Patent ID: 7792962

Claim:
A method for managing provision of commercial products and services in a building by a manager, the method comprising the steps of: providing a portal unique to a building, the portal being accessible by at least one tenant and by at least one vendor of said building via at least the Internet, wherein said step of providing a portal for a building includes the step of providing a home page for each tenant or vendor, wherein the home page provides access to particular links and capabilities according to the tenant or vendor, providing public access to an anonymous user home page, receiving data from a person accessing the anonymous user home page, determining whether said person is one of a tenant or a vendor, and processing said data to create one of a tenant home page or vendor home page, wherein said step of processing said data includes the step of creating vendor categories; and assigning one or more vendors to said vendor categories, and wherein the tenant home page or vendor home page provides access to links and capabilities according to the vendor or user; receiving, from a plurality of vendors of a variety of commercial services products, requests to be associated with the portal, wherein being associated with the portal includes being identified on a list of vendors from which a tenant of the building can select, the list of vendors being determined by the manager; the manager selecting at least one vendor based on the needs of at least one tenant of the building and the manager selectively associating said at least one vendor with said portal for the building; providing at said portal at least one offer for at least one commercial service or product for each of said vendors; specifying one or more order parameters for each tenant; receiving at the portal a request for one or more orders for at least one commercial service or product of a specified vendor from a tenant; determining whether or not approval is necessary after receiving orders for one or more of said commercial service or product from a user; said determination being made based on said specified order parameters; notifying the tenant whether or not said received orders have been approved; notifying a vendor of one or more orders received from a tenant; receiving from said vendor a status of each order; and providing the tenant with status information of said orders during the pendancy of the order.