IT services provider Tata Consultancy Services has enabled 100% in-store mobile checkout for all Croma stores, a first in the retail industry in India. TCS leveraged TCS OmniStore, its artificial intelligence AI-powered, unified composable commerce platform, to deliver faster checkout and a best-in-class omnichannel shopping experience across touchpoints.
This commerce transformation enables convenient mobile checkout anywhere in-store and facilitates a consistent shopping experience across the stores and online channels. It has resulted in increased sales and footfall for Croma, while reducing the checkout time for shoppers.
With more than 500 stores across 160-plus major cities, Croma is a leading Indian electronics retailer offering 22,000 products across 550 brands. This partnership was aimed at delivering an outstanding unified shopping experience and further cement Croma’s position as a leader in the highly competitive retail industry.
Shibashish Roy, Deputy CEO, Croma, said “Croma’s vision is to be number one in customer experience and satisfaction. Many of today’s shoppers want to learn and shortlist products online—so when they arrive at the store, they can select the right items, check out, and be on their way out. Crafting a seamless, delightful omnichannel journey is, therefore, an imperative for us, and OmniStore is key to enabling it. We have enjoyed our unique and truly integrated partnership with TCS to co-develop and co-innovate multiple aspects of the customer experience, and that’s exactly what we needed to succeed in an ambitious initiative like this.”
The microservices-based architecture of TCS OmniStore offers the scalability and flexibility needed for Croma to continuously innovate and simplify every aspect of the shopping journey, from purchasing to servicing. It helps Croma power modern commerce experiences with a range of capabilities such as click-and-collect, scan and go, universal cart, and self-checkout, along with dynamic promotion management. In addition to faster checkout, Croma stores now offer flexibility in payment with more than 80 payment options inclusive of wallets, cards, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as well as loans.
The new cloud-based checkout model with lean store footprint eliminates the need for traditional specialized onsite hardware and facilitates Croma to set up the billing process four times faster—a capability that is vital as they look to rapidly expand their store footprint. It has also enabled Croma to optimize 83% of Bill Desk Space, freeing more space for selling. The sheer pace of adoption of mobile checkout with 500+ stores going live within two weeks is testimony to the intuitive user experience that requires minimal training for store associates, a key factor defining the success of commerce transformation.
Krishnan Ramanujam, President, Consumer Business Group, TCS, said, “Croma is way ahead of the curve in terms of its multi-channel strategy, and its continuous investments in technology proves to be a competitive differentiator. TCS will serve as a technology and knowledge partner to Croma, to jointly fashion a unique and futuristic commerce journey with a best-in-class customer experience at every touch point. We look forward to this partnership with Croma and are committed to pushing the boundaries by unlocking the power of technology and innovation.