Tesco centre to double IT headcount

British retailer Tesco, the third largest in the world, has been able to forge ahead in the last decade and a half because of its customer focus and extensively using IT to enable it.

Appropriately, it is the only global retail leader which has set up its shared service centre in India to both take its own use of IT forward and be in a position to roll out a strong IT-driven retail network in India as and when the government allows foreign investment in retailing.

"In Tesco retail and technology really come together and we in India will particularly create expertise in retail technology as we go along," says Meena Ganesh, CEO of Tesco Hindustan Service Centre.

IT is important to Tesco as not only is modern mass retailing hugely IT-driven, the company has the world's biggest online supermarket, Tesco.com, which last year clocked a turnover of pounds 557 million, representing 1.7 per cent of Tesco's overall turnover.

Tesco's Indian centre, which presently has a staff strength of 500, plans to take this up to 800 by the end of the year. Most of the accretion will take place in its IT wing, where the headcount will double from the current 240.

The rest of the staff is engaged in offshored business services which cover areas like financial processing, customer management and store support.

The Indian centre supports through modification and maintenance Tesco's supply chain management process and is working on a 'continuous replenishment model'. The retailer's USP is putting just-in-time those products on shelves which the customer wants. This is identified by capture and analysis of data on customer buying behaviour.

A key part of the India centre's work is maintaining and improving 'Tesco in a box', which is the legacy system that has to work with the IT systems that Tesco inherits through its international acquisitions. (Tesco operates in 11 countries other than the UK.)

By deploying a set of tailor-made business integration applications, Tesco has a standardised platform which retains the look and feel specific to the country of operation.

"The India centre has a big role to play in developing competency for the box and is the central point for its creation and deployment," says Ganesh. The Indian contribution is going from coding to project management to higher levels. "The box is being developed as it is being used."

The centre also supports the global IT infrastructure of Tesco (Unix servers) while working on refashioning desktops and building a new protocol.

"Over time we will become a centre of excellence in Tesco," Ganesh adds.