Methods and systems for integrating procurement systems with electronic catalogs

A computer implemented method for providing online procurement between a buyer and suppliers over a network, wherein the method is implemented by executing software instructions stored on one or more non-transitory computer readable media by one or more processors, the method comprising:

• receiving a user initiated catalog shopping request;
• searching for the request using a plurality of supplier web site search engines to access a set of disparate electronic catalog sources wherein each electronic catalog source has its own search engine;
• locating a set of product information associated with the request in at least one of the electronic catalog sources;
• retrieving said set of product information;
• obtaining a set of translated product information by performing acts comprising translating said set of product information into a standardized format regardless of the format of the electronic catalog sources;
• and
• rendering a document comprising the set of translated product information.

A computer system comprising one or more memories storing software instructions, and one or more processors configured to execute the software instructions to perform operations comprising:

• receiving a user initiated catalog shopping request;
• searching for the request using a plurality of supplier web site search engines to access a set of disparate electronic catalog sources wherein each electronic catalog source has its own search engine;
• locating a set of product information associated with the request in at least one of the electronic catalog sources;
• retrieving said set of product information;
• obtaining a set of translated product information by performing acts comprising translating said set of product information into a standardized format regardless of the format of the electronic catalog sources;
• and
• rendering a document comprising the set of translated product information;
• wherein the software instructions comprise instructions configured to communicate with a first procurement system and a second procurement system wherein the first procurement system is configured to accept information in a first format type and the second procurement system is configured to accept information in a second format type;
• wherein the user initiated catalog shopping request includes inter-related sub-requests and wherein the software instructions comprise instructions for determining, for each sub-request, one or more intelligent agents for searching the set of electronic catalog sources;
• wherein the one or more intelligent agents are configured to determine one or more sub-agents for non-invasively searching the set of electronic catalogs;
• wherein non-invasively searching the set of electronic catalogs comprises using the one or more intelligent agents and one or more sub-agents on a buy-side of one or more firewalls relative to the one or more electronic catalog sources;
• wherein the software instructions are configured to perform the searching using a distributed remote search configured to utilize the search engines from each of the set of disparate electronic catalog sources;
• wherein the set of product information comprises information retrieved from multiple electronic catalog sources and is multi-formatted;
• and
• rendering the document comprising the set of translated product information comprises rendering attribute information which is specific to a particular buyer.