Patent ID: 8180710

Claim:
A method for determining a contract price for a user-defined configuration of business services, said method comprising: obtaining a plurality of market raw data sets, the market raw data sets comprising data describing characteristics of business services including price of service and at least one of: type of service, scope of service, volume of service, quality of service, and other complexity or demographic data that drive price; deriving, by at least one processor, industry standard values for business services using the market raw data sets, the industry standard values being industry standard prices of business services; normalizing and adjusting, by the at least one processor, the market raw data sets with respect to the derived industry standard values by adjusting prices of the market raw data sets for differences in services based on the industry pricing index and standardized percentages based on industry-specific cost ratios; calculating, by the at least one processor, an industry pricing index using the normalized data sets; obtaining a characteristic data set for a user-defined configuration of business services; normalizing and adjusting, by the at least one processor, the user-defined characteristic data set with respect to corresponding derived industry standard values; determining, by the at least one processor, a contract price for the user-defined configuration of business services using at least one of: (i) the normalized and adjusted user-defined characteristic data set, and (ii) the normalized and adjusted market raw data sets; and generating one or more reports that graphically display the calculated industry pricing index or the determined contract price.