• European Technology Council (ETC)
  The 1 st quarterly meeting of the NRF-ARTS European Technology Council (ETC) was hosted by Harrods in London on March 15, 2005. Massimo Franzese, IT Director, Harrods, was elected Council chair and potential tasks were identified; 1) review and update the Master Agreement section of the ITT’s for European consideration, 2) form a work team to develop one or more schemas from the Warehouse Management ITT to ease integration and 3) review the IXRetail conformance test criteria and suggest enhancements. The Council mission was defined as interfacing with the U.S-based NRF CIO Council and ensuring that ARTS global standards fully conform to international requirements, organizing local work teams and activities and promoting adoption of standards.

  Click here to register for the next meeting scheduled on June 8, 2005, in conjunction with Retail Solutions United Kingdom.

• Who Passed Conformance Testing?
  Congratulations to Cornell Mayo and Associates (CMA) and 360Commerce, Inc. for passing conformance-testing for POSlog. A full list of conformant vendors for IXRetail and Data Model is availableby clicking here.

• Proposed Standard ► Notification Events for Applications in
  Retail (NEAR)
  NEAR is a standard proposed at the ARTS IXRetail meeting in San Francisco last month that would pass real-time “event” messages between disparate systems. This new standard allows the reporting of a change in a condition within an enterprise in real-time. Event examples include 1) a special order arrives at the store ► an automated message is sent to the store manager, 2) a till has too much money ► an automated message is sent to the cash office, 3) an inventory item reaches replenishment point ► an automated message is sent to purchasing.

  For detailed information members may review the 2005 Feb28-Mar2 San Francisco meeting minutes on the ARTS WebBoard.

• Standard Data Protocol for Monitoring Remote Equipment
  ARTS and the North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers (NAFEM) have reached tentative agreement to cooperate on developing a standard data protocol for monitoring remote equipment. Retailer representatives, particularly from the food and grocery segments are needed to participate in this effort. Please contact ARTS@nrf.com for more information.

• ARTS UnifiedPOS
  The ARTS UnifiedPOS technical committee met in Atlanta to begin work on release 2.0. Items considered for inclusion in this next version include Electronic Journal, Biometrics, RFID and enhancements to existing supported devices. If you have comments or suggestions for this next release please contact ARTS@nrf.com.

• ARTS Data Model
  The new release of the ARTS Data Model will be available by May 1, 2005. Release 5.0 is full of enhancements, customer orders, enhanced POS transaction control, additional enterprise-wide management and close alignment with POSlog.

• Standard RFP Program Update
  Warehouse Management, the fifth ARTS-NRF standard RFP, will be available to ARTS and NRF members in early April. The next standard RFP to be created will be Price Optimization. ARTS needs previously used RFPs on Price Optimization to guide development. Please contact maderr@nrf.com if you wish to contribute.

• ARTS-NRF Standard RFP article March 2005 STORES
  Read the STORES article on how the ARTS and NRF Requests for Proposal (RFP's) Program can assist you to select the right application(s), per Limited Brands and Tractor Supply.

• ARTS IP Policy Effective March 6, 2005
  ARTS and NRF developed the IP policy over a 24+ month period with dedicated assistance by attorneys from IBM, Microsoft, and Seiko Epson. This policy enables retailers and vendors to implement ARTS standards with a significantly lower risk of lawsuits due to undisclosed intellectual property being inadvertently embedded in ARTS standard and encourages participation in technical meeting by protecting IP rights of contributors.

• ARTS Update at the NRF Annual Convention
  Missed the update? View the presentation online.

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