CONFIGURATION OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS BASED UPON PURCHASERS COMPONENT NEEDS AS DETERMINED FROM PURCHASER DATA ENTRIES CORRELATED WITH A SET OF SELLER BUSINESS RULES TO OPTIMIZE QUANTITIES OF EACH COMPONENT SOLD
The seller of computer components who has developed the process for configuring computer systems or networks provides a configuration process comprising a prompting system or computer purchasers to make a sequence of interactive data entries, each of said entries relative to the data processing needs of the purchaser of one of said computer systems, allocating said computer components to said computer systems based upon said user entries which are indicative of the system needs solution of that purchaser, and tracking the quantities of said computer components thereby allocated to computer systems sold by said seller to said purchasers. In addition, the invention includes means for applying a set of seller business rules to the tracked quantities of each of said computer components to produce a set of optimized quantities for each of said computer components based on the seller's business needs and means for offering to selected ones of said purchasers modifications in the quantities of selected ones of said allocated components to thereby reconcile said purchasers' system needs solutions with said optimized quantities of said components based upon the seller's business needs. Through the purchasers' cooperation in permitting the seller to make such a dynamic reconciliation of the purchasers' system solution needs with the seller's business needs, the seller is able, through the optimization of profits, to recoup the costs of developing and maintaining the processes for configuring computer systems.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED PATENT APPLICATIONS
The following patent applications, which are assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, cover subject matter related to the subject matter of the present patent application Ser. No. 09/159,954, filed Sep. 24, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,336,101, entitled Tracking of Computer Components Allocated During Configuration of Computer Systems and Networks by a Simplified User Friendly Configuration Process, to Dean, Howard and Rodriguez; and, Ser. No. 09/282,616, filed Mar. 31, 1999 (pending), entitled Configuration of Computer Systems Based upon Purchaser Component Needs as Determined from Purchaser Data Entries and Having a Tiered Structure of Financial Incentive Levels Automatically Provided From Distributer to System Resellers, to Dean, Howard, Neumann and Rodriquez.
