STORES Magazine - May 2008 - (Page 106)

CONSIDER THIS/ ARTS UPDATE Cut Costs, Not Service BY RICHARD MADER A challenging economy presents the classic dilemma to retailers: how to cut expenses without losing customers or competitive edge by undermining service. Recognizing that many retailers correctly look for IT to play a leading role in meeting these challenges, ARTS has released three new standards, each offering opportunities for savings as well as the potential to increase sales through better service. The first to be released was the Tax TransTo ensure that RTI will work for retailers action XML technical specification. The com“out of the box,” IBM implemented the RTI plexity of U.S. sales taxes, with some locatechnology for a client in Germany in tandem tions allowing three or more jurisdictions to with the creation of the standard. This “live” tax a single sale, has made it practically imtesting of developing standards is a practice possible for retailers to maintain the current ARTS will utilize wherever possible to allow tax tables in their POS systems. our members to rely on our products, particuTax Transaction simplifies accurate tax collarly those supporting SOA. lection by allowing retailers to communicate Last but by no means least, the ARTS Warewith ADP Taxware or Vertex to access tax house Data Model is now available to support rules for updating internal applications — or improved retail business intelligence. The pass sales transactions to these specialists warehouse is a data store designed to supto calculate the proper tax via standardized port any of the many Business Intelligence XML messages. This clearly reduces the inanalysis applications available in the market Richard Mader is executive ternal IT workload and eliminates overlooked — the makers of many of which (Teradata, director of ARTS. updates. Quanitsense, Retail Anywhere and ProfitTax Transaction Base) contributed to its development. The warecan also have a house model is derived from the widely-implemented The warehouse model is positive impact on ARTS Data Model that stores all the operational data derived from the widely-implereducing the time required to operate a successful retail business. mented ARTS Data Model that and expense of tax audits and supports Norwegian testing stores all the operational data your SarbanesThe ARTS mission in developing the warehouse required to operate a successful Oxley compliance. model was to reduce the two principal challenges to retail business By creating a log supplying data to the business for decision making: file that integrates ensuring data is accurate by identifying the correct with reporting systems, the number of audits can be resource, and allowing a timely and smooth flow of updated duced and, when they do arise, can be resolved quickly. information to the warehouse. The warehouse model also contains sample key performance indicators (KPIs) to guide retailers in selecting the proper data to store in the SOA services warehouse. As with RTI, Norwegian member ProfitBase Retail Transaction Interface (RTI) is the first ARTS XML piloted the ARTS data warehouse during its development, schema specifically designed to work in a service- oriented so we are confident it works as designed. architecture (SOA). RTI exposes POS sales transaction These releases fulfill the promise of standards: allowing functions as a set of SOA services, allowing them to be retailers to adopt new technologies and enhance customer used by other customer-service solutions such as selfservice, while actually driving costs out of your operation. checkout, fuel at grocery stores, kiosks, shop on the web, Why not take a moment and review our website (www.nrfstore within a store, portable shopper and mobile line arts.org) or e-mail me at maderr@nrf.com to see how buster. This enables retailers to offer additional customer ARTS can help you weather the current stormy economy services quickly and inexpensively, while maintaining a and emerge stronger than ever. consistent look and feel. 106 STORES / MAY 2008 WWW.STORES.ORG http://www.nrfarts.org http://www.nrfarts.org http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - May 2008

Stores - May 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Contrasting C-Level Compensation Across Segments What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Cover Story: Concepts That Clicked Concept2Watch Kiosks Artificial Intelligence Tech Support Online LPinformation Data Synchronization Human Resources Site Selection POS Selection Communications Biometrics Networking Systems Credit Loeb Retail Letter Arts Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.