Dive Brief:

• C&S Wholesale Grocers is preparing to deploy a cloud-based traffic-management system to help the food-distribution company improve efficiency and save energy, according to a Tuesday press release.
• The company has enlisted Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of India to develop the new platform, which will tap artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities as well as use Google Cloud infrastructure.
• C&S is launching the sustainability-linked project as retailers increasingly tie goals related to preserving the environment to their operations.

Dive Insight:

C&S’s new system is intended to enable the company to glean insights that will allow it to provide better service to customers while also cutting its carbon emissions and reducing food spoilage, according to the announcement.

The platform will mine data to provide more predictable delivery schedules to the distributors and retailers C&S serves, allowing the company to give customers improved visibility into when products will arrive and helping them better manage inventory, Amit Bajaj, president of TCS North America, said in the press release.

In addition, the system will provide C&S workers with access to self-service information technology tools that will improve their ability to serve companies they work with, according to the release. C&S provides approximately 7,500 independent supermarkets and other retail locations with access to an assortment of more than 100,000 products.

Beyond allowing C&S to refine its supply chain management capabilities and provide grocers with more predictable delivery schedules, particularly during periods of peak demand, the new platform is intended to allow the company to save energy by migrating computing resources to Google’s data centers. Google Cloud’s operations are entirely carbon neutral today, and the internet giant says it intends to use only carbon-free energy to power its servers by 2030.

C&S is among a number of companies in the grocery industry that are working with Google to handle key aspects of their businesses. 

Last year, Hy-Vee entered a multi-year deal to use Google Cloud to make its Aisles Online e-commerce platform more convenient for shoppers, while Albertsons said it would use Google’s search and mapping tools to help shoppers place online orders. Also in 2021, checkout technology company Trigo announced that it would use Google Cloud to help retailers manage how shoppers pay for products in stores.