Patent ID: 7580862

Claim:
An electronic services network system, comprising, in combination: a plurality of data exchange interfaces to facilitate transactions with partner sites and legacy data processing infrastructures, automatically accept new leads, new user transactions and new orders for goods or services and synchronize workflow process state transitions, wherein the workflow process state transitions include internal and external workflow states and transitions defined by internal and external partners and wherein and the internal and external workflow process state transitions are synchronized between internal and external partners cooperating to provide the goods or services; a plurality of user interfaces to communicate with a plurality of different user devices via a plurality of different communications protocols; a plurality of user notification interfaces to deliver event notifications to user devices related to goods or services for events that require an immediate response; an application manager to provide a common entry point for a plurality of applications used on the electronic services network system; a plurality of applications managed by the application manager to provide a plurality of different types of support assistance in the electronic services network system; an information repository for storing and retrieving customer lead, customer order workflow information and other types of information obtained from customers, and partners generated using the electronic services network system; and a plurality of functional engines to provide functionality to select, schedule, confirm, purchase, invoice, bill and settle orders for goods or services, wherein the plurality of functional engines include Workflow, Preference and Personalization, Service-Fulfillment Tracking, Factor-based pricing, Real-Time Scheduling, Billing and Credit Card processing, Need-Solution Identification, Service Provider Network, Provider Selection and Assignment, Event notification, Service Appointment Calendaring, Resource Management, Service Route Calculation, Invoicing Settlement and Renewal Engines; wherein the plurality of functional engines help provide enterprise-wide visibility and management of business processes for the internal and external partners; and wherein orders for the goods or services are accepted and scheduled in real-time via a computer network and confirming scheduling of delivery, handling of administrative and business details for both customers and service providers and fulfilling, tracking and settling orders for the goods or services are completed in real-time.