Patent ID: 7392228
Filing Date: 2008-06-24
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method of optimizing the process of quoting prices for reserving a date-constrained service comprising the steps: defining a family of candidate pricing policies wherein each of said pricing policies are comprised of: generating an application schedule, wherein said application schedule comprises: responding to a quote request by, searching said application schedule for the unique data pair that corresponds to the parameters of said quote request and identifying the secondary element of said unique data pair as the applicable pricing policy that will be applied in response to said quote request; applying said applicable pricing policy to the parameters of said quote request and said data parameters; determining and quoting a price value in final response to said quote request; computing a performance metric associated with any sale resulting from said quoting process; summing said performance metric over all sales transactions associated with each member of said family of candidate policies; comparing said summed performance metric of each member of said family of candidate policies and eliminating at least one sub-optimal members of said family of candidate pricing policies based on the value of its associated performance metric; whereby the sub-optimal member of said family of pricing policies are thus identified and removed from said family of pricing policies and an improved optimal family of policies is thus determined.