Boots has enjoyed a hugely successful night at the BCS UK IT Industry Awards, scooping up two headline awards.

Rich Corbridge, Boots Chief Information Officer, took home the CIO of the Year Award, recognising an impressive year of leading multiple Boots IT initiatives, including launching the #TechAtBoots IT development programme. Rich was also the driving force behind IT Stores Day, where his team visited hundreds of stores in just 48 hours to fast-forward tech developments across Boots stores.

Judges described Rich as “genuinely transformative” and how he worked “with both pace and purpose” this year making him a worthy winner.

Boots also saw success in the IT Team of the Year Award, going to Walgreens Boots Alliance in partnership with TCS. The two partners have been working collaboratively to develop a Unified Cloud Data Platform. The resulting Data Lynx platform curates data spanning 15 countries and over 30 domains across retail, beauty and pharmacy to support reporting and analytics.

Elise Walker, Director of Data Platform, Boots UK said: “The team are thoroughly deserving of their award for IT Team of the Year last night! The pure commitment, innovation and collaboration to create a seamless team across many countries and organisations is second to none.

“The proficiency, expertise and dedication of the entire team to solve decades of legacy complex data transformations and modernise our data landscape is truly inspiring. This recognition is a strong testament to the tremendous value this team will add to our organisation, customers, consumers and patients.”

Judges were impressed by how far the partnership had come in the last year, its vision and by a clear and driven description of the collaboration’s next exciting chapter: “The planning was extremely well thought through, from agreed patterns to the consideration for data security.”

Speaking on the winning entries, Sue Hargreaves, Global IT Capability Senior Manager, WBA, said: “I was lucky enough to attend the UK IT Awards and was so happy to see Boots, WBA and TCS receive the award for awarded IT Team of the Year. I’m super happy for Elise Walker, Data Platform Director, and Nishant Nigam, TCS Engineering Manager and teams as I know how hard they’ve worked this year to make the vision a reality. I’m sure there is much more in store from them and I can’t wait to see what the team do next to build on what they’ve achieved so far."

“And a huge congratulations to Rich Corbridge whose exceptional leadership is a driving force behind what is making #TechAtBoots so successful. A well-deserved win!”