Company, CEO honoured at Udyog Rattan Awards
Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (HSC), the global services arm for Tesco, world’s third largest retailer, with over 4000 stores in 14 countries, has been conferred with two awards by the Institute of Economic Studies, New Delhi.
The Bangalore based company whose 3500 employees provide all the IT, business and financial services for the UK-headquartered parent, was presented with the “Excellence Award”in recognition of its outstanding contribution to the country’s industrial development.Sandeep Dhar , CEO, Tesco HSC, received the “Udyog Rattan Award” for his vision and leadership in developing a world class organization.
Since 2004, Tesco HSC has provided the technology and services backbone for a $ 100 billion business that serves 30 million customers. It provides support from India to Tesco operations in the UK‚ US‚ Ireland‚ Hungary‚ Poland‚ the Czech Republic‚ Slovakia‚ Turkey‚ Thailand‚ South Korea‚ Malaysia‚ China and Japan. HSC engineers design‚ develops‚ tests‚ and manages some of Tesco's mission critical IT applications.
Recent contributions by the India team include Tesco’s Clubcard system that allows shoppers to collect points at each purchase and redeem them later for discounts, offers etc. The process has been set up to allow the customer to continue receiving their vouchers even after they changed their address. The Bangalore team detected and fixed a glitch, that was wasting revenue.HSC has also HSC has developed a smart voucher solution that enables voucher redemption effective in real-time, combined with the introduction of unique voucher numbers. This helped in minimizing fraud and ensured that reward discrepancies were quickly solved.
Tesco has deployed cutting edge paperless picking technology in its warehouses: Employees entering the mammoth distribution centres use a wrist device that could be swiped at the entrance of these warehouses. On swiping the device each employee is given the task list for the selection of a particular product from a warehouse section and the information regarding the store to which the products needed to be delivered. Tesco HSC delivered the software than ran this function.
“It is indeed heartening to have received this recognition in spite of our short history in India”, says Sandeep Dhar, “. We are confident of achieving many more milestones in the years to come and will constantly endeavour to work for the development of the economy of India”.
Green campusThe Bangalore campus was conferred an award for having Bangalore's best “Green Campus Garden” by the Mysore Horticultural Society, for the second year running this year. When it crossed the 3000 employee mark last year, HSC mark the occasion by planting 3000 saplings.
"Tesco HSC is the beating heart of Tesco. In the retail industry‚ logistics‚ marketing and other aspects have become commodities. What can differentiate a retailer today are its staff‚ technology and processes‚ and the latter two are what HSC delivers,” says Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco PLC, the parent company, “I am proud to see the centre deliver what it was envisaged to, The team at HSC are fantastic - bright, enthusiastic, dynamic, and they've become an important part of the Tesco team.”
Self service checkoutAs IndiaTechOnline observed on a recent visit to Tesco, HSC, the Bangalore centre is also the technology base for Tesco’s checkout systems worldwide, including jumbo sized self checkout systems that it deploys in its stores under the Fresh and easy brand in three western states of the US. A vast hall has dozens of checkout and Point of Sales systems working out realistic scenarios to create the optimal customer experience. Wish some of it would rub off on Indian retailers who don’t seem to mind if their shoppers spend more at the checkout than they do in shopping!