Inventory and revenue maximization method and system

Abstract

A method is provided for enterprise management and bundling of radio, outdoor and entertainment inventory to achieve maximum revenue on perishable products. An electronic data-martor central information storage and data processing system is established to collect influencing factors for the probability and price sensitivity of a particular advertising buyer. The data-martalso collects business rules for inventory scaling, available inventory to sell, budget (goal) information, advertiser payment history, and station performance data to feed to a scenario planner. Once three or more variables exist, inventory and pricing fuzzy logic algorithms create scenario plans to present the most profitable bundle of offerings. The scenarios are typically pre-approved although presented to the local business unitsfor an abnormality failsafe. Once processed by the local business units, the scenarios are presented to the advertising buyer. Negotiations typically take place which cause for the process to restart. The main systems that interact to build these scenarios are: an enterprise data-mart, a scenario planner, a performance measure system, a rate or yield management subsystem, a traffic and accounts receivable systemand a similarly configured local inventory booking system. A business rules engine provides the local rule definitions for scaling inventory and price to provide for the most profitable combination.