Abstract:
An integrated financing services system provides a leasing service for vendors accessible through the Internet, embedding financing into the checkout process using several Web services. The present system is accessed by a vendor to provide lease prices on a line item by line item basis within an electronic shopping catalog. Depending on the detail provided by the sales company in the request for those rates, these lease prices can map to the specificity of the catalog. The present system provides a service for the vendors to integrate leasing into their sales agents&#39; and customers&#39; shopping experience without a large investment in a flexible, and customer-customizable way. The lessor can now support vendors and customers in a very repeatable manner, using the same technology with no new special development for each vendor.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention generally relates to the field of customer financing, and particularly to a software system, service, a computer program product, and an associated method to finance high value customer sales over the Internet, that are secure, customizable, and available on demand as the customer transaction occurs. More specifically, this invention pertains to an e-business method that allows vendors to electronically interact with a leasing organization to present either a planning lease quote for a generic or entitled customer that a customer can use for comparison purposes, or a committed lease quote for a specific customer, thus providing a new way of incorporating financing payment options to existing sales systems and sales points of presence over the internet. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     The World Wide Web (WWW) or Internet is comprised of an expansive network of interconnected computers upon which businesses, governments, groups, and individuals throughout the world maintain inter-linked computer files known as Web pages. Originally, the Internet was devised for the transfer of information. More recently, the Internet has increasingly been used as a shopping tool for users, much like an electronic catalogue. The increasing number of Internet users purchasing products over the Internet has resulted in significant changes in the approach businesses take to product sales, converting from a standard business model to an electronic business, or e-business model. 
     In a customer&#39;s shopping experience, either on the Web or through a salesperson, the offer presented to the customer typically doesn&#39;t present a valid lease option for payment unless the vendor has involved a leasing sales representative or uses non-committed planning rates in creating the offer document. For example, a customer wishes to purchase a computer from a vendor, either in person, or from the vendor&#39;s Web site. The vendor can readily incorporate a purchase price for the cost of the computer in the customer&#39;s offering catalog. However, the vendor does not have a simple, on-demand electronic leasing service that automatically presents timely lease prices concurrently with the purchase price. To be able to present interest rate and customer credit accurate lease prices along with the purchase price of the computer electronically, the vendor will need to make a relatively large and possibly a prohibitive investment in sales system development along with a proprietary-like commitment to a partnership with one or more third party lessors. 
     In the on-demand world, retailers and wholesalers require the ability to easily and readily integrate lease options into their sales solutions for their customers at the time of shopping and checkout at any point of sale. The sales tool medium can range from a house-grown product and service configurator that the vendor uses to pull together an offer proposal to an e-procurement (electronic procurement) system. One example of an e-procurement system currently used is the Ariba® software. 
     Vendors need to be able to dynamically support those B2B and non-B2B sales systems with leasing options cheaply and flexibly for the different ways customers do business with them. 
     Numerous customers have turned to e-procurement systems to automate and streamline their procurement processes. Several third-party companies have created e-procurement systems for those customers to use as a business to business (“B2B”) solution or tool to manage procurement in their companies. A lack of leasing integration with e-procurement systems will affect the ability for customers to buy products on lease and limit their choices a time of buy. 
     What is therefore needed is a system, a service, a computer program product, and an associated method that allow companies to electronically interact with a leasing organization, to present either a planning lease quote for a generic customer that a customer can use for comparison purposes, or a committed lease quote for a specific customer. Vendors and customers using electronic procurement (or e-procurement) systems are in need of a leasing solution that is flexible and that provides better integrated leasing prices at time of checkout. This solution should avoid re-keying and disjointed processes. In addition, the solution should support all sales methods (including e-procurement processes), providing financing prices in catalogs and checkout. The need for such a solution has heretofore remained unsatisfied. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention satisfies this need, and presents a system, a service, a computer program product, and an associated method (collectively referred to herein as “the system” or “the present system”) for providing a financing services solution for leasing. The present system includes a leasing Web services (known as Integrated Financing Services) that can be readily used by any vendor. The vendor sends its request for a lease or leasing information over a network, such as the Internet, in the format of, for example, an XML database for an immediate response of a lease quote or lease configuration screen. The communication protocol might be, for example, TCP/IP with an XML data structure. This process is initiated from any point of sale shopping and checkout processes using several Web services. 
