 "IBM")
Global technology provider IBM announced that Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd (ABFRL), an Indian fashion and lifestyle company, has expanded its existing relationship with IBM to reduce costs, improve productivity enhancements and drive business growth.
The strategic 10-year services agreement will help ABFRL’s growth, enabling them to expand their store network across the country. As a part of this agreement, IBM will bring in its global technology and automation expertise to help enhance and manage ABFRL’s IT infrastructure with better availability of IT systems, employee productivity through self-help solutions and improved disaster resilience. Last year in April, Aditya Birla Online Fashion ( ABOF), the e-commerce arm of ABFRL, and IBM had announced a new shopping experience to deliver a personalized and convenient shopping experience powered by IBM Cloud and Watson.
IBM will provide infrastructure-as-a-service in a private cloud environment, enabling ABFRL to scale their IT operations in line with their business growth. In leveraging IBM’s deep technology and services expertise, ABFRL aims to build a world-class IT environment to support its strong growth in India. IBM also has existing IT infrastructure and services agreements with a number of Indian retail brands like Titan, Kalyan Jewellers and Honda among others.
With more than 8,000 points-of-sale across 700 cities, including more than 2,000 exclusive ABFRL brand outlets, the company owns brands such as Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Peter England and many others.
NP Singh, CIO, ABRFL, said, “The retail industry has seen a stupendous growth in the past decade with the emergence of technology-enabled smart consumers. As leaders in the retail industry and to build platforms which provide a seamless experience to our consumers, the need of the hour is to have strong and stable technology partners that can help us realize our future growth.”
