Patent ID: 8521549

Claim:
A method of recommending vendors to bid on a print job, the method comprising: identifying a print job for which a recommendation of vendors to bid on the print job is desired; identifying one or more vendors as potential bidders for the print job; for each identified vendor: determining, by a computing device, a bidding probability associated with the vendor, wherein the bidding probability represents a probability that the vendor will bid on the print job, determining, by the computing device, a winning probability associated with the vendor, wherein the winning probability represents a probability that the vendor will win a bid for the print job, determining, by a computing device, a recommendation probability associated with the vendor, wherein the recommendation probability represents a probability that the vendor will be recommended to bid on the print job, wherein the recommendation probability is based on the bidding probability and the winning probability associated with the vendor, and identifying the vendor as a recommended vendor based on the associated recommendation probability; and notifying a user of the recommended vendors.