     The first Web service is accessed by a vendor to provide leasing prices on a line item-by-line item basis within an electronic shopping catalog. Depending on the details provided by the vendor in the request for those rates (at catalog build and update), the lease prices can map to the specificity of the catalog. In other terms, if the vendor has a catalog designed for a specific customer or industry, the provided lease prices can be tailored to those specifications as well. 
     The second Web service is accessed at customer checkout when a payment option is being selected. The present system calculates the final lease price in the form of a proposal or firm rate, depending on the level of approvals previously attained between the customer and lessor or accepted risk within the lessor. 
     The third Web service is accessed by the vendor&#39;s sales agent to validate that the shipment should be made to the customer based on completion of the leasing (or lease) agreement. 
     The Web services as designed provide the added advantage of supporting various lessor and lessor&#39;s third party backoffice systems to provide lease rates for catalog support in both a manual and automated-process. 
     The present system meets high-level requirements for providing integrated processing support of an end-to-end flow from customer e-procurement and vendor systems through lessor processes, and returning the appropriate responses back to the requesting systems. 
     The present system also provides the ability to calculate and display periodic lease payments under the customer&#39;s shopping experience. In addition, the present system provides the ability to flow lease order detail into fulfillment systems. The lease detail will pass back to the lessor upon shipment from the vendor fulfillment system as part of the vendor invoice to process the lease. 
     These high-level requirements support, for example, the business-to-business, vendor configurator tool and Web site process flow for entitled catalog and lease offer creation, customer shopping experience, and order management. The present system can provide leasing support for companies such as vendors and third party companies that sell products supplied by several vendors. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       The various features of the present invention and the manner of attaining them will be described in greater detail with reference to the following description, claims, and drawings, wherein reference numerals are reused, where appropriate, to indicate a correspondence between the referenced items, and wherein: 
         FIG. 1  is a schematic illustration of an exemplary operating environment in which a financing services system of the present invention can be used; 
         FIG. 2  is a process flow chart illustrating a method of operation for Integrating Financing Services/Web Service  1  of  FIG. 1  in support of updating lease prices in an electronic catalog; 
         FIG. 3  is comprised of  FIGS. 3A and 3B , and represents a process flow chart illustrating a method of operation of the Integrated Financing Services/Web Service  2  of  FIG. 1  in support of a user&#39;s shopping experience; 
         FIG. 4  is a process flow chart illustrating Integrated Financing Services/Web Service  3  of  FIG. 1  in support of vendor order management; 
         FIG. 5  is a screen shot illustrating a shopping cart service provided by the financing services system of  FIG. 1 ; 
         FIG. 6  is a screen shot illustrating a financing selection service provided by the financing services system of  FIG. 1 ; and 
         FIGS. 7 and 8  are block diagrams illustrating the main components of the financing services system of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     The following definitions and explanations provide background information pertaining to the technical field of the present invention, and are intended to facilitate the understanding of the present invention without limiting its scope: 
     Configured to Order: A term for products that require configuration to form a complete product. 
     Financing: Loans made direct to the customer without collateral. Anything other than a standalone loan to a customer would be referred to as Leasing. 
     Internet: A collection of interconnected public and private computer networks that are linked together with routers by a set of standard protocols to form a global, distributed network. 
     Leasing: A leasing company acquires assets on behalf of the end-user customer and retains title of the asset for the duration of the lease. The asset is retained as collateral against the lease until the end of the lease. At this time the customer may choose to purchase the asset, return it or, renew the lease. 
     Offer: A set of lease rates, lease payments, terms and conditions presented to a customer by the lessor. 
     TCP/IP: The transmission control protocol (TCP) on top of the Internet protocol (IP). The Internet protocol is a connectionless protocol providing packet routing. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol providing reliable communication and multiplexing. 
