Morrisons has expanded its decade-long partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in a bid to roll out new digital products at speed and accelerate its digital transformation with AI technology.

As part of the move, the supermarket will align operations across areas including retail, e-commerce and marketing to increase efficiency, as well as overhaul its existing loyalty scheme.

The partnership will give the retailer access to an end-to-end engineering service, including application design development, testing, and maintenance services to modernise Morrison’s legacy platforms.

Morrisons, one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains with 500 stores serving 11 million shoppers each week, said the partnership will improve the customer experience and help it to capture greater market share.

As part of the expanded partnership, a new automation factory and a Business Intelligent Command Centre (BICC) will be set up to enable a 360-degree operation view, proactive issue resolution, and more data-driven decision-making.

Morrisons said these changes are designed to reduce service disruptions, manual interventions, and response time as well as deliver more consistent and engaging customer experience for shoppers.

Stuart O’Hara, director of IT operations at Morrisons said that the organisation is confident that the automation-first approach and “innovative operating model” will support it in delivering “superior service quality, faster time-to-market, and meaningful value to our customers.”

Morrisons has been working with TCS since 2014 on projects including a supply chain transformation initiative that improved lead times, addressed stock availability issues, and reduced waste.

The two companies also partnered to enhance the grocer’s HR experience by modernising IT operations and engineering practices.

Last month, Marks & Spencer announced it had terminated its technology helpdesk contract with TCS, months after the retailer suffered a cyber-attack which both parties state was unrelated to the Indian firm.

M&S said the process to find a new provider began in January, following a market test and provider selection process that concluded in the summer.

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