Patent ID: 7571131

Claim:
A method of conducting an online competitive price quoting event for at least one commodity, comprising: storing event data associated with the event into at least one data table; storing commodity data associated with the at least one commodity into the at least one data table; storing supplier data associated with a plurality of suppliers who will participate in the event into the at least one data table; storing historical data associated with past transactions related to the at least one commodity of the plurality of suppliers; storing a default currency for the event into the at least one data table; storing a preferred currency for each of the plurality of suppliers into the at least one data table; assigning an event token to the event and providing the event token to the suppliers; granting access authorization to agents representing the plurality of suppliers in response to receiving the event token for the event; displaying a bid entry screen to the agents listing the at least one commodity as at least one entry, a current winning bid in the preferred currencies of the suppliers, a target price in the preferred currencies of the suppliers, status of the agents' bids, and entry fields for receiving an actual bid and a minimum bid; comparing the actual bid to the current winning bid and a current minimum bid in response to receiving the actual bid from an agent, the actual bid representing the price at which the supplier is willing to sell the at least one commodity; comparing the minimum bid to the current winning bid and the current minimum bid in response to receiving the minimum bid from the agent, the minimum bid representing the lowest price the supplier is willing to sell the at least one commodity; determining a new current winning bid based at least in part on the comparisons of the actual bid and the minimum bid to the current winning bid and the current minimum bid; updating the bid entry screen with the new current winning bid; color coding the at least one entry on the bid entry screen to reflect the current status of the agent's bids; computing a total price representative of the winning bid for the at least one commodity; comparing the total price for the at least one commodity with a historical total for a commodity comparable to the at least one commodity that the supplier of the winning bid supplied in one or more previous events; and computing a difference between the total price and the historical total.