Bangalore: Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro (www.wipro.com), has announced that it has received the Bravo IT award from Best Buy Co recognising Wipro as Best Buy’s premier IS partner for 2002.

The Bravo Award acknowledges outstanding vendor performance and recognises those vendors that demonstrate a passion, vision and drive for operational excellence throughout the past year.

“Best Buy is committed to recognising business partners who have performed above and beyond our expectations,” says Todd Soller, IS leader responsible for Best Buy’s global sourcing programme. “Wipro is a valued partner and we are pleased to present it this award in only its second year of service with Best Buy. Wipro’s execution excellence has made it a reliable IT partner consistently exceeding our expectations. We are impressed by Wipro’s commitment to make it happen.”

Brad Anderson, vice-chairman and CEO of Best Buy, presented the award to Team Wipro, including Richard S Garnick, chief executive (Americas’ Field Operations); Srinivas Pallia, relationship manager; Bhaskar Madari, onsite manager; and Hariprasad Shetty, programme manager of Wipro Technologies.

Winners were selected on the basis of a variety of criteria including strategic vision, willingness to partner, innovation, customer service, achievement orientation, cultural fit and financial impacts.

“This award recognises Wipro Technologies’ consistently high quality delivery to Best Buy during the course of this relationship,” says Richard Garnick, chief executive (Americas’ Field Operations), Wipro Technologies, who received the award on behalf of Wipro.

“We are honoured to receive this award and look forward to continuing our mutually beneficial relationship. This award is a testimony to our teams in Minneapolis and Chennai who, on a daily basis, demonstrated passion in delivering to Best Buy’s expectations,” he adds.

Sudip Banerjee, president (enterprise solutions), Wipro Technologies, says: “The award is a feather in the cap of Wipro Technologies and is testimony to our promise of serving our customers with integrity and innovation through an appealing global delivery model.”

Wipro Technologies and Best Buy have been working together since April 2001. Wipro has played a pivotal role in key projects including Electronic Subscription Capture, an account payment system for several ISPs offered at Best Buy; system integration services to develop a middle-ware application framework and process to integrate several applications at an enterprise level; Multi Channel Fulfillment, including implementation of various modules of i2, eProcurement using Ariba, and Oracle FA/PA.

Retail Practice at Wipro Technologies combines years of technical experience and domain knowledge to provide solutions to retailers across the globe. Wipro has established centres of excellence (CoE) in the areas of POS, supply chain execution, merchandising and pricing to provide best-in-class solutions to its customers.

Collaborative commerce, POS solutions, category management, and warehouse management systems are some of the key solutions offered by Wipro.