CAINZ partners with TCS to drive business transformation

Tata Consultancy Services to help Japan’s leading home improvement retailer accelerate digital transformation and enhance customer experience through dedicated global development centre

Tokyo | Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting and business solutions organisation, has been selected as a strategic partner by Cainz Corporation (CAINZ), Japan’s leading home improvement company, to accelerate its digital transformation, improve customer experience, and drive growth.

CAINZ operates 226 stores across 28 prefectures nationwide, making it the largest home improvement retailer in Japan. The brand is committed to improving consumer lifestyles, and believes that the little sparkle found in our daily lives can make the world a better and brighter place. To fulfill this purpose and keep pace with diverse consumer needs and behaviors, CAINZ outlined its vision to transform into an ‘IT-empowered retail company’.

The retailer partnered with TCS to realise its vision and drive digital initiatives like the agile development of Find in CAINZ, a mobile application for customers and store associates to identify the location and availability of products in the store. The partnership is being significantly expanded to scale up co-development initiatives at the new Global Development Centre that TCS is setting up for CAINZ. Here, TCS will leverage its deep contextual and domain knowledge as well as global best practices to accelerate agile development of digital solutions aimed at further enhancing customer experience across channels including POS, EC, CRM, and in-store applications.

Naoki Iketeru, chief digital officer, Cainz Corporation, said, “Against the backdrop of acute IT talent shortages spurred by Japan’s declining population, there is burgeoning demand for retailers to digitalise in response to the rapid diversification of consumer behaviours. It is thus critical that we strengthen our ability to deliver digital solutions with agility and flexibility, and this requires us to open our sights to global talent and expertise. TCS has partnered in our digital journey from the early stages, starting with application development, and demonstrated not only an understanding of our business, but also global expertise backed by deep domain knowledge and a proven track record. This has all contributed to the decision to establish this dedicated development center.”

“Progressive retailers are betting big on next-gen technologies to accelerate digital transformation and design hyper-personalized customer experiences,” said Shankar Narayanan, business group head, Retail Cluster, TCS. “TCS will leverage its deep domain knowledge of the retail industry and expertise in digital technologies to help CAINZ respond to customer needs with agility, enhance competitive differentiation, and help realise their vision of becoming an ‘IT-empowered retail company’.”

TCS Japan leverages a unique hybrid model combining deep domain knowledge, technology expertise, and strong global and local execution, to help leading Japanese corporations achieve their growth and transformation aspirations. It is a strategic partner today to over half of the Japanese Fortune 500 companies, leveraging its Tokyo Pace Port™, a co-innovation and research centre, to accelerate their product and business-model innovation initiatives. With a local workforce of over 4,000, augmented by a Japan-centric delivery center in India, TCS Japan is one of the fastest growing IT services firms in its class.