TCS-Woolworths partnership
Here’s how TCS Optumera™ helped ANZ retail giant Woolworths transform its in-store customer experience with optimised space planning.
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INDUSTRY
- Retail
Omnichannel Experience & Intelligent – The Future of Retail
Solution
- TCS Optumera™
TCS Optumera™: An Intelligent Platform to Reshape Retail
Highlights
- Woolworths wanted to transform its customer experience with an agile macro space planning platform.
- TCS Optumera™ leveraged AI to recommend optimal space for products within seconds, making the space planning process twice as fast.
- The ANZ retail giant can now evaluate the impact of space decisions through a powerful what-if analysis, preventing costly trial and error.
In this article
Top retailer
TCS’ AI-powered strategic retail platform enables Woolworths to make data-driven decisions to optimise store space and drive sales and profitability.
Woolworths is one of Australia’s most-loved brands and the largest food and everyday needs retailer in the country and neighbouring New Zealand. The retailer’s 1,451 stores serving 22.7 million customers per week are connected by a unified purpose of being better together for a better tomorrow. Woolworths takes immense pride in providing fresher food, healthier options, and the best range and value for its customers.
Optimising space
As one of Australia’s most innovative retailers, Woolworths believes in constantly upgrading the retail customer experience and expanding its product portfolio to reflect local preferences. This means more remodelling, refits, and optimising of store space to make way for new product lines. With macro space planning being a manual process, there was clearly a need to be more agile.
“We wanted a partner who understands Woolworths and its customers and applies its breadth of contextual knowledge from across the globe to transform customer experience with the TCS Optumera™ AI-powered platform. There is now a robust mechanism in place to execute ‘always-on’ dynamic aisle optimisation and constantly look out for opportunities to drive sales and profitability,” said Doug Frank, General Manager, Data and Retail Analytics, Woolworths Group.
Optumera™ leverages its AI models to augment Woolworth Group’s data insights and recommends optimal space for product categories within seconds, making the entire space planning process twice as fast. It also enables the retailer to evaluate the impact of space decisions through a powerful what-if analysis based on multiple scenarios, preventing costly trial and error.
Exponential outcomes
As Woolworths’ growth and transformation partner of 25 years, TCS understands the business and helps the retailer live its beliefs and purpose. Woolworths now easily manages space allocation of over 1,200 categories across 1,451 stores, significantly improving sales through twice as fast store remodels and five times quicker sales plans.
TCS Optumera at work
“TCS Optumera™ allows us to simulate scenarios and see the impact of our decisions. The step-by-step explanation for each recommendation makes it much easier to craft a business case and get buy-in. Supermarkets always want to optimise space, but what TCS Optumera™ enables us to do is to do it on a smarter, faster, and better scale across multiple brands and geographies,” said Murtaza Nawab, Senior Manager, Strategic Initiatives, Woolworths Group.
The AI-based platform has enabled Woolworths to optimise its space more effectively through contextual knowledge and key partnerships. “We are extremely delighted that TCS Optumera™ has been able to deliver Woolworths substantial benefits: significant improvement in sales, enabling sales plans five times faster, and store remodels twice as fast. These are results that we at TCS are extremely proud of, as it brings demonstrable success and conviction to our algo retail proposition,” said Kirthi Duvoor, client partner, TCS.
Putting customers at the centre is at the heart of everything at Woolworths. And as its trusted partner on this journey, TCS delivers the best in convenience and value to provide healthier and more sustainable choices to the retailer’s customers
We wanted a partner who understands Woolworths and its customers and applies its breadth of contextual knowledge from across the globe to transform customer experience with the TCS Optumera™ AI-powered platform. There is now a robust mechanism in place to execute ‘always-on’ dynamic aisle optimisation and constantly look out for opportunities to drive sales and profitability.
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