BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS/FIGURES
The features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the detailed description set forth below when taken in conjunction with the drawings in which like reference numbers indicate identical or functionally similar elements. Additionally, the left-most digit or digits of a reference number identifies the drawing in which the reference number first appears.
FIG. 1 is a system diagram of an exemplary business intranet environment and external network and database environment in which the present invention, in an embodiment, would be implemented.
FIG. 2A is a flowchart illustrating a customer linking and identification capability (CLIC) process according to one embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2B is a flowchart illustrating a CLIC process according to an enhanced version of the embodiment of the present invention illustrated in FIG. 2A, showing additional steps which may be advantageous to perform.
FIG. 3 is a system diagram illustrating possible sources of internal customer account data at a representative business, and further illustrating the consolidation and filtering of that data into the consolidated database.
FIG. 4 is an example of representative customer account data being imported into the consolidated database.
FIG. 5A is a system diagram illustrating possible sources of external personal identification information, and further illustrating the importing of that data into the centralized repository for external data via a matching and filtering process.
FIG. 5B is a block diagram illustrating representative criteria that may be used in an embodiment of the invention to determine which external data corresponds to customer data in the internal consolidated database, and therefore which external data should be imported into the centralized repository for external data.
FIG. 6 is an example of representative external personal identification information which is matched and filtered for import into the centralized repository for external data.
FIG. 7 is a flow chart of a method by which linkage recommendations are made, and linkages established, between customers and customer accounts in one embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 8 is a block diagram showing both the flow of data and the data processing entailed in making an initial linkage recommendation in an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 9A is an example of how the initial rules may be applied to analyze external personal identification data in relation to a customer listed in the consolidated database.
FIG. 9B is an example of how the initial rules may be applied to link two customer accounts.
FIG. 10A is a first example of a secondary linking rule, and the application of the rule to a customer linkage.
FIG. 10B is a second example of a secondary linking rule, and the application of the rule to a customer linkage.
FIG. 11A is a flowchart showing the detailed steps of the linkage recommendations involved in steps 704 and 710.
FIG. 11B is a flowchart showing the detailed steps for linking customer records, formerly treated as separate customers, so that they are one unique customer, and also linking the appropriate customer accounts to the one unique customer.
FIG. 12 is an alternative representation of a customer linking and identification capability method.
FIG. 13 illustrates two examples of corrections required due to overlink errors or underlink errors.
FIG. 14 illustrates the hierarchy of linking rules in a CLIC process which employs multiple stages of rules processing.
FIG. 15 is a block diagram of an exemplary computer system useful for implementing the present invention.
Patent Application
20070192122
