STORES Magazine - November 2008 - (Page 54)

CONSIDER THIS / ARTS UPDATE Education Program to Reduce IT Costs BY RICHARD MADER Throughout my many years in retail, the first expense reductions enacted during difficult times were always to sales-floor payroll, travel and education/training. I could never understand why education and training would get cut when the expected results — new ideas and more efficient use of time — are the exact things needed to succeed in a downturn. It appears this thinking might be turning around. As the recent NRF Retail IT Budget Benchmarking Study indicates, many retailers will continue to invest in new technology. Planned capital spending — which demands training — will increase 14 percent this year. For many years ARTS has used the slogan Reducing Technology Costs Through Standards, implying that retailers can implement new applications and underlying technology not just cheaper, but faster, offering a rapid return on investment and an edge on the competition. Effective use of ARTS standards to attain these objectives requires education, and ARTS is pleased to announce three new education courses that can be taken separately or in a related curriculum: • Understanding SOA for a Successful Implementation (7 hours) • Managing Your Data for Accuracy with the ARTS Data Model (5 hours) • Integrating Applications with XML (5 hours) Each of these courses has been delivered to and vetted by BJ’s Wholesale Club and Macy’s. They were developed to allow participants to learn in an environment free of vendor hype, with an emphasis on showing how open standards can bring benefits to a company. According to the IT Budget Benchmarking Study, networking and infrastructure are two other areas cited for increased investment. Surely any investment here must consider service-oriented architecture (SOA). ARTS has spent the last 24 months gathering and publishing information to guide SOA implementations. The results of this effort are the SOA Blueprint for Retail and SOA Best Practices Technical Report, the latter containing how-to tips from 26 of the best retail technology companies. Together, they form the nucleus of the SOA education class. physically implemented, it is often used as the road map for creating a managed data environment enabling data synchronization and offering standard data definitions for XML messaging, often within an SOA infrastructure. With more than 600 tables and nearly 5,000 elements, the first review always raises as many Richard Mader is executive questions as it answers. The director of ARTS. Data Model education course has been designed to enable users to implement the model as a physical database or to use it as a guide to develop one’s own single-version-ofthe-truth data architecture. XML is the language of the Internet and is uniquely suited to service-oriented architectures. The XML course was created to teach basic XML concepts and explain how to use the 17 standard ARTS schemas in the public domain to create and validate messages and to integrate disparate applications within an application architecture. Use of XML facilitates communications with suppliers and customers, and is particularly helpful in providing consistency to multiple sales channels. Data model as road map The ARTS Data Model is now fully integrated with a Data Warehouse version to facilitate the movement of data for analysis. The model itself has been implemented by vendors and retailers around the world. Where it has not been 54 STORES / NOVEMBER 2008 Workshop formats These educational workshops, led by the experts who participated in the development of these standards and are responsible for ongoing enhancements and maintenance, can take one of three formats: • Onsite and tailored to specific interests. Course materials can be reused internally. • Periodically given at NRF and ARTS events like the recent Retail Technology Summit in Berlin. • On the web as a multiple session webcast, with live questions and answers. Take the classes on your schedule. For more information on obtaining this education to maximize your technology investments, please contact maderr@nrf.com. WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

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STORES Magazine - November 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Every Cup Counts What Shoppers Think Less Park Time, More Shop Time 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Retail Held Captive First Look Concept2Watch Marketing Technology Custom Software PCI Compliance Data Security Arts Update Newsbeat LP Issues: Q&A Cover Story Surveillance Systems Online Fraud Industry Perspective LOEB Retail Letter Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - November 2008

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