The customer is a large Bricks and Clicks Retailer. With a powerful bricks and mortar foundation composed of over 400 retail stores throughout the U.S., the customer sells products to customers both online and off-line. The customer is the largest volume specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances, in the USA. The customer currently operates retail stores in 41 states and has plans to have more than 550 stores in the US by 2004.

The customer collaborates with partners over electronic document interchange (EDI), the service provided by a value added network (VAN) provider. The proprietary technologies associated with VAN makes it cumbersome for partners to collaborate and for new partners to induct.

Wipro suggested a solution to enable web based EDI. This web based EDI system would work in unison with the existing VAN based EDI system, to protect the investment of the customer as well as the trading partners.

Wipro gathered the requirements from the customer and provided a requirement specification document. Further it developed two prototypes to prove the concept of EDI on the Internet.