Morrisons partners with Wipro Retail for systems transformation

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Morrisons, the UK food retailer, with 375 stores and annual turnover of 13bn*, has chosen Wipro Retail, a specialist division of Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited, as its IT partner, to deliver a new and robust operating model that supports the retailers strategic and commercial objectives.

Richard Pennycook, Morrisons CFO, commented, Morrisons is making a major investment to give us the systems and processes to drive our business forward.  Wipro Retail brings technology and retail business expertise to help us in this process.

Wipro will support Morrisons to achieve the core objective of delivering effective planning, management and delivery of large scale systems and process change based on an Oracle ERP platform.

Gary Barr, CIO, Morrisons, said, This is more than a systems replacement programme. It is a business change programme enabled by the replacement of the existing IT systems, in order to support the continued and future growth of the business.

Wipro Retail was chosen after extensive market testing and Morrisons positive experience of working with them as part of the programme planning and scoping phase. As Phil Goodwin, Programme Director, Morrisons, explained, When we looked at the Oracle Implementation references, they all said that we should be speaking to Wipro Retail.  We decided to shortlist Wipro Retail based on such strong feedback.  During Planning & Scoping we allocated project streams to different potential partners; Wipro Retail impressed us most with their agility, quality of people and their cultural fit. We are confident that they have the capability to meet the future needs of Morrisons.

In planning and scoping, Wipro Retail led work streams around Manufacturing, Testing and Business Intelligence / Data Warehousing. Wipro was also able to offer the right combination of on-shore, near shore and off-shore resources to deliver cost effectively for Morrisons.

Bhanu Murthy B M, Senior Vice President, Retail, CPG Transportation & Services, Wipro Technologies said, Morrisons has made a major investment in Wipro and we are delighted to have been chosen as a strategic partner. We recognise the unique requirements of their business and how IT can play a major role in their transformation. We welcome the challenge of helping them to prepare for further success in the competitive UK grocery market.

Mike Davies, General Manager, Wipro Retail, said, Wipro Retail has the ability to deliver major systems and process transformations into large organisations. Our extensive international experience of grocery retailing gained through working with top tier retailers combined with the expertise of senior management in corporate retail enables us to deliver significant value to the retailers business."

By using Oracles best of breed software to perform labour intensive, non value-add tasks, Morrisons will be able to focus their key staff on higher value and customer facing tasks, which in turn will help maintain their competitive advantage and support continued growth.

* to February 3, 2008

About WM Morrisons Supermarkets plc
Morrisons is the UKs fourth largest food retailer with 375 stores. The business is mainly food and grocery the weekly shop. Uniquely Morrisons source and process most of the fresh food that we sell though its own manufacturing facilities, giving close control over provenance and quality; and Morrisons have more people preparing more food in store than any other retailer.

Every week nine million customers pass through its doors and 117,000 colleagues across the business work hard each day to deliver great service to them.

The group annual turnover is 13bn. Pre-tax profits for 2007 were 612m, up from 369m in 2006.

About Wipro Limited

Wipro Technologies, a division of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT) is the first PCMM Level 5 and SEI CMM Level 5 certified global IT services organization. Wipro Technologies was recently assessed at Level 5 for CMMI V 1.2 across offshore and onsite development centers. Wipro is one of the largest product engineering and support service providers worldwide. Wipro provides comprehensive research and development services, IT solutions and services, including systems integration, information systems outsourcing, package implementation, software application development, and maintenance services to corporations globally.