METHOD AND PROCESS FOR PROVIDING RELEVANT DATA, COMPARING PROPOSAL ALTERNATIVES, AND RECONCILING PROPOSALS, INVOICES, AND PURCHASE ORDERS WITH ACTUAL COSTS IN A WORKFLOW PROCESS

摘要

The present invention provides a process and a system for matching buyers and sellers of goods and/or services for a project. The invention enables a buyer to specify a project in terms of physical, functional, temporal, financial, and/or transactional parameters that are then automatically converted into at least one request for goods/services perform work related to the project (102). The requests are suitably provided to at least one seller, who may be pre-identified by the buyer as a preferred seller. The requests may be accompanied by supporting information or reference links to sources of such supporting information. Upon receiving a request, the seller may submit a response to the request, as desired. The seller's response may likewise include attachments with information supporting the proposal, or reference links to such information in other sources. The process itself provides a library of industry information for the benefit of users accessible from a respository in the system or via reference links to other sources. The invention provides an environment for the manipulation of proposal data to compare proposals between multiple sellers (104) and to identify economics of scale across similar projects (106), a forum for the negotiation of any agreements and the formation of contracts to provide the requested, or alternative goods/services (108), as well as reconciliation of purchase orders, actual field costs (110), and invoices (112).