- TCS leveraged its AI-powered, unified, composable platform, TCS OmniStore™, to transform Croma’s commerce operations to a 100% cloud model – a first of its scale in Indian retail.
- The change enabled Croma to increase its sales and reduce waiting times at the checkout for its customers
PRESS RELEASE
MUMBAI, 12 August 2024: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions provider, has enabled 100% mobile checkout across all Croma stores – a first in Indian retail. TCS leveraged TCS OmniStore™, its award-winning, AI-powered, unified, composable commerce platform, to enable faster checkouts and a best-in-class omnichannel shopping experience across all touchpoints.
This commerce transformation enables convenient mobile payments anywhere in the store and ensures a consistent shopping experience across all stores and online channels. This has resulted in increased sales and footfall for Croma while reducing checkout time for customers.
With more than 500 stores across 160 major cities, Croma is a leading Indian electronics retailer offering 22,000 products from 550 brands. Building on a relationship spanning over a decade, Croma expanded its partnership with TCS in 2019 to adopt a significant business model along with a technological transformation. The aim of this strategic partnership was to deliver an outstanding unified shopping experience and further cement Croma’s position as a market leader in the highly competitive retail industry.
Shibashish Roy, Deputy CEO, Croma, said “Croma’s vision is to be number one in customer experience and satisfaction. Many of today’s shoppers want to research and select products online so that they can pick the right items in-store, checkout and leave. So, creating a seamless, delightful omnichannel experience is a must for us and OmniStore is key to achieving this. We have enjoyed our unique and truly integrated partnership with TCS to co-create and innovate multiple aspects of the customer experience and that is exactly what we needed to succeed on an ambitious initiative like this.”
TCS OmniStore’s microservices-based architecture provides the scalability and flexibility Croma needs to continuously innovate and simplify every aspect of the shopping experience, from purchasing to maintenance. It helps Croma enable modern shopping experiences with a range of features such as click-and-collect, scan-and-go, universal cart and self-checkout, and dynamic promotion management. In addition to faster checkout, Croma stores now offer payment flexibility with more than 80 payment options including wallets, cards, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and credit.
The new cloud-based, slim-store model eliminates the need for traditional, specialised on-premise hardware and enables Croma to set up the checkout process four times faster – a capability that is critical as the company looks to rapidly expand its store footprint. Additionally, Croma was able to optimise 83% of the checkout space, creating more room for sales. The sheer speed with which mobile payments were rolled out – over 500 stores went live within two weeks – is a testament to the intuitive user experience, which requires minimal training for store staff – a key factor in the success of the retail transformation.
Krishnan Ramanujam, President, Consumer Business Group, TCS, said, “Croma is way ahead of the competition with its multi-channel strategy and its continuous investment in technology is proving to be a competitive advantage. TCS will join Croma as a technology and knowledge partner to jointly create a unique and futuristic shopping experience with a world-class customer experience at every touchpoint. We are excited about this partnership with Croma and are committed to pushing the boundaries by unleashing the power of technology and innovation.”
TCS works with the world’s top 10 retailers and many others across the globe, including Croma, to build profitable and sustainable businesses and deliver comprehensive, unified and hyper-personalized omnichannel experiences to their customers. TCS’s deep industry expertise, backed by decades of experience, an innovative suite of TCS Algo Retail™ platforms and domain solutions, and relevant retail partnerships, spans store operations, merchandising, supply chain, marketing, pricing strategies and business model redesign. In addition to TCS OmniStore, TCS’s extensive portfolio of retail platforms and offerings also includes TCS Optumera™, an AI-powered strategic intelligence platform that enables retailers to make optimized merchandising decisions across the entire value chain.
