Industry
Retail
Omnichannel CX and Intelligent Innovation – The Future of Retail
Highlights
- The British supermarket chain, Morrisons, wanted to use real-time data to monitor shelf availability for faster and more accurate operational decision-making.
- The absence of real-time information posed a hindrance for effective day-to-day operations, especially those promoting consumer loyalty.
- TCS helped the retailer with real-time monitoring of operations for faster decision-making on shelf availability, reducing waste and markdown.
Overview
Wm Morrison Supermarkets Limited is one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK.
TCS has been a strategic partner in data transformation for Morrisons since 2019. Headquartered in Bradford, Morrisons has over 490 stores in the UK and serves about 11 million customers each week.
TCS has extensive experience delivering numerous large-scale transformation programs for the British supermarket group, including warehouse management system modernization, business intelligence (BI) legacy modernization (Exadata to BigQuery, and Qlik to Looker). In addition, TCS has helped Morrisons successfully navigate compliance demands for regulations related to Brexit and the allergen regulations under Natasha's Law.
The grocer was looking for a solution that would enable real-time access to shelf availability for faster and more accurate operational decision- making.
Real-time data ingestion
One of the primary challenges that Morrisons faced was the inability to access data in real time.
The lack of real-time information meant the data science team struggled with securing actionable insights to run day-to-day operations. Given the dynamic nature of the industry, the supermarket chain needed the capabilities to help drive faster decision-making for shelf availability. This was necessary to enable waste reduction and markdown, key to minimizing loss for the organization.
The TCS team worked closely with Morrisons to redesign the data flow across the enterprise using a real-time ingestion approach.
Integrating applications
The TCS-Morrisons team worked closely to make the implementation a success.
We started by setting up the network architecture to ensure the success of the implementation. The agile approach involved close collaboration within the team, quick review of day-to-day observations, prioritizing and resolving challenges while keeping tabs on the ambitious cloud migration timelines.
By leveraging our contextual knowledge of the existing IT landscape, we were able to deliver the very complex task of integrating the legacy applications with the Striim platform. In addition, we resolved the technical challenges during the process to ensure the resilience of the production source systems was not compromised.
Reducing waste
The project helped drive real-time visibility of stock data, shrink management, and waste reduction, among others, improving Morrisons’ business.
Real-time ingestion helped Morrisons stock products in time and reduce waste within stores.
One of the major benefits of this new capability is that Morrisons can now monitor the operations in real-time. This has helped in faster decision-making for shelf availability, reducing waste and markdown.
Going forward, AI will play a crucial role in driving growth in the retail industry as organizations increasingly look to powering their strategies with data. We believe Morrisons is exceptionally placed for future growth, particularly with its plan to continuously innovate and modernize its IT landscape. With proactive adoption of cutting-edge technologies and focus on customer-centric strategies, Morrisons is also well equipped to navigate the current challenging times and deliver sustainable growth for its stakeholders.
