Woolworths names its most prized technology platforms

Woolworths Group has named its most valued IT service providers and platforms for the past year, with several focused on its end user compute environment.

The retailer's IT group gives awards to some of its IT suppliers every year, though generally does not provide much context on the winning projects or the award selection criteria.

It's a similar story for the latest installment of prizes, though at least this year the work of several winners is known.

A Woolworths spokesperson has been contacted by iTnews for additional comment.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) won Woolworths' top IT award for the second year in a row, though it is unclear for what packages of work.

Other winners announced included Eighty20, Workjam, Fujitsu, NTT, and Wipro.

Workjam is a digital communication app that Woolworths deployed at the start of last year, just months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

It "enables frontline staff to access messaging, chat, training, surveys, polls, and badges capabilities in one place", and also allows employees the opportunity to contribute ideas.

Woolworth’s CEO Brad Banducci said WorkJam is helping the supermarket giant open communications between various departments.

“By opening direct lines of communication, our aim is to give team members the knowledge they need to create unique customer experiences," he said in a statement last year.

“We’re excited to put communication and training back into the hands of Woolworths team members.”

WorkJam took to LinkedIn to celebrate its win.

“We are proud of our team who works to support Woolworths’ 130,000 team members and deliver our shared vision of a unified digital workplace," Workjam wrote.

Eighty20, meanwhile, is the IT partner responsible for a massive end user computing refresh, which brought 12,000 group users up to Windows 10 and standardised desktop apps that were delivered to those users.

Woolworths CIO John Hunt said that the company's IT partners were collectively helping to "build a better tomorrow" at the retailer.

“We’re pleased to recognise the great IT partnerships we have," Hunt said.

"These partnerships support us to deliver our huge IT agenda for our team and our customers, and we simply couldn’t do it without them."

Hunt said TCS, in winning the overall Woolworths IT gong for a second straight year, "did not waver and continued to provide exceptional service to our business ... despite the many and varied challenges 2020 threw at us."

Outsourcers generally were hit hard by Covid, with staffing issues caused by work-from-home orders in various countries of operation as well as the closure of international borders.

“As a global business, TCS dealt with different and ever-changing challenges across its operations," Hunt said.

"They went above and beyond to ensure their service remained stable for Woolworths Group through a period of peak demand, and we are very grateful for that.”