Industry
Retail
Omnichannel CX and Intelligent Innovation – The Future of Retail
HIGHLIGHTS
- Salling Group embarked on an enterprise AI journey to respond faster to changing customer expectations, market dynamics, and operational demands across its retail business.
- TCS helped the retailer move beyond AI pilots by identifying opportunities to embed agentic AI into business processes, enabling greater automation, data-driven decision-making, and operational efficiency at scale.
- The initiative laid the foundation for an AI-first retail enterprise, enabling Salling Group to enhance customer experience, improve product availability, reduce waste, and boost workforce productivity.
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Executive summary
Retail isn’t just moving fast—it’s accelerating in every direction
For Salling Group, Denmark's biggest supermarket chain, that shift is happening in real time. Across supermarkets, department stores, cafes, restaurants, and ecommerce, the business is constantly adapting to changing customer expectations, market dynamics, and technology. At this scale—nearly 60,000 employees, more than 1,700 stores, and 12 million weekly customers—every decision matters.
“The world is spinning so fast right now that there are no absolute answers,” says Miklas Strøm Kristoffersen, the head of AI development at Salling Group. “What we get is a common language to move along the path—hopefully in the right direction.”
Denmark's Salling Group gets future-ready with AI
AI: Talk to action
Retail has always been at the forefront of innovation. However, AI is shifting the conversation—from experimentation to execution.
Shorter innovation cycles, constantly changing customer expectations and rapid advances in technology mean retailers are under pressure to respond faster than ever—often in real time.
At the same time, the volume and quality of data available to retailers has exploded, creating new opportunities to act—but also raising the stakes.
Salling Group is working with TCS to move beyond pilots and proof points, focusing on where AI can deliver measurable impact across the business.
“AI has been the talk of the town,” says Arunava A. Chakrabarty, Retail Sales Director, TCS, but the real question is how do we adopt it—and scale it for the enterprise—so it drives faster time to market, faster time to value, and reduces the cost to serve.”
This shift—from experimentation to execution—isn't just about deploying AI. It’s about rethinking how decisions are made in a business where timing, precision and context are critical.
At the same time, the growing reliance on data introduces new challenges.
“I find it really interesting to look out into the future from a security perspective—how much data is involved, and how much personal data is now included in the shopping experience,” says Michael Venø Bækgaard, CISO, Salling Group.
Thor Kristiansen
Head of Tech Innovation, Salling Group
This technology offers new possibilities to approach challenges in a different way than we had done earlier."
Michael Venø Bækgaard
CISO, Salling Group
I find it really interesting to look out into the future from a security perspective—how much data is involved, and how much personal data is now included in the shopping experience."
Abhijit Niyogi
Vice President and Business Head, Retail – UK, Europe & India, TCS
Together with Salling Group, we are looking to turn AI ambition into enterprise-wide execution. The coming together of Salling Group’s deep retail expertise and our technology and business capabilities will help build connected and resilient operations that can adapt faster, make better decisions, and deliver consistent value for customers."
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Putting AI to work
For Salling Group, the next step isn’t just to use AI—it's to embed it in how the business runs day-to-day, evolving toward an agentic-first enterprise.
That means moving beyond tools and pilots, toward an operating model where AI actively supports—and increasingly drives—decisions across the value chain.
“Processes mean a lot if you want to be successful with AI and AI agents,” says Alan Jensen, CIO, Salling Group. You need to understand the steps in your process—and where AI can actually help.”
In essence, the real value of agentic AI doesn’t come from isolated use cases. It comes from how it connects decisions, data and actions, enabling the business to respond faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver better customer outcomes.
Looking ahead, this could span the entire value chain—with AI agents supporting decisions across core retail functions, from store operations and merchandising to supply chain, pricing, and customer experience.
See it in practice
Agentic AI can help retailers turn data into action across the business—enabling more personalised customer experiences, optimising supply chains, reducing operational costs, and improving decision-making in real time.
From automating merchandising and pricing to delivering real-time insights, these systems can act faster, with greater precision—helping retailers respond to change, improve performance and ultimately boost the bottom line.
The road ahead
For Salling Group, the next phase is about making AI an integral part of how the business runs—building on learnings and applying them where they deliver the most value.
"This technology offers new possibilities to approach challenges in a different way than we had done earlier,” says Thor Kristiansen, Head of Tech Innovation, Salling Group.
That potential is already beginning to take shape.
“AI is central to Salling Group’s roadmap for 2026, 2027 and 2028,” says Swarup Sarkar, TCS Client Partner.
Working closely with Salling Group, TCS is exploring how to leverage AI across the business—strengthening the digital core, scaling automation, and enabling agentic, experience-led ways of working as part of the Digital core, Automation, Generative AI and Experience (DAGE) approach.
This approach can help focus on improving product availability, reducing waste, enhancing customer experience and increasing workforce productivity, in turn ensuring clear, measurable value across the business.