     Web Site: A database or another collection of inter-linked hypertext documents (“Web documents” or “Web pages”) and associated data entities, which is accessible via a computer network, and which forms part of a larger, distributed informational system such as the WWW. In general, a Web site corresponds to a particular Internet domain name, and includes the content of a particular organization. Other types of Web sites may include, for example, a hypertext database of a corporate “Intranet” (i.e., an internal network which uses standard Internet protocols), or a site of a hypertext system that uses document retrieval protocols other than those of the WWW. 
     Vendor: A person or a legal entity, such as a company, that sells products and services that wishes to include lease options in the sales offer. 
     Sales Agent: A salesperson (or application) who works in the vendor&#39;s company and who may personally be completing the sale. 
     Fulfillment Agent: An administrative person completing the order and shipment for the customer. This person works for the vendor as well. 
     Lessor: A person or a legal entity, such as a company, that underwrites the lease offer that the vendor includes in his or her offer. 
     Entitled Customer/Entitled Prices: A pre-contracted leasing customers. Lease rates and credit terms are contractually agreed to between the lessor and the customer prior to shopping. 
     World Wide Web (WWW, also Web): An Internet client-server hypertext distributed information retrieval system. 
     XML: eXtensible Markup Language. A standard, semi-structured language used for Web documents. During a document authoring stage, XML “tags” are embedded within the informational content of the document. When the Web document (or “XML document”) is subsequently transmitted by a Web server to a Web browser, the tags are interpreted by the browser and used to parse and display the document. In addition to specifying how the Web browser is to display the document, XML tags can be used to create hyperlinks to other Web documents. 
       FIG. 1  portrays an exemplary overall environment in which a system, a service, a software program product, and an associated method for providing Integrated Financing Services may be used. System  10  includes a software programming code or computer program product that is installed on a host server  15 . While the system  10  will be described in connection with the WWW, the system  10  can be used within, for example, a wide area network, a local network, or any type of network over which computers may be connected. 
     A lessor  20  utilizes the financing services system  10  to provide leasing information to a vendor  25 . The vendor  25  utilizes a vendor server  30  that comprises an electronic catalog  35  of products. The electronic catalog  35  is accessed through the Internet by users, such as customer  40 , via the cloud-like communication network  45  or through the local network of the vendor by the vendor&#39;s sales agents. The customer  40 , vendor  25 , and lessor  20  are connected through the network  45 . 
     The host server  15  is connected to the internet  45 . The vendor server  30  and customer  40  can be connected via communications links  55 ,  60  respectively. 
     The Integrated Financing Services Lease Rates Subscription web service (LeaseRatesRequest) of System  10  enables lessor  20  to automatically provide the latest lease prices to vendor  25 . Vendor  25  may present these lease prices next to a purchase price of a product listed in electronic catalog  35  in either a general or customer-specific situation. 
     The subscription service allows Vendor  25  to initiate a request as a subscriber of lessor  20  lease rates. The subscription request identifies the catalog contents of vendor  25  so that lessor  20  and system  10  can provide the appropriate rates for the catalog. If the catalog is a customer specific catalog, Vendor  25  subscription request will also include information about the customer so that entitled lease rates can be provided. 
     On system  10 , receipt of the subscription request will establish the subscription profile needed to correctly associate the appropriate lease rates for the catalog. The service will complete the creation of the subscription by adding connection definitions associated with the vendor  25  catalog and the catalog server to the system  10  server and returns a confirmation to the vendor server that the subscription has been established. A publish rates service (LeaseRatesPublisher) will be invoked by system  10  as a support function of the subscription service to publish new rates to the Vendor  25  catalog as the new rates are made available by lessor  20 . 
     A customer-specific catalog is referenced as an “entitled electronic catalog  35 ”. System  10  also allows vendor  25  to provide lease prices to a customer  40  for products from various competitive vendors. Customer  40  may access product offerings and lease prices from, for example, the vendor&#39;s Web site or a salesperson that is providing those values from a company internal order configuration tools (also supported by the same Integrated Financing Services). If there is no specific “entitled electronic catalog” for that customer, representative (planning) rates can be used for the customer for shopping comparisons. 
