Method and apparatus for competitive solicitation and bidding
AssigneeAccion Group Inc.
InventorsHarold Judd, Harris Burpee
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus for providing secure, online centralized control over a solicitation and bidding process and more particularly the method and apparatus for the procurement of services and commodities, such as for example, procuring electricity to meet capacity for an electric generating plant, the method and apparatus providing screening and rejection of unqualified applicants, transparency exceeding governmental guidelines, options to aggregate offers among bidders that meet criteria, and facilitate automated, real time bid evaluation and ranking.
Claims20
A procurement management system, comprising:
- an authentication interface accessible to one or more isolated data structures;
- application software and at least one database installed on a computer system having an internet connection accessible through the authentication interface;
- the application software comprising;
- a configure solicitation module to set bid qualification parameters;
- a pre-qualification bid form;
- a map site interface;
- a bid submission form;
- a document management module;
- an electronic messaging module;
- and
- wherein bid submission data entered within the procurement management system is automatically ranked based on at least one selected bid qualification parameter.
A method of managing a request for proposal comprising the steps of:
- authenticating user accessibility to one or more isolated data structures;
- installing application software and at least one database on a computer system having an internet connection accessible to the isolated data structures;
- configuring bid qualification parameters for the request for proposal within the application software;
- displaying for data entry a pre-qualification bid form;
- displaying a map site interface;
- displaying for data entry a bid submission form;
- configuring a document management module;
- configuring an electronic messaging module;
- and
- ranking bid submission data entered within the request for proposal based on at least one selected bid qualification parameter.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.