TCS tops Everest Group's store services provider ranking

Tata Consultancy Services has been ranked No. 1 in Everest Group's Top 50 Store Services Providers 2026 report, which covers companies that provide services for retailer stores.

Everest Group assessed suppliers across areas including back-end management, store operations and in-store experience. It also examined work in inventory management, point-of-sale modernisation, retail media networks and customer engagement.

The ranking puts TCS at the top of a global list focused on the services behind physical retail outlets, at a time when many retailers are trying to connect store operations more closely with digital channels. It reflects a market in which stores are being treated not only as sales locations, but also as part of broader commerce and fulfilment networks.

Abhilasha Sharma, Practise Director at Everest Group, outlined the reasoning behind the ranking.

"Retailers are reimagining physical stores as monetizable platforms, with investments increasingly centered on unified commerce, smart-store enablement, frictionless checkout, retail media, and AI-enabled immersive shopping experiences. TCS demonstrates strong breadth across the store services value chain, supported by its global retail scale, domain contextualization, IP-led portfolio, including TCS OmniStore and TCS Optumera. These capabilities helped TCS earn recognition as the top provider in Everest Group's Top 50 Store Services Providers 2026 report," Sharma said.

TCS said its store-related work covers agentic store operations, workforce management, point-of-sale modernisation, merchandising, retail media networks and experiential stores. It has carried out such work for more than 100 clients worldwide across grocery, speciality retail, apparel, quick-service restaurants and mass retail.

According to TCS, those programmes have delivered a double-digit increase in sales, an 85% increase in productivity, and a 5-10% increase in revenue and margin. The company also highlighted its platforms, TCS OmniStore and TCS Optumera, as part of its retail offering.

Store focus

The ranking highlights the importance of store services in retail technology spending. As retailers update checkout systems, improve inventory visibility and strengthen customer engagement in stores, service providers are competing to connect software, analytics and in-store operations more closely.

TCS said its partner network in this area includes specialists in robotics, RFID, IoT, computer vision and retail media. It also cited relationships with cloud providers and other technology companies, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and NVIDIA Omniverse.

Krishnan Ramanujam, President of the Consumer Business Group at TCS, said the result reflected the company's retail work and product portfolio.

"Physical stores are being reinvented as intelligent, adaptive, and monetizable assets at the center of modern retail. Our leadership position in the report is a testimony to the strength of our comprehensive retail, AI advisory services, and differentiated IP portfolio. This uniquely positions us to help retailers transform store networks into perceptive, intelligent growth engines that deliver stronger margins, higher productivity, and better in-store experiences," Ramanujam said.

TCS said its retail strategy is guided by what it calls Perceptive Retail, which combines decision intelligence, multimodal data analysis and machine agents. It said this approach is intended to support operational and commercial decisions across store networks.

The Everest Group ranking gives TCS external endorsement in a segment where retailers are under pressure to improve store productivity while maintaining service standards. The study's focus on both operational systems and the customer-facing experience suggests suppliers are increasingly being judged on how well they connect the two.

For large retail chains, that can include everything from stock accuracy and staff deployment to checkout processes and in-store advertising networks. For technology suppliers, it means proving they can support practical change across large estate footprints rather than isolated pilot projects.

TCS said it serves more than 100 global retail clients.