Distributor Rule Propagation for Vendor Product Visibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Distributors face complexity and high costs in developing and maintaining distributor-side filters to manage vendor product offerings, as they need to implement vendor-specific provisioning logic and handle intricate product dependency relationships, making it difficult to provide a competitive suite of products and services across various business scenarios.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves authenticating end users and sending sets of rules to vendor sites, allowing vendors to manage their own product and service visibility based on distributor-defined business rules, using protocols like SAML, OpenID Connect, or OAuth2, which enables vendors to control what products and services are visible to customers, reducing the need for distributor-side filtering and provisioning logic.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If distributor-side filtering is implemented to control vendor product visibility, then distributor control over product offerings is improved, but device complexity and development cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of having the distributor build filtering logic on their side to control what vendors can show, the patent inverts the approach by having vendors receive filtering rules from the distributor and implement the filtering on their side. This reverses the traditional architecture where the distributor maintains control through their own filtering mechanisms, but instead shifts the filtering responsibility to vendors while maintaining distributor authority through rule propagation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a rule propagation mechanism as an intermediary between the distributor and vendors. The distributor sends filtering rules to vendors, and vendors use these rules to control their product visibility. This intermediary rule set allows the distributor to maintain control without building complex filtering systems themselves, instead using a standardized rule-based communication protocol.
2Adaptability or versatility
If distributor-side filtering is implemented to control vendor product visibility, then distributor control over product offerings is improved, but development and maintenance cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables vendors to self-manage their product visibility by receiving filtering rules from the distributor and automatically applying them. Instead of requiring the distributor to build and maintain complex filtering systems, vendors use their own existing infrastructure to enforce the rules, effectively serving themselves in the filtering process while still adhering to distributor control requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The filtering rules sent from the distributor to vendors are designed to be universally applicable across different vendor systems. The same rule-based mechanism can be implemented by any vendor without requiring vendor-specific filtering logic, making the system multi-functional and reducing overall development and maintenance costs through standardization.
3Adaptability or versatility
If distributor builds complete solution bundles to meet customer demands, then customer solution completeness is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the solution bundle management responsibility between the distributor and multiple vendors. Instead of the distributor building and managing complete solution bundles themselves, they coordinate with individual vendors who each manage their own product portfolios. The filtering rules enable this segmentation by allowing the distributor to control which vendor products are visible while vendors maintain their own product management systems.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges the capabilities of multiple vendors into a unified marketplace view for the distributor. By propagating filtering rules to all vendors and having them collectively enforce product visibility constraints, the system combines the strengths of multiple vendor offerings while maintaining centralized distributor control, achieving complete solution bundles without requiring the distributor to manage each component individually.
Data Source
AI summary
An approach is provided that authenticates, at an on-line distributor, an end user that has connected to the distributor over a communications network. One or more sets of rules are sent from the distributor to one or more vendor sites. The distributor receives vendor product data pertaining to the vendor sites. The vendor product data received from the vendor sites is based on the sets of rules sent to the respective vendors. A product request is received at the distributor from the authenticated end user. The vendor product data received at the distributor is queried using a query that is based on the product request with the query resulting in a search result that is returned to the end user.