Patent ID: 8170898

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for facilitating evaluation, in a context of at least one of (i) a financial transaction and (ii) operation of an enterprise, such context involving a first class of parties in a first role, the first class of parties being natural persons who have interest in procuring services, and a second class of counterparties in a second role, the second class of counterparties being businesses offering the services, the method comprising: in a first computer process, retrieving first preference profile data for the selected party from a first digital storage medium, the first preference profile data derived, for a selected party in the first class of parties, from a first set of utility functions, each utility function of the first set pertaining to a distinct attribute and resulting from analysis of responses by the selected party to a first series of forced choices; in a second computer process, retrieving second preference profile data, for each of the counterparties, from a second digital storage medium, the second preference profile data derived, for any given counterparty, from a second set of utility functions that is distinct for the given counterparty, each utility function of the second set pertaining to a distinct attribute and resulting from analysis of responses, by a set of co-evaluators of the given counterparty, to a second series of forced choices; in a third computer process, for the selected party, performing multilateral analyses of the selected party's preference profile data and the preference profile data of each of the counterparties, by computing a closeness-of-fit value based thereon; and in a fourth computer process, using the computed closeness-of-fit values to derive and provide a list recommending at least one of the counterparties to the selected party.