TCS, Marks & Spencer win Retail Partnership of the Year award

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Marks & Spencer (M&S) have won the Retail Partnership of the Year award at the Retail Systems Awards, for the loyalty platform co-created by both the partners.

The Retail Systems Awards celebrate excellence in the retail sector with a strong focus on technology innovation. TCS and M&S were recognised for their collaboration to build an in-house loyalty platform using the latest technology stack, an engineering-driven approach, and a cloud-first strategy to enhance customer experience. TCS and M&S created a modern, scalable, headless, microservice, and event-based architecture that meets current and future business requirements. The new solution is performant, data-driven, and capable of supporting major marketing campaigns and business events.

The new loyalty platform enables M&S to innovate and redefine its loyalty proposition with shorter time to market. The engineering-first approach adopted in its design gives the platform tremendous scalability, enabling M&S to target customers at scale and run massive campaigns with zero impact on retail operations during the peak seasons. 

The loyalty platform supported ‘12 days of Sparks’, one of the biggest campaigns in M&S’ history, achieving throughput of more than one million emails per hour and 500,000 mobile push notifications an hour, without performance or availability issues. The outcomes were equally spectacular. The campaign drove half a million new loyalty program members and over one million app downloads during that period. This resulted in a significant increase in offer activations and redemptions. 

“By re-platforming our loyalty services and bringing them in house we have been able to deliver greater stability and improved customer experience allowing us to land key campaigns seamlessly. With a phased approach and outstanding overall delivery, TCS ensured we didn’t create any adverse customer impact. We have seen some fantastic examples of teamwork and individuals going the extra mile. I am really proud of what TCS and M&S have delivered to enhance our customer experience and system capability,” said Danielle Papagapiou, Head of Loyalty, M&S.

“The loyalty platform that we have built together with M&S demonstrates our commitment to customer-centricity and innovation in the retail industry. It enables M&S to offer its customers unique and personalised experiences, enhancing a deeply personalised omnichannel customer experience through faster innovation and experimentation,” said Abhijit Niyogi, Business Head, Retail, Tata Consultancy Services.