust factor between users, so that reputable information available over the network my be provided. In an example embodiment, a social rank score for available items of information is provided that allows the system to rank available information based upon topical factors associated with such information.

It is a first aspect of the present invention to provide a computer implemented method of performing ad-hoc analysis including the steps of: generating a text index of the textual information items, generating a metadata lookup structure based, at least in part, on the text index, searching the text index using a search query, compiling results of the text index search into aggregate information related to characteristics of the search results from the metadata items associated with the textual information items in the search results from the metadata lookup structure, and reporting the aggregate information.

Growing community of inventors

Fort Thomas, KY, United States of America

Mark William Reed