RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) today announced that it has been selected by Riyadh International Catering Corporation (RICC) as a strategic partner to enable McDonald's restaurant chain in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to become a digital enterprise, transforming customer experience and service agility.

RICC owns and operates McDonald's in the Central, Eastern and Northern regions of the Kingdom under developmental license from McDonald's Corporation of Delaware, US. RICC has 154 quick-service restaurants and plans to expand its footprint to more than 200 outlets by 2020. To help RICC meet the demands of rapid business growth, Cognizant will leverage its deep digital business, technology and restaurant industry expertise to design and build an enterprise planning and management platform.

Using SAP® Success Factors and ECC software, the platform will be built to provide RICC with real-time visibility into day-to-day operations and quality control across all its outlets in KSA. As part of the engagement, Cognizant will simplify and standardize key supply chain, food and workforce processes, making them flexible and responsive to business demands. Cognizant will also enable RICC to harness customer and operational intelligence to drive faster, more informed decision-making, and optimize customer experience, speed-to-market, business throughput, and return on assets.

"The success of McDonald's in KSA is underpinned by our commitment to delivering our customers the highest standards of quality, service, cleanliness, and value," said HH Prince Waleed Nasser F. Al-Saud, Vice President, Business Support, RICC. "As we embark upon an aggressive growth plan for McDonald's, it is imperative that we deliver our digital-era customers the experiences they expect, while also empowering and engaging our modern workforce. Technology has become central to unlocking the full potential of enterprise resources and turning data into a competitive asset. Cognizant's deep digital expertise and vast industry experience will help us become a smarter, more agile enterprise for the needs of tomorrow."

"We appreciate the opportunity to drive fundamental, technology-enabled changes across core enterprise functions at RICC for it to compete and win in this new technology- and data-intensive world," said Narayan Iyer, Vice President, the Middle East and India, Cognizant. "In today's digital era, it is ever more important for restaurant chains to re-engineer and digitize their most essential business processes to improve user experiences, transform service delivery, and deliver better outcomes. We look forward to helping RICC build a robust and scalable enterprise system across its McDonald's outlets in Saudi Arabia, as well as create competitive advantage through process excellence and business agility. Our market-leading digital and process capabilities, coupled with our long-standing alliance with SAP®, will help us fulfill RICC's strategic goals for McDonald's in Saudi Arabia."

About McDonald's Saudi Arabia / Riyadh International Catering Corporation
McDonald's Saudi Arabia is owned and operated by Riyadh International Catering Company in the Central, Eastern and Northern regions of KSA. With more than 154 restaurants, McDonald's employs over 1,200 Saudis and is an important contributor to the Kingdom's economy. The company supports the development of local suppliers and heavily invests in the employment and training of the local workforce.

Since its beginnings in 1993, McDonald's Saudi Arabia has and still is committed to serve safe, high quality products to each of its customers, every time they visit any of the restaurants in the Kingdom. It operates at the highest food safety standards meeting local and international food safety regulations. Its menus are designed with the active lifestyle in mind and it is committed to educating and informing it customers about the food it serves.

About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process services, dedicated to helping the world's leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 100 development and delivery centres worldwide and approximately 255,800 employees as of September 30, 2016, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.

SOURCE Cognizant