     For example, customer  40  can select products from the electronic catalog  35  that has been customized with the entitlements of customer  40 . In this example, electronic catalog  35  would display periodic lease payments specific to customer  40  as part of the shopping experience. For each item selected from the electronic catalog  35 , customer  40  may indicate whether the item will be leased or purchased. Upon receipt of invoice, customer  40  would be able to reconcile his or her purchase order to his or her invoice. 
     To provide lease rates to customer  40  in the electronic catalog  35 , lessor  20  requires the details of the sales offerings that will be presented to the customer  40 . The sales offering may take a variety of forms, for example, a list of products, predefined bundles of products, a configure-to-order product offering, etc. 
     For both general and entitled electronic catalog support, the rates of lessor  20  are tied to the residual value of the product being sold. A clear definition of the components that are included in the product offerings of the electronic catalog  35  may be passed to lessor  20  by vendor  25 . In turn, lessor  20  automates the assignment of rates to the components that make up the sales offering for the electronic catalog  35 . 
     Under the scenario of an entitled electronic catalog  35 , lessor  20  would support numerous customer electronic catalogs  35  at any given time. In this case, the automated mapping of lease rates to product components is achieved to facilitate the ability to deliver rates in support of these entitled electronic catalogs  35 . 
     System  10  embeds financing into the checkout process using several Web services. 
     One Web service is asynchronously accessed by vendor  25  to provide leasing prices on a line item-by-line item basis within the electronic catalog  35 . Depending on the detail provided by vendor  25  in the request for those rates (at build and update of electronic catalog  35 ), these lease prices can map to the specificity of the electronic catalog  35 . In other terms, if vendor  25  has an electronic catalog  35  designed for a specific customer  40  or industry, the provided lease prices could be tailored to those specifications as well. That “entitled” lease price could be pre-negotiated with credit and lease rates updated in a separate process. 
     An exemplary service method  200  of system  10  in support of an entitled electronic catalog  35  and lease offer creation is illustrated by the process flow chart of  FIG. 2 . Through method  200 , system  10  interacts with the entitled electronic catalog  35  of customer  40  as created by vendor  25 . Vendor  25  creates the entitled electronic catalog  35  specific to customer  40 . 
     In this case, the electronic catalog  35  is an entitled catalog  35  that lists sales prices and lease prices specific to customer  40 . Vendor  25  invokes a request for lease rates for electronic catalog  35  at block  205 . System  10  passes data in the electronic catalog  35  to the lessor  20  at block  210 , so that lessor  20  may calculate lease rates for the specific items for the entitled electronic catalog  35 . 
     At block  215 , the Request Credit Check service (RequestCreditCheck) of system  10  is invoked to assess the customer&#39;s credit worthiness. If at block  220  the customer  40  is deemed to be credit worthy, system  10  updates the lease rates within the lessor  20  for that new customer  40  at block  235 . System  10  loads leasing rates and other leasing information to a common table, at block  240 , that is used to provide the entitled rates to the vendor  25  for this customer&#39;s future shopping experience. 
     System  10  will then request an update to the electronic catalog  35  owned by vendor  25  to set up the customer&#39;s catalog for future shopping experience. This set up will be initiated a call from the vendor  25  catalog server via the Lease Rates Subscription web service (LeaseRatesRequest) to system  10 . The updated leasing rates and other leasing information are then available for on-demand lease price calculations from the entitled electronic catalog  35  of customer  40  as provided by vendor  25 . 
     (2) Another Web service is dynamically accessed at checkout by customer  40  through the vendor system when a leasing payment option is being selected. System  10  calculates the final lease price in the form of a proposal or firm rate, depending on the level of approvals previously attained between the customer  40  and lessor  20  or accepted risk within the lessor  20 . Get Lease Quote web service (PeriodicLeasePaymentCalculation) will be invoked to return the firm rates. The firm rates will be displayed via the vendor&#39;s web page or via the Integrated Financing Services web page depending on the vendor&#39;s preference. If the customer was an entitled customer, the customer may approve acceptance of the rates via an electronic approval. 
