TATA Consulting Services (TCS) has acquired largest deal in retail sector from US pharma retailer Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA). TCS has won USD 1.5 Billion dollar deal for a period of ten year and will aid Walgreen Boots to innovate and transform its technology operations. The former has promised cost savings for Walgreen Boots during the deal period by delivering complete managed services from infrastructure, application maintenance and support, to security operations.

As India’s largest IT firm, TCS will run the entire IT operations, take over staff and consolidate vendors for one of the giant in retail segment, i.e., Walgreen Boots which is a USD 136.9 billion company. As Welgreen Boots is already an existing customer from a decade, TCS plans in further aiding them with technological interventions to modernize applications and operations.

According to Rajashree Ramakrishnan, Chief Marketing Officer, TCS, “The deal marks a pivot in the relationship between Walgreens and TCS and takes us to become their growth and transformation partner. TCS is transforming their whole IT operating model.” However, he has not specified clearly about the vendors they would consolidate and also the number of people they will be taking over.

Furthermore, contributing over 15 percent, retail segment is the second largest vertical for TATA Consulting Services. The company has said that they won over USD 18 billion worth of deal from its customers.  Even if TCS has witnessed few knock downs in retail segment over the period of last two months, the company sees very promising opportunities as many giants in traditional retail segments are investing in various next generation technologies to compete with today’s online retailers.    

CEO and Managing Director of TCS Rajesh Gopinathan has also went on to say that TCS would use cloud architecture to transform and automate Welgreen Boots’ pharma portfolio systems and bring in efficiency and productivity, thereby enabling cost cutting.

 “WBA is building a scalable, sustainable and globally unified IT operating model that is focused on digital transformation, automation of service delivery and innovation,” highlighted Francesco Tinto, Senior Vice President, Global Chief Information Officer, WBA. "The TCS strategic partnership will enhance our ability to rapidly address evolving business needs, support large-scale global technology solutions and promote investment in truly differentiating capabilities through a modernized platform,” he added.