Patent ID: 6915269

Claim:
A method for facilitating evaluation, in connection with the procurement or delivery of products or services, in a context of at least one of (i) a financial transaction and (ii) operation of an enterprise, such context involving a member of a first class of parties in a first role and a member of a second class of counterparties in a second role, the method comprising: a. obtaining for each of the parties in the first class and storing in a first digital storage medium responses from at least one of the party and a party co-evaluator to a first set of forced choice questions designed to permit analysis of the responses in terms of a first plurality of attributes that are essentially orthogonal to one another so as to reveal underlying party preferences that can be used to estimate the closeness of such party's fit with a counterparty in such context; b. obtaining for each of the counterparties in the second class and storing in a second digital storage medium responses from at least one of the counterparty and a counterparty co-evaluator to a second set of forced choice questions designed to permit analysis of the responses in terms of a second plurality of attributes that are essentially orthogonal to one another and complementary to said first plurality of attributes so as to reveal underlying counterparty preferences that can be used to estimate the closeness of such counterparty's fit with a party in such context; c. deriving, in a first computer process, from the responses to the first set of questions for each such party, a first preference profile for each such party through conjoint analysis of the responses; d. deriving, in a second computer process, from the responses to the second set of questions for each such counterparty, a second preference profile for each such counterparty through conjoint analysis of the responses; e. for each party, analyzing, in a third computer process, the preference profile of such party in relation to the preference profiles of the counterparties to derive a first list of counterparties for which the preferences of the party closely match the preferences of the counterparty and the preferences of the counterparty closely match the preferences of the party and communicating the first list to such party, so that the first list identifies counterparties having preferences, determined by conjoint analysis of responses to forced choice questions, that match preferences of the party, also determined by conjoint analysis of responses to forced choice questions, in connection with the procurement or delivery of such products or services in such context of at least one of a financial transaction and operation of an enterprise.