     In the event that the customer is not an entitled customer, calculation of the final lease price may require system  10  to call the Request Credit Check service (RequestCreditCheck) for the un-entitled customer. A proposal may also be required to present the final lease prices to the customer. When a proposal is required, the generate proposal service (GenerateLeaseProposal) of system  10  will generate the lease proposal for the customer&#39;s review and approval. 
     Under certain customer scenarios, an immediate response with lease rates may not be feasible due to additional process steps that must be completed by lessor  20   n . Under these scenarios, system  10  will provide a message that indicates an immediate lease price is not available and the customer will be advised with a response will be ready for review. The delayed response will occur via an update lease status service (UpdateLeaseStatus) module  712 , where the customer will be instructed to return to the site via an e-mail notification (block  380 ,  FIG. 3B ). 
       FIG. 3  ( FIGS. 3A and 3B ) illustrates an exemplary service method  300  of system  10  in support of the shopping experience of customer  40  as customer  40  shops from an electronic catalog  35  and places an order on lease. This customer already has a leasing contract, entitled rates and a pre-approved credit. 
     Customer  40  selects products from the electronic catalog  35  (block  305 ). Customer  40  may then select a payment method for each line item in the shopping cart of the electronic catalog  35  of vendor  25  (block  310 ), allowing for the purchase and lease mixed orders. For example, customer  40  may select five desktop computers, five monitors, and one laptop computer for purchase. Customer  40  may request financing for the computers and monitors but not the laptop. 
     Having selected financing for some of the items in the shopping cart, the customer  40  then selects “request financing” at block  315 . Vendor  25  calls the lease calculation web service or module (PeriodicLeasePaymentCalculation)  707  of system  10  at block  330  and passes the shopping cart data to lessor  20  at block  335 . The shopping cart data comprises items being purchased, such as quantity, information about customer  40 , and so forth. The lease calculation module  707  calculates the lease price for a proposal module  714  to generate the lease price to the customer  40 . 
     System  10  then takes over the “shopping experience.” This means the screens are now owned by system  10  but it appears seamless to the end user that they are no longer on the “vendor owned” screen. The Get Lease Quote web service of System  10  first determines whether a minimum finance value has been met by the purchase made by customer  40  at decision block  340  ( FIG. 3B ). 
     If the purchase amount is too small for financing, the Get Lease Quote web service system  10  sends a message to customer  40 , for example, “Increase purchase size or submit as purchase”. This informs customer  40  that the order is too small for financing and should be increased if financing is desired. 
     If the minimum finance amount is met at decision block  340 , the Get Lease Quote web service (also referred to herein as the Get Lease Calculation service) of system  10  determines at block  350  if lease rates are available for the items selected by the customer  40  for financing. If lease rates are not available, system  10  displays, at block  355 , a message to the customer  40 , for example, “Rates not currently available,” and provides the update with the delayed response at block  380 , as explained above. 
     If it is determined at decision block  350  that the lease rates are available for the items in the shopping cart of customer  40 , and that a proposal is not needed (block  356 ), the initial periodic lease payment is calculated on the configured purchase price where applicable for electronic catalog  35 , and the periodic lease payments along with the lease rates, lease term and other appropriate terms and conditions are then displayed (block  360 ), and method  300  proceeds to decision block  365  which will be described later in more detail. In another embodiment, the present system displays the content of the lease proposal in country-specific format, such as the local country language and currency based upon customer preferences. 
     Once the customer has completed configuring and accepting the lease (block  365 ), the lease is processed at block  375 . The orders are then passed back to the vendor system with associated periodic lease payment detail. The vendor system then submits through a gateway to a transaction hub from business to business procurement initiated orders. Orders initiated via the non-B2B electronic catalogs  35  or vendor&#39;s sales agent configurators are then submitted to the vendor fulfillment system. Submitted orders will carry lease data that will flow through the vendor fulfillment systems to the lessor at the time of invoice for lease processing. 
     If at decision block  365  it is determined that the customer did not accept the lease, method  300  follows the regular purchase order process at block  370 . 
     A screen shot of an exemplary shopping cart  500  is shown in  FIG. 5  after customer  40  has selected items from the electronic catalog  35  of vendor  25 , illustrating a service provided to customer  40  and vendor  25  by system  10 . While shopping, customer  40  has selected items  505 . When the selection of items  505  is complete, customer  40  has the option of check out  510  or request leasing  515 . Check out  510  initiates a standard purchase process of items  505  from vendor  25 . 
