(Image source from: business-standard.com)

Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) which is an American pharmacy retailer has expanded its strategic partnership with the IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) making a deal of a $1.5 billion across a ten- year period from US pharma retailer Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) in order to transform its technological operations.

The deal between the Tata Consultancy Services and the Walgreens Boots Alliance is said to be the largest deal in the retail space for the company.

The entire IT operations of the $ 136.9 billion Walgreen boots will be taken over by the Tata Consultancy Services which is the largest IT firm of India. The staff and the consolidate vendors of the Walgreens Boots shall also be taken over by the Tata Consultancy Services.

The applications and the cloud shall be modernized by the Tata Consultancy Services enabling the technology operations for the retailer of the United States, which is an existing customer over a decade.

The cost savings has been committed by the company for the retailer during the entirety of the deal period. The managed services such as application maintenance and support, infrastructure and the security operations will be provided.

Rajashree Ramakrishnan who is the Chief Marketing Officer has said that the deal that has been done with the Walgreens marks a pivot in the relationship that the two companies share and would make Tata Consultancy Services as the growth and transformation partner of the Walgreens.

However, the number of vendors who would be consolidated or the staff that TCS would take over has not been specified.

Although the retail business of the Tata Consultancy Services has not been smooth in the last two quarters, the company was upbeat of the opportunities as large traditional retailers have been investing in the technology in order to take on pure online retailers.

The Tata Consultancy Services depends on the retail as the second biggest vertical. The retail contributes of over 15% of the revenue of the company.

The company Tata Consultancy Services has said that the firm has won over $ 18 billion deals from the customers in the nine months to September.

Rajesh Gopinathan who is the chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services has said that Walgreens is the largest transformation thet TCS has won in the retail segment where in it has been transforming the pharma portfolio systems of the retailer in a modern cloud architecture, as said in post-earnings earlier analyst call in January.

Francesco Tinto who is the senior vice president and the global chief information officer of WBA has said in a statement that a scalable, sustainable and globally unified IT operating model is being built by the WBA and it focuses on the digital transformation, automation of service delivery and innovation.

He added saying that the strategic partnership with the Tata Consultancy Services will enhance the ability to address the business needs that are evolving, support the large scale global technology solutions and also to promote the investment in truly differentiating capabilities through a modernized platform.

By Shrithika Kushangi