Morrisons taps TCS for digital operations upgrade

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has expanded its decade-long partnership with Morrisons to accelerate its digital transformation journey. The extended contract will see the consultancy work to enhance Morrisons’ customer experience across its 500 stores and online platforms, while embedding AI tools in its operational set-up.

Morrisons, is the fifth largest chain of supermarkets in the UK, dealing with 11 million customers every week across its network of stores and online platforms. As the Bradford-headquartered chain looks to meet the evolving needs of modern shoppers, and streamline its operations amid a turbulent economic picture, it has been investing consistently in digital changes to its operations and services.

Since 2014, Tata Consultancy Services and Morrisons have partnered to drive growth and modernisation across the retailer’s various lines of business – with the supermarket selecting TCS as its application and managed services partner in 2016, to improve its customer and employee experience. Since then, TCS further expanded its remit in 2020 when it pledged to “harness the power of AI and machine learning to augment human teams, improving operational resilience and boosting productivity.”

Five years on, Morrisons has confirmed its relationship will continue into a second decade, with a new contract that further builds on that AI-centred service. Now, TCS will work to align Morrison’s operations across key business functions including retail, e-commerce, and marketing, increase efficiency, and accelerate Morrisons’ digital transformation.

Stuart O’Hara, director of IT operations at Morrisons, commented, “TCS has consistently demonstrated deep domain expertise, technical capability, and a collaborative approach that aligns with our strategic vision. As we accelerate our digital transformation, we are confident that TCS’ automation-first approach and innovative operating model will help us deliver superior service quality, faster time-to-market, and meaningful value to our customers.”

Now, TCS will deliver end-to-end engineering services, including application design development, testing, and maintenance services – while embedding AI-powered solutions to improve service outcomes. Meanwhile, TCS will also set up an automation factory and a Business Intelligent Command Centre (BICC), which a statement from the firm said would “enable a 360-degree operation view, proactive issue resolution, and more data-driven decision-making”. Looking ahead, Morrisons hopes these changes will “reduce service disruptions, manual interventions, and response time”, while also enabling “more consistent and engaging customer experience for shoppers”. At the same time, the grocer’s renewed operating model through automation, to deliver new digital products, will enable it to “consolidate its vendor base and improve synergy across business areas”.

Shekar Krishnan, head of retail at TCS in the UK, concluded, “This expanded partnership is a testament to the strong relationship we have built with Morrisons over the last decade. By leveraging our automated solutions, deep retail domain expertise, and engineering excellence — all underpinned by a future-ready operating model — we are excited to drive large-scale transformation across digital, marketing, and customer engagement for Morrisons.”