     The selection of request leasing  515  by customer  40  displays a financing selection screen. A screen shot of an exemplary financing selection screen  600  is shown in  FIG. 6 , illustrating another financing service of system  10 . Lease options  605  are displayed for each line item in the shopping cart of customer  40 . Other lease variables such as, for example, term  610  and offer  615  may be customized by customer  40 . 
     If a lease value can not be calculated for a purchase item, system  10  presents a message to the customer  40 , as shown by message  620 . After selecting lease terms as presented by lease options  605 , term  620 , and offer  615 , customer  40  may request re-calculation of lease payments by system  10  by selecting re-calculate  625 . Customer  40  may accept the lease prices by selecting “accept lease price”  630 . Alternatively, the customer  40  may select “continue shopping”  635  to continue adding items to the shopping cart. 
     (3) A further Web service, credit confirmation (GetCreditConfirmation), is accessed by the customer fulfillment agent of the vendor  25  to validate that shipment should be made to the customer  40  based on completion of leasing agreement. This web service verifies that the customer  40  has sufficient credit to obtain the lease in question (block  435  of  FIG. 4 ). If lessor  20  withdraws credit as a result of the credit confirmation check (decision block  440 ), system  10  suspends the credit offer at block  445 , and notifies the customer  40  at block  450 . 
       FIG. 4  illustrates an exemplary service method  400  of system  10  in support of order management by vendor  25 . At block  405 , an order is received by vendor  25 . Customer  40  may have selected some items in the order for financing, and others for purchase, creating a mixed order. 
     The vendor fulfillment system or administrator transfers information to lessor  20  at block  435  so that a credit capacity check (GetCreditConformation) may be performed for customer  40 . System  10  determines whether the credit capacity of customer  40  is sufficient at decision block  440 . 
     If the credit capacity of customer  40  is insufficient, the lessor  20  determines whether to pend or reject the lease application at decision block  445 . If, in real time, the credit capacity of customer  40  is adequate, then the lease is approved at block  460 . The lease price presented to the customer  40  may be based on the credit rating of the customer  40 . The manufacture of an order may be dependent on the approval of the lease. In this case, the information relayed from the lessor  20  allows the vendor  25  to manufacture the items and ship them to the customer  40 . 
     With further reference to  FIGS. 7 and 8 , the vendors  25  access the present system  10  over a first network service  704 , within network  45 , to provide leasing prices for items within the electronic shopping catalog  35 . The customers could access the present system  10  over a second network service  706 , within network  45 , upon selection of a payment option for an item within the electronic shopping catalog  35 , to obtain a lease quote from vendor or vendors  25 . A lease calculation module  707  automatically determines lease conditions or terms for the selected item. 
     A proposal generation module  714  automatically proposes the lease conditions to the customer  40  for approval, as an alternative to a direct purchase of the item. A display  716  displays, to the customer  40 , the proposed or firm lease rates, terms, and other data to the customer  40 . 
     Upon approval of the lease terms  720 , by the customer  40 , a vendor-lessor commitment to finance module  725  sends an acknowledgement to the sale agent of the vendor  25  that the sale of the item is based on the lease conditions that have been approved by the customer. The present system  10  then updates the lease rate table  730  for the items in the electronic shopping catalog  35 . 
     A vendor fulfillment module  735  at the corresponding vendor  25  receives the customer&#39;s order, and the a credit check and confirmation module  740  having performed a credit check on the customer  40  for use in determining the lease rate for the items within the electronic shopping catalog  35 , confirms the order and sends a notice of lease approval  745  to the customer  40 . 
     It is to be understood that the specific embodiments of the invention that have been described are merely illustrative of certain applications of the principle of the present invention. Numerous modifications may be made to the system and method for providing a financing services solution invention described herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Moreover, while the present invention is described for illustration purpose only in relation to the WWW, it should be clear that the invention is applicable as well to, for example, a wide area network, a local network, or any type of network over which computers may be connected.