Patent ID: 8050396

Claim:
A machine-implemented method, comprising: determining, in response to a message from a sender over a network, a type of business partnership comprising at least one of a customer, a supplier, and an agent of an enterprise, wherein the determining the type is performed based on at least information obtained from an enterprise resource management system; identifying a role of the sender based on at least one of a region of the sender, a product associated with the sender, and a previous transaction associated with the sender, wherein the identifying the role is based on at least information obtained from the enterprise resource management system; determining whether a match exists between the determined type and the identified role; forwarding to a first user of the enterprise resource management system the message including a profile of the sender obtained from the enterprise resource management system, when the match exists; searching the enterprise resource management system for a list of candidate recipients, when the match does not exists, wherein the searching queries for the list of candidate recipients based on at least the determined type of business partnership; identifying the list of candidate recipients to handle the message based on roles of the candidate recipients within an organization in view of the sender; and forwarding the message to a recipient selected from the list of the candidate recipients to enable the selected recipient to handle the message.