The Co-operative Group and TCS - Building a Strategic Partnership

Purposeful partners

Since its founding in 1844, The Co-op Group has had a sense of purpose at its core-to serve its members and the community.

"It is an organization that exists to serve its members," explains The Co-op Group CEO, Shirine Khoury-Haq. "Equality is extremely important, education is extremely important, and so is giving back to communities as part of our way of working. It's an organization with a deep culture of social purpose, and I'm very, very proud that our colleagues represent this in everything that they do."

With these values so deeply embedded, it's vital that any of The Co-op's partner organizations share and support these approaches to business. It is one of the reasons TCS is so proud to have worked with the group since 2009.

"The Co-op relationship is very special for TCS," says Shekar Krishnan, VP and Head of Retail, TCS UK & Europe. "Besides sharing the same core values of the organization, which is to give back to society, we also execute jointly multiple large transformation programmes, which helps define the future of the industry."

Delivering together

Of course, in competitive business environments, sharing common values is not enough on its own. Partner organizations must also deliver results.

With more than 2,500 retail outlets, over 5 million active members, and around 60,000 employees, it's vital that The Co-op Group is able to deliver on its organizational aims.

"It's incredibly important to have a partner who's got both the depth of experience and the skills readily available, and the organizational size and scale of TCS," says Rob Elsey, Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO), The Co-op Group.

He says that TCS has worked in close strategic partnership with The Co-op Group to implement new technologies and find solutions to challenges, such as improving onboarding time for franchisees. Together, they made the process 20-30% faster.

"I've seen how our teams have worked so well together in order to increase our scale, and also how they worked with us in order to build some of our critical platforms within the organization, and particularly our retail platform, which is our biggest business and absolutely critical to our growth," adds Khoury-Haq.

Focus on the future

As well as working together to ensure they are offering the best possible retail experience, TCS and The Co-op Group are also collaborating to support the next generation of talent.

Together, they are empowering the youth through TCS' signature digital innovation and career readiness program, go Innovate Together (goIT). TCS has worked with The Co-op Group's academy students in year nine to help them choose the General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs) that are right for them, explains Khoury-Haq.

"Through its various initiatives, TCS has impacted over 6,400 students and over 300 of those have been part of our Co-op academies," she says.

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