Patent ID: 8135713

Claim:
A method for searching for a business partner, comprising: classifying possible search requirements for a business partner into multiple classes; providing the classified search requirements to a user; providing a weighting level for each search requirement; responsive to the user's input of the search requirements, sending search requests to an internal information resource storing previously stored data for business partners and an external information resource storing real time data for business partners; receiving information about business partners as responses to the search requests; assigning a rating score to a response from a business partner; calculating ranking of a business partner with the weighting level and the rating score, wherein the weighting level of a search requirement is based on how important the search requirement is to the user, and the rating score is assigned according to how close the response matches a user's search requirement; and classifying the responses according to the classified search requirements, wherein the ranking is calculated with a formula: R =√{square root over ((Σ( RS* α) 2 ))}, wherein R represents ranking of a business partner, RS represents rating score of a response from the business partner to a search requirement, and a represents weighting level of the search requirement.