Case Studies
Shoppers in the Fortune 100 Retailer that benefitted from W3Global's EDI/EAI Solution
W3Global Brings Home EDI/EAI Solution for Fortune 100 Retailer
About The Client:
When you're one of the nation's largest home improvement retailers, connectivity can be a challenge. In a recently completed project, W3Global paved the way for smooth communication and streamlined management to save a Fortune 100 Home Improvement Firm time, money and hassle. As one of the world's largest home improvement retailers, our client for this project operates more than 1000 stores across North America.
The Scenario:
The Company made a strategic decision to move the standard set of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transactions from a Procure-To-Pay Model to a new platform. In addition, they wanted to streamline key business drivers, automate processes and leverage strategic partnerships. The goal was to support all aspects of forward logistics order generation, invoice processing, invoice error reporting, inventory management, sales management and exception management.
The Challenge:

W3Global was tasked with a range of challenges to address, including the following:


  • Address complex system issues, including restricted productivity, decision-making and system stability.
  • Provide missing key functionalities, which were causing the client to lose their competitive edge.
  • Improve point-to-point interfaces, which were inconsistent, and brought high costs of support and redundancy.
  • Resolve problems associated with information latency — data was not being sent in real time because of system limitations
  • Address issues effectively, despite a lack of reports and historical data.
Key Initiatives:
  • Migrate from legacy systems.
  • Create a platform for future growth of the company.
  • Decrease support and training costs.
  • Reduce total cost of ownership.
  • Improve data consistency, accuracy and visibility.
  • Reuse application functionality.
The Approach:
The key challenge in moving from legacy systems to newer systems was the migration of data specific to the client's trading partner. This was accomplished by developing a utility that would extract the data and translate it to the required format.
Other challenging tasks included the following:
  • Developing Advanced Mapping Functions
  • Debugging Integration Scenarios
  • Developing Complicated Data Definitions
Other challenging tasks included the following:
  • System Design
  • Back-End Integration with SAP and other Applications' Functionality
  • Business Process Management
  • Data Transformation and Mapping
  • Message Routing
  • System Administration and Monitoring
  • Synchronous and Asynchronous Communications
  • Testing
  • End User Training
Key Benefits:
The integration services developed by W3Global led the Company to make the following improvements:
  • Increase Sales Representatives' efficiency, allowing for a decrease in work force.
  • Capture customer interest based on time spent on a particular e-detailing screen, leading to a better understanding of sales prospects.
  • Automate the deployment of e-detailing content and training material.
W3Global can help sync up your team for streamlined success. Connect with us today.
A W3Global client pleased with the results
W3Global Cures Inefficiency for Global
Pharmaceutical Company
About The Client:
As one of the world's most renowned pharmaceutical companies, this client came to W3 Global with a wealth of expertise in their industry. They just needed a little assistance improving internal productivity.
The Challenge:

W3 Global was tasked with organizing Sales Representatives' work and increasing their efficiency.


When they approached W3Global, the Company was using a traditional method of detailing and call recording, which was inefficient compared with newer systems. Our challenge was to build an application that would work both online and offline for Sales Representatives' Tablet PCs.

The Approach:

The key challenge for this project was in building an application that worked offline. The offline application would be required to cache data on Sales Representatives' PCs, and sync offline data to legacy systems, deploying e-detailing content onto the PC.


After assessing the capabilities and infrastructure of the legacy systems, W3Global led the implementation team in integrating Siebel CRM, Siperion Customer Master and Subversion.

As part of the project, W3Global consultants handled the following components:
  • System Design (Functional and Technical)
  • Design and Development of Interface Definitions and Coordination Patterns
  • Development of Services for Initial Synchronization of Data
  • Development of Synchronization Services for Offline Data Created During Call Recording
  • Data Conversion and Mapping
  • Testing
Key Benefits:
The integration services developed by W3Global led the Company to make the following improvements:
  • Increase Sales Representatives' efficiency, allowing for a decrease in work force.
  • Capture customer interest based on time spent on a particular e-detailing screen, leading to a better understanding of sales prospects.
  • Automate the deployment of e-detailing content and training material.
Contact W3Global to connect your company with synchronization, speed, and maximum efficiency.
A scanning electron microscope
W3Global's Formula for Success brings Increased Sales to Scientific Innovator
About The Client:
A leading biotechnology corporation, with expertise in cutting-edge scientific innovations, approached W3Global for assistance developing a high-tech solution for their online ordering system. The company's scientists have extensive experience formulating medications to address hormone deficiencies, asthma, arthritis, lung cancer, breast cancer and more. Now, they just needed a remedy for efficiently processing orders.
The Challenge:

W3Global was tasked with developing a web ordering management system for medications, which involved integrating several different systems used by the client.

The Approach:

To create a seamless integration between systems, W3Global developed complete customized solutions on top of a SalesForce.com (SFDC) platform that integrated with the client's SAP Order Management System, Siperian MDM (Master Data Management) Solutions, and Oracle Databases. This project was successfully implemented and contributed to increased sales and revenue for the client.

Best Practices:

W3Global established best practices and a design pattern to determine how customization in the client's systems could be achieved in future implementations.

Challenge:

The key challenges in the planning phase for this project included the integration of systems which each had their own individual limitations. Middleware software webMethods (ESB Enterprise Service Bus) was used to bridge the gaps between the different client systems, enabling them to communicate with each other.


