With government scrutiny over competition and land management dominating the grocery supermarket industry headlines, it was with some considerable surprise I recently reported that Morrisons had signed up to modernise its IT infrastructure based on Oracle’s entire suite of retail, back-office and database products.

As part of the fourth largest UK supermarket’s publicly declared intention to spend £110 million on modernising its operations, the fact that Morrisons is spending money on IT was not the surprising fact. Many in the retail industry have known for some time that ‘the Morrisons way’ has historically been paper-based and manual, with computerisation being almost forced on it where unavoidable.

I remember writing stories at the time Morrisons acquired its slightly larger rival, Safeway in 2003 that raised doubts over whether it could handle the merger. Safeway had quite advanced IT systems, including recent investments at the time in PeopleSoft back-office software and automated warehouse systems, which sources told me were being sidelined or ripped out in favour of ‘the Morrisons way’. Otherwise, “it was the highway,” I was told at the time.

All went very quiet on the IT front for some time at Morrisons which, to be fair, seems to have finally completed the full merger with Safeway – changing over stores and assessing the suitability of integrating its systems across its 375 store estate. It most recently posted positive post-Christmas trading figures, saying it attracted over 4 million extra customer visits during that six-week period and that its three-year Optimisation Plan was on schedule. But compared to the multichannel capabilities of the top three – Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda – Morrisons always seems to be a poor relation.

No, the most surprising thing about the deal announced last Friday is the faith it demonstrates it is placing in the one vendor, with its ‘prototype Oracle footprint’. It fits with the ‘Morrisons way’ of thinking and confirms Oracle’s acquisition strategy to build a complete IT infrastructure portfolio is paying dividends in vertical markets it hasn’t traditionally played well in. But only time will tell whether this massive strategic gamble will pay off for Morrisons.