Walgreens taps IBM retail analytics to maximize tech infrastructure

ARMONK, N.Y.  — IBM on Friday announced a new agreement with Walgreens to deploy IBM retail analytics at more than 8,100 locations nationwide to help improve the efficiency of field service support for these locations.



“Extending our multivendor services capabilities to support Walgreens stores sets an exciting new benchmark in an evolving retail industry, but it does not stop there,” stated Martin Jetter, SVP IBM Global Technology Services. “As a cloud services integrator, IBM is always driven by the desire to think differently about the way we manage our clients’ services and underlying infrastructure in any business, and we are well suited to help them achieve the results they are looking for.”



With IBM’s support of IT systems at Walgreens stores, IBM’s capabilities to integrate hardware and software from different vendors under one roof will lead to more efficient operation of technology across the store, the company stated.



IBM Cloud also will be used to determine the level of support that will likely be needed at each Walgreens location based on service request history. In the future, this information may enable better anticipation and coordination when dispatching field technicians, so they arrive at the right time to resolve an issue. These data-driven insights may help to identify the most frequent service calls at a given location and bundle those requests into one service call to minimize repeated instances of system downtime.