Tesco HSC is closely involved in the development of TescoLink. This is a collaborative portal developed for Tesco’s suppliers‚ giving them direct access to store level sales data as well as valuable information on wastage margin and stock availability.
TescoLink features:
	It provides a series of standard and customised reports giving information about the specific suppliers products at the Tesco stores
	First-ever retail platform designed for use by all suppliers
	System has been successfully implemented for all 3‚500 trading partners

Each Tesco retail store displays detailed planning of aisles product sections and display areas. The blueprints involved in designing each store go a long way in enhancing customer experience by making it simpler for them to locate products of their choice. The planning and design of each store is undertaken at Tesco HSC with store layouts‚ checkout counters‚ racks‚ entrance and exit points strategically placed for employees‚ customers and suppliers. Whether it is creating new store extensions or refurbishing the store‚ Tesco HSC provides comprehensive planning and design solutions for Tesco stores worldwide.

Challenge:
Tesco is the only retailer to replenish stores three times a day. In order to match the customer's demand‚ achieve lower inventories and shorter lead-time in the supply chain‚ a process had to be in place to ensure on-time delivery of products to each store.
Solution:
A 32-member team at Tesco HSC developed the application that provides continuous replenishment of the shelves at more than 2000 Tesco stores across the UK and the rest of the world. The team polls sales data on 48‚000 different product lines every hour with the help of the continuous replenishment system. This enables Tesco to adjust delivery quantities as little as five or six hours before the inventory arrive at the store.
Benefits:
	Improves product availability and boosts labour productivity
	Continuous movement of goods between warehouses and stores‚ thus avoiding long storage delays
	Continuous replenishment application can handle more than 4‚308 stores worldwide and Tesco HSC teams ensure that continuous improvement and maintenance is performed on the application to meet the evolving customer demands and the growing network of Tesco stores

Challenge: Tesco retail promises its customers ‘Always one in front’ when it comes to billing i.e. there will not be more than one person in front of any customer at the billing counter. Tesco needed to ensure that this promise was strictly adhered to in all its stores worldwide. Solution: A team at Tesco HSC along with counterparts in UK conceptualised a project titled ‘I Don’t Queue’. Thermal sensors were developed and implemented in Tesco stores. Algorithms were developed by the team at Tesco HSC for a system to determine the number of people entering and exiting the store and calculate the number of people likely to hit the billing counter at an approximate accurate time. Benefits: Sensors at tills calculated the length of existing queues and based on the data collected‚ the system determined the exact number of tills to be opened. This ensured that long queues disappeared and in the event of fewer customers it helped relieve the staff at the tills to take care of customers in the store.

Tesco’s experience across challenging markets has led to the formulation of a strategy based on developing people skills, processes and systems that can be shared across diverse markets. With the close involvement of Indian and UK teams, an Operating Model has been developed as a key aspect to Tesco's international strategy Tesco HSC is the central hub for the development, implementation and support of the Operating Model. The Operating Model is a well defined common set of business processes and IT systems that can meet the diverse needs of various countries where Tesco sets up shop. The road to Tesco Operating model was an innovative journey where we had started with looking at only putting IT systems and process in place, but over a period of time we realised that it is not enough to create a successful model without the business process in place.
Benefits:
	Standardises the core processes and systems across Tesco.
	Drastically reduces the time to rollout operations in new geographies
	Lowers the cost of country deployments
The operating model has been successfully deployed in US, Turkey, China & Japan.

Retaining customers is the key to Tesco's success and in this regard 'Loyalty Cards' are issued to valuable customers. Tesco HSC has a club card team who use the club card application to help marketing teams across Tesco retail stores. This application which is maintained at Tesco HSC performs the following functions:
	Enables marketing teams to disburse points to customers
	Helps analyse the shopping habits of customers
	Automatically run the reward mailers to the customers
	Enable online redemptions of any vouchers received through the 'Loyalty Card'
The 'Clubcard programme', is a unique process that has helped boost Tesco's market share in groceries to almost 31%, nearly double the 16% held by Wal-Mart's Asda chain, according to market-research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres. Tesco has signed up 13 million Britons for its Clubcard program. The Clubcard application enables the marketing teams to disburse points to the customers, helps analyse the shopping habits of the customers, run reward mailing, online redemptions of the vouchers (and hence checks fraud). The HSC team recently took over the club card mailing process. The process is complex and highly critical and reached out to 12 million households in the UK alone. The team has introduced many innovations in the way the process is handled to deliver the best-in-class mailing so far with the least number of discrepancies.

In a market as diverse and competitive as the retail industry‚ The retail industry being a diverse and competitive one, Tesco needs to fine-tune its processes to match demand and trends. At Tesco HSC‚ a business intelligence team develops customised solutions that help the Tesco retail chain to develop strategic business policies for that particular target market. These solutions are delivered using the following technology:
	Teradata
	Business Objects

Challenge: Every Tesco retail store banks the cash received at the tills. During every transaction at the till‚ the bank account was automatically updated with the cash inflow. While transferring cash to the bank‚ if the difference between the banks records and the cash received was greater than 100 pounds‚ then the bank withheld the deposit of cash. This resulted in loss of interest for Tesco. Solution: The Tesco HSC Shared Service Centre was called to investigate such financial discrepancies. During investigations‚ our finance team realised that the withholding of deposit of cash by the bank resulted in loss of millions of pounds of interest. In order to avoid this Tesco HSC identified this issue and resolved it by a change in the ways of working which resulted in the funds being credited first and the investigation taking place later on. Benefits: By having the cash deposited first‚ Tesco HSC helped the store save on the loss of interest that would have otherwise occurred till the investigation was complete.