Newsletter


Upcoming Meetings and Events:
	UnifiedPOS meeting, June 21 – 24 NRF Headquarters, Washington DC The agenda will focus on the next release1.9. Register to attend at nrf-arts.org under Meeting Registration.
	IXRetail and Data Model meetings, August 2 – 6 Microsoft Offices, Washington DC Register to attend at nrf-arts.org under Meeting Registration
	ARTS will present at NRF Loss Prevention Conference and Exhibition, June 22 – 24 Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida ARTS expects to release the first draft of the POS Exception Reporting RFP at this conference. See NRF.com for conference information.
	2^nd Annual NRF-ARTS Retail Technology Summit in association with RetailWeek, October 7^th ARTS and NRF, in association with RetailWeek, a leading trade publication, will once again organize a Retail Technology Summit in London on October 7^th. Data Model and IXRetail meetings will be held in London October 4 – 6. We encourage members from UK and Europe to attend – these meetings are for you.

Welcome New ARTS Members
Boutique Jacob	Canada
Cabela’s Inc.	United States
CommercialWare, Inc.	United States
Delta Add-Power Systems, Inc.	United States
JavaGreen Pvt Ltd	India
Kohl's Department Stores, Inc.	United States
MCRL	Germany
Raley's Inc.	United States
Reflexis Systems, Inc.	United States
RetailVision Group	Netherlands
Stamford Consult AB	Sweden
Tequila Software, Inc.	Canada
Tomax Corporation	United States

Top Story of the Month
ARTS Board Adds Five New Members, Expands to 25 Total Members
The ARTS Board is pleased to the addition of these new members: Cy Young of Burlington Coat, a long time advocate of open systems; John Morgan of Circuit City, a user of the Data Model; Don Hooker of ADS Retail, a conformant ARTS vendor; Al Pappa of Fujitsu, a member of the original Data Model development committee; and Brent Brown of Hewlett-Packard, a key player in the new HP POS offerings. These new members illustrate the diversity of ARTS Board membership, which ranges from CEOs to marketing executives to experienced technicians, allowing the Board to give direction to ARTS activities across a wide range of policy and operational issues. The ever-growing influence of ARTS in the retail IT community has prompted many requests to serve on the ARTS Board and to help guide development of our standards. Read the ARTS Update in this month’s edition of Stores Magazine to learn more about the ARTS Board and its role in ARTS’ success.

Recent Activities and Events

ARTS and Microsoft Announce Cooperative Conformance Testing
	Microsoft and ARTS announced at Retail Systems that ARTS has been chosen by Microsoft Corp. to help develop the standards for the .NET Connected for Smarter Retailing logo program. Software vendors may receive the .NET Connected for Smarter Retailing logo if they have an application built on the Microsoft .NET Framework that also either exposes or consumes a Web service and has also passed the ARTS IXRetail standard XML schemas conformance test for interfacing applications within the retail enterprise. Full details are available on the ARTS website at nrf-arts.org.

Join Standard RFP Committees for Loss Prevention POS Exception Reporting and Signature Capture RFPs
	Committees are being formed to review and develop these soon-to-be-released RFPs. If you wish to participate on these committees please contact ARTS@nrf.com. The POS Exception is ready for first review; hurry to be sure your voice is heard.
ARTS adopts New Process to coordinate RFP, IXRetail and Data Model Development
	The successful RFP program will become the determining factor for new XML schemas and enhancements to the Data Model. The ARTS Board and NRF CIO Council will select topics for RFPs, IXRetail will create work teams to create schemas to integrate the applications addressed by the RFPs, and the Data Model committee will ensure the Model includes all new elements. Conformance testing for the Data Model and IXRetail schemas will help ensure that integration costs for purchased application as guided by the RFP will be at a minimum.
ARTS Members Present at IBM Store Systems User Conference
	In a main tent presentation, Dave Moorman, Director of Retail for PCMS Datafit and Tom Rittman, VP of Marketing for Datavantage, wowed the audience with the story of they were able to successfully integrate their applications using POSlog and share data in only 26 minutes. ARTS Executive Director Richard Mader also presented on the ARTS Standard RFP program, prompting several requests to participate in the project. All presentations are available on nrf-arts.org.