Retail Vendors Demonstrate ARTS
Joint Effort Proves Ease of Deployment of Standards-Based Solutions
Washington, DC, December 19, 2003 – The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) will demonstrate ease of deployment of standards-based solutions at the National Retail Federation’s 93rd Annual Convention & EXPO, January 11-14, 2004 in New York City. ARTS, a division of the NRF dedicated to creating a barrier-free retail technology environment, will host a pavilion in which retailers can see offerings from a mix of vendors who are dedicated to helping retailers reduce costs by adhering to retail technology standards.
The primary focus of this year’s ARTS Pavilion is on demonstrating standards in action. To that end, a series of vendor collaborations will be highlighting three of the current IXRetail XML schemas live, including POSlog, Digital Receipt and DAM. In the ARTS pavilion, retailers will have the opportunity to see the ease of integrating with IXRetail and learn how it can lower technology costs, as well as learning how to transform non-standard interfaces to standard IXRetail or vice versa. Additionally, vendors will display a variety of combinations of server platforms, hardware and peripherals, demonstrating the retailer’s ultimate freedom-of-choice provided by retail standards.
POSlog (standard TLOG) is the data captured at the point of service, including sales, returns, exchanges, deliveries and customer information. POSlog will reduce the time and cost of integrating POS systems with related applications, such as ERP, inventory, fraud analysis, customer purchase history, big ticket, etc.
"The Store of the future will no longer be an island of automation," said Bob Graham, Vice President, Store Technology of Smart & Final. "Our demanding customers will require that our stores be a part of a seamless Retail Enterprise, delivering products and services to them on their terms anywhere, anytime. ARTS is the foundation that will help us to deliver these services - a foundation created by Retailers for Retailers."
Digital Receipt is an electronic purchase verification transaction that can be used for returns, warranties and analysis of customer purchase patterns. DAM enables requests for and communication of images between manufacturers and retailers, eliminating the need to separate image libraries.
"The adoption of POSlog by so many of the leading POS application providers clearly indicates the value of standards," said Richard Mader, executive director of ARTS. "In the ARTS Pavilion we have created a demonstration to show retailers how to evolve to a standards-based architecture to obtain flexibility and save expenses every day through less costly integration."
ARTS has developed three standards embraced by the retail industry around the world: (1) Standard Retail Data Model, supporting all retail applications; (2) UnifiedPOS, a detailed, specification for point-of-sale device interfaces; and (3) IXRetail, which provides standard XML schemas to interface applications within the retail enterprise. These standards have been developed through the cooperative efforts of retailers and hardware and software solution providers to reduce the time and cost of implementing retail technology from multiple vendors.
Featured in the ARTS pavilion are a variety of hardware and software vendors that have adopted ARTS standards, including 360Commerce Inc., AccessVia, afterBOT Inc., Bostech, Datavantage, GERS Retail Systems, IBM Corporation, Interwoven, Microsoft Corporation, NCR Corporation, NSB Group, PCMS Datafit, Sonic Software Inc., Ultimate Technology Corporation, and Wincor Nixdorf.
The exhibit can be viewed during show hours at NRF booth #743. Attendees are invited to stop by the booth to learn more about the standards initiative. In addition, retailers can attend a variety of sessions on standards-related topics in the ARTS Pavilion throughout the exhibit hall hours. The schedule of sessions can be found in the NRF show guide and on the ARTS website.
The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) is an international membership organization dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards. Since 1993, ARTS has been delivering application standards exclusively to the retail industry. ARTS has three standards: The Standard Relational Data Model, UnifiedPOS and IXRetail. Membership is open to all members of the international technology community- retailers from all industry segments, application developers and hardware companies. For more information contact ARTS at ARTS@NRF.com or 202-626-8140.
The National Retail Federation is the world`s largest retail trade association, with membership that comprises all retail formats and channels of distribution including department, specialty, discount,catalog, Internet and independent stores as well as the industry`s key trading partners of retail goods and services. NRF represents an industry with more than 1.4 million U.S. retail establishments, more than 20 million employees – about one in five American workers – and 2002 sales of $3.6 trillion. As the industry umbrella group, NRF also represents more than 100 state, national and international retail associations. www.nrf.com.
On the Net: ARTS site: http://www.nrf-arts.org
NRF site: http://www.nrf.com
Contact: Scott Krugman/ Ellen Tolley (202) 783-7971
Email: krugmans@nrf.com or tolleye@nrf.com
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