ARTS Welcomes New Members

April 2006

• ARTS Developing Standard for Data Exchange with Comparative Shopping Engines (CSEs)

  With the support of Shop.org, ARTS is creating standard XML data messages to send product information to Comparative Shopping Engines (CSEs) and for online retailers to receive back confirmation messages and click reports.  Jay Heavilon, President of Mars Interactive, was recently elected chair of the new ARTS work team organized to create a first draft of these standards in time for Christmas 2006.  According to Jay, “The goal is to eliminate the frustration that both the retailer and the CSEs are experiencing.   Too many staff resources at the retailer and CSE organizations are spending their time researching and correcting feeds instead of marketing products.” 

  Messages to post products are just the first of many standards this work team is tasked to develop.  Future efforts will establish common product categories for consistent display of similar products, pay-per-click reports and other analytics to allow retailers to make informed marketing decisions, and standard messages to allow retailers to easily create accounts on multiple CSEs. 

  As validation of the critical need for these standards, AOL, Mercent, Performics, Channel Intelligence, Etilize and Yahoo have joined ARTS to work with Target, RadioShack, AccessVia, Epson, Gladson Interactive, IBM, MSN and others to develop them.  The work team will meet during the IXRetail Committee meeting, May 8 – 10 at RadioShack headquarters in Ft. Worth.  For more information or to participate, email arts@nrf.com.

   

• Hollis Posey, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Longtime ARTS Board Member, to Retire

  As the IBM representative to the Board for the last nine years, Hollis was instrumental in creating the ARTS Software Distribution guide and also led the creation of the UnifiedPOS standard.  Hollis also worked diligently on the creation and adoption of the ARTS IP policy.  A longtime supporter of ARTS, he also ensured that IBM participated on all three technical committees (IXRetail, Data Model and UnifiedPOS).  Please join ARTS in congratulating Hollis on his retirement and best wishes on this next chapter of his life.

   

• NCR the latest vendor to pass ARTS POSlog conformance

  ARTS congratulates NCR Corporation for being the latest vendor to pass conformance testing for POSlog version 2.1.  NCR’s application is Advanced Checkout Solution version 6.2.  Click here for more details from the ARTS website. 

• ARTS Releases Results of Member Survey

  ARTS recently surveyed the membership to help determine ARTS’ development priorities for the coming year and also for general guidance on how ARTS should allocate resources among the different standards (IXRetail, Data Model, UnifiedPOS and Standard RFPs).

   The responses been tallied and the results are:

  Votes	RFP Rankings	Votes	Schema Rankings
  22	Master Data Management	27	Update Item Schema
  20	Update POS for Special Reqs.	21	Update Inventory Schema
  17	Merchandise Planning	19	PCM Schema
  12	Update POS Hardware Guidelines	14	Vendor Management
  12	Task Management	12	NEAR
  12	MultiChannel	11	Workforce Management
  9	Fresh Management For Grocery	11	Update REMC
  7	Returns Management	8	Event Calendar
  3	Real Estate	1	Schedule
  1	Forecourt Operations

  Per your direction, ARTS will begin work on the Master Data Management RFP Monday, May 8 at the IXRetail committee meeting in Ft. Worth.  If you have a previous RFP on this subject or other selection materials please send them to ARTS.  To participate in the MDM RFP meeting contact Richard Mader for details.

   

• ARTS to attend Softechnics 20^th Annual Users Conference

  Softechnics celebrates 20 years of informative users conferences April 24-26 in San Diego.  If you are attending, stop by our booth to find out “What’s New” with ARTS and give us your feedback on services and communications.

Committee News

• IXRetail Technical Committee to offer Education in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

  The ARTS IXRetail technical committee will lead education sessions on implementing ARTS standards via Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).  SOAs and Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs) are new tools to allow retailers to integrate disparate systems.  They provide the connection, ARTS provides the data formats.  What better way to learn the right choice for you business than from the expert members of the technical committee: Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, Oracle, Triversity, IBM and others.  Classes should begin in July or August, so be sure to budget time to attend!

   

• European Technology Council (ETC) to meet at Retail Solutions, June 7 in UK

  The next meeting of the ETC will be Wednesday, June 7, at the NEC in Birmingham during the Retail Solutions trade show.  Plan now to attend the show; location of the lunch meeting will be emailed to EMEA members soon.

   

• WAMPOS renamed RA-POS; Identifies Approaches to Remote Connectivity

  The WAMPOS work team of UnifiedPOS reports great progress in creating remote web connectivity for POS devices.  The work team has been renamed Remote Access POS (RA-POS) to denote a three-phase effort using these approaches to accomplish the objective of remote connectivity:

  ·     XMLPOS:         A straight mapping between UnitifedPOS UML into XML

  • WS POS:          Employing Web Services to provide remote access. 
  • WAMPOS:        Browser-based remote access.

   Remote Access POS will meet Tuesday April 25 during the UnifiedPOS meeting April 25-27, hosted by Ultimate Technology in Rochester NY.

This is a free service to keep you up-to-date on the latest new programs and publications available to you through ARTS.

It is our hope that you will find ARTS Update a valuable resource and will share it with your friends and colleagues.

ARTS | 325 7th St NW Suite 1100 | Washington, DC 20004