Business Challenge:
Create a world-class e-commerce website offering commercial access to the 20,000+ products and client services commonly available in Walgreens' 3,300 "bricks & mortar" store chain.

Business Team:
Walgreens is one of the leading merchandisers of our time. With the recent opening of its 3,300th store, Walgreens' ability to grow and innovate remains unchallenged. Walgreens' new computer system for filling prescriptions, Intercom Plus, links all stores into a single network and represents how advanced technology serves customers' needs better than any other pharmacy resource. In fact, Walgreens is the largest private user of satellite technology (second only to the United States government). Now, with the ability to fill prescriptions and offer on-line shopping quickly and economically at www.walgreens.com, the latest piece of Walgreens' advanced technology is in place. Website: www.Walgreens.com

marchFIRST is a global professional services firm that creates and delivers innovative, distinctive customer outreach and enterprise improvement solutions for Global 3000 corporations and leading emerging companies. These solutions are designed to help marchFIRST clients connect with their customers, optimize their business infrastructure and maximize their assets to drive better business results. Website: www.marchFIRST.com

Electronic Scriptorium, Ltd. solves complex information management and data conversion problems for many of the world's leading media companies, e-commerce web sites, manufacturing firms, museums and libraries. In a business association unique to Scriptorium, cloistered monks underpin a highly educated workforce that prides itself on meeting exacting standards of quality and accuracy. Scriptorium provides expertise in content creation for online product catalogs, digital photography, digital photo cataloging, USMARC record cataloging and XML document conversion. Website: www.ElectronicScriptorium.com

Technical Approach:
Walgreens' e-commerce division staff interviewed many firms during the process of assembling an e-commerce implementation team. marchFIRST was selected to provide the system architecture and website development support for the project. Electronic Scriptorium was selected to provide metadata and digital images for products offered on the site. Walgreens' e-commerce division staff coordinated efforts between marchFIRST, Electronic Scriptorium and internal Walgreens resources dedicated to the effort.

Implementation Methodology:
From the inception of the project, Walgreens established an aggressive timeline for implementing the e-commerce initiative. Successfully implementing the e-commerce initiative prior to the 2000 holiday season required that the web design and development effort, stock selection, metadata development and digital photography take place in parallel.

marchFIRST's experience with large scale web initiatives provided Walgreens with an experienced pool of development specialists. marchFIRST worked with Walgreens to develop the technical and graphical details required to support the business objectives of the e-commerce website.

Simultaneous with website implementation efforts, Walgreens identified the products to be offered on the website. Samples of each selected product were shipped directly to Electronic Scriptorium's facility in Leesburg, Virginia, for metadata and digital imagery processing. Having provided similar services for over 40 other e-commerce retailers, Electronic Scriptorium was able to provide the experience necessary to create a content database of 20,000 products selected for sale. Product shipments were inventoried and then staged at a local warehouse allowing easy access during the cataloging process by Electronic Scriptorium. Digital images were captured in accordance with Walgreens' specifications for each product. Each image was then edited and reviewed for proper lighting, angle and color tone. Once digital photography was completed, products were cataloged using Electronic Scriptorium's proprietary metadata collection system. All information from each item label was entered into specific fields corresponding to the various segments of the product label. For example, active ingredients, inactive ingredients, nutritional information, promotional information were all entered into individual data fields in order to facilitate ease of use on the website. Extensive quality review procedures were implemented at each step of the conversion process.

Electronic Scriptorium provided a secure file transfer area on its servers for use by Walgreens. Metadata records and images were mounted on the FTP site and downloaded for use by marchFIRST. marchFIRST then converted the images and metadata records to populate the schema

Conclusion:
The ongoing e-commerce initiative augments an already powerful business. Global Supply Net’s own sites, such as JanCentral.com, with the largest online selection of janitorial supplies and services, and CalvarySupplies.com, as well as clients Janimart.com and ParPaper.com, all have benefited from continuing development of e-commerce solutions. GSN is rapidly growing and anticipates achieving profitability by 2001.

Global Supply Net successfully enhanced its capacity as an Application Service Provider through its content development project. Electronic Scriptorium provided thousands of high-quality metadata records and images within the time period necessary to allow GSN to grow as a leading supplier of e-commerce solutions.