Patent ID: 8600783

Claim:
An Internet-enabled automatic rental vehicle transaction system for managing a plurality of rental vehicle transactions for third party use placed by high volume customers, the system comprising: a processor; and a memory; wherein the processor and the memory comprise parts of a rental vehicle reservation management computer system configured to create and manage a plurality of rental vehicle reservations in response to user input received from a plurality of business partner computer systems, wherein the processor is configured to interact with the memory to execute a rental vehicle software program and a web service connector, the web service connector for connection in network between the Internet and the rental vehicle software program to process a plurality of rental vehicle transaction requests, the rental vehicle transaction requests being formatted in a pre-determined web services format; and wherein the web service connector comprises: a first software module configured to identify a type of rental vehicle transaction from among a plurality of types of rental vehicle transactions for a received rental vehicle transaction request, the plurality of types of rental vehicle transactions comprising at least two selected from the group consisting of a request to create a rental vehicle reservation, a request to modify a rental vehicle reservation, a request to extend a rental vehicle reservation, a request to cancel a rental vehicle reservation, a request to obtain a price rate for a rental vehicle reservation, a request to find a rental vehicle location at which a rental vehicle reservation for an insured or claimant is to be fulfilled, a request to retrieve stored data for an existing rental vehicle reservation, a request to terminate an existing rental vehicle reservation, and a request to return any error messages for a rental vehicle reservation; a web service specification document for defining a plurality of data and format requirements for the different types of rental vehicle transactions; and a second software module configured to transform the received rental vehicle transaction request into a plurality of data objects having a format processable by the rental vehicle software program according to the defined requirements in the web service specification document; and wherein the rental vehicle software program is further configured to receive the plurality of data objects and automatically perform an operation on the received data objects in accordance with the identified rental vehicle transaction type.