TCS - BEST BUY 'WINNING PARTNERSHIP'

You may ask what is so special about a business relationship between an Indian software company and an American retail giant?  There better be something special when Asia's largest software company - Tata Consultancy Services and the largest American speciality retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances - Best Buy Co Inc. come together. 

The partnership, which began in the November of 1999 is two years old now and is likely to bring in revenue of over US $ 10 million in the coming years for TCS.  The announcement came at a media conference where Tim Bates, Director - Business Office, Best Buy was also present. 

There have been quite a few 'special firsts' in this relationship that has been on the fast track since the very moment it was established.  TCS quickly established itself as a successful partner and moved on from providing just Application Maintenance Outsourcing to Application Development, Maintenance and Enhancements, Performance Engineering, Process Definition and Deployment in just under a year.  TCS is at present the largest solutions provider for Best Buy out of India so far with over 140 of its consultants providing services to Best Buy both at Minneapolis, USA as well as offshore at Sholinganallur, Chennai.  Best Buy has presented TCS with the 'Best Category Partner Award' within 10 months of their relationship.  The award was given to 31 out of 1400 vendors who did business with Best Buy.  TCS was chosen from over a 100 vendors in the Information Systems category.

Tim Bates speaking about how TCS came to be chosen as their vendor said, "I should say that the TCS - Best Buy relationship started not in November 1999 but April 1999 when I came to India with the sole purpose of finding a solution to our need for an application systems maintenance provider.  We started with a list of six companies, which we pruned down to just two companies.  TCS was the leader when we evaluated the two on a 300-point scale".  The decision to strengthen the relationship, he added was a natural corollary to the excellent work done by TCS. 

S Mahalingam, Executive Vice- President, TCS said "TCS has always prided itself on building up long standing relationships with clients.  It is no different with Best Buy.  Though it is just a two-year-old relationship, we believe that the future of this relationship is very bright".  He also highlighted the fact that TCS was very recently the first organisation in the world to have four of its centres assessed at People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) Level 4.  He also said that TCS was hoping to be among the Top 10 global companies within 10 years.

In the US, the $15-billion Best Buy Co is one of the largest speciality retailers of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances. The company is ranked 156th in the Fortune 500 list of companies.

|