The client's system was using webMethods 6.5, which did not support the SOAP requests and responses in document literal format. Additionally, the SFDC platform supported the SOAP requests only in document literal format.


W3Global's solution was the introduction of a web logic proxy layer between ESB and SFDC, which would convert the doc literal requests to webMethods-supported RPC requests.

As part of the project, the W3Global consultants handled the following tasks:
  • Designing System Architecture for Integration
  • Preparing Functional and Technical Specifications
  • Coding and Deployments
  • Testing and SQA (Software Quality Assurance)
  • Production Migrations
  • End User Training
The Benefits:
With the successful web ordering management system, the company obtained the following benefits:
  • Increased Productivity in terms of Sales, Leading to Lower Maintenance Costs and an Effectively Lowered Life Cycle Cost
  • Utilization of an Accurate, Easy-To-Use and Bug-Free Web Ordering System with Minimal Maintenance
Future Enhancements

The present system was developed as a pilot version, with a scope of going national with the system in the future. W3 Global identified possible enhancements that could be implemented when the project goes national.

Conclusions and Lessons Learned:

With team effort and a thorough SQA Cycle, we have successfully launched a bug-free web ordering system with minimal maintenance.

Contact us to see how W3Global can solve your company’s IT needs.
An image of rack servers awaiting migration
Fortune 100 Firm Migrates Faster
with W3Global
About The Client:
W3Global successfully completed a recent Supply Chain Management Solutions project with a global Fortune 100 firm. Offering innovative eMarketPlace solutions by providing support for most eStandards, this client now needed a little support for a major migration. Our client’s initial focus had been on providing solutions to mining industry companies, but over time, they expanded their solutions to include every vertical sector, as well as a global audience. The Company’s core infrastructure included webMethods for B2B/Integration solutions, Sonic MQ as ESB, and MS SQL server for persistence.
The Challenge:

W3Global was tasked with developing a web ordering management system for medications, which involved integrating several different systems used by the client.


The Company had been using the webMethods 6.1 product suite, and it had reached its end-of-life for technical support. In addition, a previous migration from 4.6 to 6.1 was not 100% complete, which was discovered during the initial evaluation period.

Our primary goals were as follows:
  • Move B2B/Integration platform from 6.1 to 7.1.2 environment
  • Move to VMWare virtual environment
  • Move the operating system from ES 3.0 to ES 4.0
  • Repeat the above for DEV, UAT and PRD (12 servers total)
  • Convert often-used WmDB services to JDBC services
  • Replace deprecated services with new, replacement services
  • Retire TN console and move to MWS (3 MWS servers)
The Approach:

Our key challenge in the planning phase for this project was to minimize the scope for human error so that more time could be spent on actual testing of the environments.



As installation/configuration of key webMethods components can be a time-intensive and error-prone process, it was crucial to find solutions that would minimize human error when moving from one environment to another. W3Global developed shell scripts to automate most processes of installation and configuration that might otherwise be performed manually.


The bare-bones system was available within a relatively short time frame, and time saved was spent in testing the system.

Major challenges that were solved during testing phases included the following:
  • The system utilized a large amount of hard coding, which exposed major flaws in the SLCD process, and in the overall quality of the code.
  • The java code that was connecting the B2B to Sonic MQ ESB was not compatible with jdk 1.5.
As part of the project, W3Global consultants handled the following tasks:
  • Drive proposed changes to the newer system
  • Complete system design (functional and technical)
  • Automate the installation and configuration process
  • Coordinate with regions spread across the globe
  • Train the support team to use the new Deployer tool
  • Suggest design changes to avoid common pitfalls when developing Integration solutions
  • Complete testing
  • Transition the project to the support team
Key Benefits:
With the successful migration from 6.1 to 7.1.2, the following benefits were realized:
  • Because most of the time-consuming tasks were automated, the client was able to spend more time thoroughly testing the system before going live
  • The client was able to effectively use their support contract with webMethods
  • Partner certificates could be managed more efficiently
  • The client gained a better understanding of the current design, improvements that could be made, and the value that changes to the current design could bring
  • There were zero incidents after going live
Conclusions and Lessons Learned:

Conclusion:The shell script used for this project was created only for the initial installation and configuration. It would be very easy to get involved more than necessary using shell scripts in the scripts — after all, it is interesting work, and any technically savvy person would love to do it. We felt is the investment was time well spent, and it provided extraordinary results. However, it is crucial to remember that the script will probably never be used again. Therefore, it was very important to draw the line and not spend any more time that what was required to complete the project.


It took more than two years for the client to move from the 4.6 to 6.1 product suite with a lesser code base on their own, without migration of deprecated services, and with a team of seven developers. In contrast, W3Global delivered a completely upgraded system with a team of one architect and two developers. The client was extremely happy that W3Global was able to save them a great deal of time and money.


Lessons Learned:W3Global underestimated the difficulty of hard coded values in the client’s environment. (After all, we cannot go through every line of code during an initial evaluation).


However, our diligent consultants responded quickly to the situation and successfully delivered the project on time.

Contact W3Global for your next migration to save costs and time, and improve productivity.
Conclusions and Lessons Learned:

With team effort and a thorough SQA Cycle, we have successfully launched a bug-free web ordering system with minimal maintenance.

Contact us to see how W3Global can solve your company’s IT needs.
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Our Clients
  • Genentech
  • Johnson and Johnson
  • Toyota Motors
  • USDA (US Department of Agriculture)
  • Quadrem
  • Wells Fargo
  • Aflac