Granted Patent B1

US 7,580,851 · App. 09/714,387 · Granted Aug 25, 2009

Abstract

Claims (33)

1. A method for estimating sales volume of an item comprising:

collecting sampled sales data for a reference period;

receiving said sampled sales data in a central processor;

estimating total sales volume for the reference period by a computer program at least partially controlling said central processor;

parsing the reference period into a plurality of sub-periods;

collecting sampled sales data for a current sub-period of interest, the current sub-period of interest and collection of sampled sales data being later in time than the reference period;

matching the current sub-period to a corresponding sub-period from said plurality of sub-periods;

calculating a sub-period specific projection factor for the corresponding sub-period; and

applying said projection factor to said sales data from the current sub-period of interest to determine an estimate of total sales for the current sub-period.

2. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 1 , wherein the sub-periods are days of the week.

3. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 1 , wherein the reference period is one week.

4. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 3 , wherein the current sub-period is a certain day of the week, the sub-periods of the reference period are days of the week and wherein the corresponding sub-period is the day of the week matching the certain day.

5. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 4 , wherein the item is a pharmaceutical product.

6. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 1 , wherein the sample size for the reference period is larger than the sample size for the current sub-period of interest.

7. A method for estimating daily sales volume of an item comprising:

collecting sampled sales data from a first plurality of sources for a current day of interest;

collecting sampled sales data for a reference week from a second plurality of sources, said reference week being offset in time from said current day by a predetermined time period;

receiving said sampled sales data in a central processor;

estimating total sales volume for the reference week by a computer program at least partially controlling said central processor;

parsing the sampled sales data and estimated total sales volume for the reference week by day of the week;

selecting the parsed sales data and estimated total sales volume data for the day of the week in the reference week that matches the day of the week of the current day of interest;

calculating a day of the week specific projection factor for the current day of interest; and

applying said projection factor to said sales data for the current day of interest to determine an estimate of total sales for the day of interest.

8. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 7 , wherein the quantity of sampled sales data for the current day of interest is smaller than the quantity of sampled sales data for the corresponding day of the week in the reference week.

9. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 7 , further comprising the step of comparing said first plurality of sources to said second plurality of sources to determine the intersection of said sources and wherein the step of determining the day of the week specific projection factor applies sample data from said intersection of sources.

10. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 9 , wherein the sources are retail pharmacies.

11. The method for estimating sales volume of claim 10 , wherein the item is a pharmaceutical product.

12. A system for estimating sales volume of an item comprising:

a processor having a communications interface for coupling to a communications network to receive sales data from a plurality of retail points of sale;

a data storage device coupled to said processor, said computer data device storing sales data from a plurality of retail points of sale, including sampled sales data for a reference period and sampled sales data for a day of interest, said day of interest and collection of sampled sales data being later in time than said reference period;

a computer program at least partially controlling said processor to retrieve the sampled data for the reference period from said data storage device, to generate estimated total volume data for the reference period from said sampled data for the reference period, to generate a day of the week specific projection factor related to said day of interest from said estimated total sales volume data and sampled data for the reference period, and to apply the projection factor to the sampled data for the day of interest to estimate total daily sales volume for the day of interest.

13. The system for estimating sales volume according to claim 12 , wherein the sampled data in said data storage device includes an indication of the retail point of sale source and wherein the sampled data for the reference period is provided from a first plurality of sources and the sampled data for the day of interest is provided from a second plurality of sources, and said computer program directs the processor to determine the intersection of the first and second sources and to apply the data from said intersection to determine said projection factor.

14. The system for estimating sales volume according to claim 13 , wherein the sales data relates to pharmaceutical sales.

Assignments (10)