International Business Machines Corporation

Sherry Lee Wilson

Susan Bumgardner Cirulli

Mark Anthony Musa

Glenn C Godoy

Jane M Murphy

William Montgomery Sjostrom

Timothy R Kane

Theresa W Broden

Amy Jeanne Snavely

Michael Randy May

Carl Steven Baumann

Gerald R Robinson

Robert Martin Evans

Glenn Paul Modrak

Russell Thomas White, Jr

John Irving Munson

Thomas William Rath

Jean-Paul Chollon

Thomas Alexander Aber

Patricia Ann Chauncey

David G Ruest

Brian E Taylor

Debora A Villella

Glenn C Codoy

A method and system for providing procurement services to customer companies. A user profile for each user, in a computer database, specifies: (i) each user is authorized by a first customer company of the customer companies to access procurement resources and the procurement services for purchasing items and (ii) the first customer company and a first company group of related customer companies. Access to volume discounts with respect to vendors is provided to all customer companies in the first company group. Companies are authorized to have access to and share each procurement resource, by providing a resource profile specifying for each procurement resource a set of customer companies authorized for accessing and sharing each procurement resource to be shared among the users. Access to the procurement resources is controlled resources based on: the first company group, the first customer company, and the resource profile for each procurement resource.

Leveraging procurement across companies and company groups

A leveraged procurement network (LPN) system for leveraging purchasing across company and company groups includes a front-end requisition and catalog system accessible by users from a plurality of companies in different company groups. Access to procurement resources is controlled by user profiles and resource profiles specifying for each user and resource the applicable company group. Purchases against volume specific contracts are leveraged by requisitions for a plurality of company groups, while user access to procurement resources within the front-end system are controlled by company and/or company group.

System and method for leveraging procurement across companies and company groups

A method and system for managing trading in trading networks. At least one trading network package is offered. Each trading network package is based on negotiations occurring prior to receiving purchase requests from customer members of the trading network. Each trading network package is configured to include: (i) a value-add service offering offered by the trading network to the customer members for a fee, (ii) a managed package for which a customer member of the customer members provides a volume commitment and for which actual purchases are tracked; or (iii) both the value-add service offering and the managed package.

Method, system, and storage device for managing trading network packages for a plurality of trading networks

A system for performing a method for managing a supplier for participation in trading networks. The method includes: receiving from each trading network a volume commitment consolidating volume commitments for offerings of commodities and services; negotiating with each trading network to supply to customer members of the trading network the commodity or service; storing, for each trading network for each supplier, attributes including start date, end date, services and products offered to the trading network, and payment flow for the commodities and services; offing a trading network package based on negotiations occurring before receiving purchase requests from the customer members, the trading network package including: (i) a value-add service offering to the customer members for a fee, and (ii) a managed package for which a customer member provides a volume commitment and actual purchases are tracked; and negotiating price discount levels for committed levels of demand from the trading networks.

System for managing a supplier for participation in a plurality of trading networks

An invoice processing system includes a requisition and catalog server (referred to as a Req/Cat Web, or RCW, server), a procurement services system (SAP), and a requester terminal (browser). ReqCat Web allows requesters to input requirements (requisitions) which ReqCat then passes to SAP, which creates purchase orders, sends them to vendors for fulfillment, receives the vendors invoices, and prepares the payments. Commodities may be designated as either receivable or non-receivable, and this designation is stored in ReqCat web and passed to SAP on inbound requisitions. Payments on invoices received for non-receivable items are approved via a positive confirmation process, and payments on invoices received for receivable items are approved via a negative confirmation process. Positive acceptance of an invoice by a requester of commodities triggers automatic generation of a goods received (move) ticket.

System for processing a purchase request for goods or services

A method and system are disclosed for modeling a relational database. The method comprises the steps of defining a set of data tables to accommodate any number of levels of a business hierarchy and using these tables as a generic data model to handle various levels of requirements of the business hierarchy. This set of tables include a first control table, a second table containing hierarchy nodes in a flattened format, a third table storing unique hierarchy node names, and a fourth table describing the hierarchy nodes in one or more languages. For example, this business hierarchy may be a commodity hierarchy, a geography hierarchy and a client organization hierarchy. Also, in the preferred embodiment, no new tables are needed when a new hierarchy is introduced, and the generic data model supports different numbers of reporting levels from one hierarchy to the next hierarchy.

Creation of generic hierarchies

System and method for automating invoice processing with positive confirmation

An Internet trading network is operated by establishing supplier memberships of suppliers providing offerings to the trading network; establishing customer memberships of customers providing volume commitments; consolidating all volume commitments for a particular commodity or service when negotiating an offering with the supplier; managing memberships and their accounts.

Method and program storage device for managing a supplier for participation in a plurality of trading networks

A hybird Notes/DB2 environment provides a requisition catalog on the Web. Client browsers are connected to a GWA infrastructure including a first network dispatcher and a virtual cluster of Domino.Go servers. The network dispatcher sprays out browser requests among configured .nsf servers in virtual server cluster. Communications from this virtual server cluster are, in turn, dispatched by a second network dispatcher servers in a Domino cluster. External objects, primarily for a GUI, are served in a .dfs and include graphic files, Java files, HTML images and net.data macros. The catalog is built from supplier provided flat files. A front end is provided for business logic and validation, as also is a relation database backend. HTML forms are populated using relational database agents. A role table is used for controlling access both to Notes code and DB2 data. Large amounts of data is quickly transferred using an intermediate agent and window.

System and method for front end business logic and validation

A system and method for keeping ledger accounts in synchronization between a back-end procurement system and a front-end requisition and catalog system. An extract utility extracts a file of general ledger (G/L) accounts, including account code, description, and company code, from a chart of accounts in the back-end and transfers it to the front-end, where it is updated by an update utility to include company group code from a company group table and then loaded into a data store of valid general ledger accounts. Maintenance of the front end data store of valid accounts includes pushing to all companies in a company group ledger code entered with respect to any one of the companies in that group.

System and method for synchronizing ledger accounts by company group

A system for processing invoices including a front-end requisition and catalog system; a back-end procurement system; a scanner for scanning images of invoices; an image system and store for storing said scanned images and serving them to said workstation keyed to said invoice in connection with positive or negative confirmation processing of the invoice.

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Conklin, NY, United States of America

Sherry Lee Wilson