Do you have a standards success story you would like to share?  ARTS is about helping the retail industry, so this is your chance to demonstrate your contribution.  Please contact Richard Mader, ARTS Executive Director, at maderr@nrf.com to discuss speaking opportunities at the Users’ Meeting in Orlando.  This represents a great opportunity to show why your applications are “best buys” for retailers because of the flexibility and ease of implementation enabled by using ARTS.  See www.nrf.com/artsusersmeeting  for more information on speaking and sponsorship.

Richard Mader of ARTS moderated panel discussion on Mobile Payments in retail at the 2009 IBM Retail Users group conference.  John Roland of BJ’s Wholesale presented the retailer perspective and how BJ’s will use mobile processing to extend addition services and conveniences to their members.  Mohammad Kahn of ViVOtech presented a mobile industry update on new equipment and use cases to provide customer services and reduce implementation efforts.  Kirstian Gjerding of CellPoint Mobile outlined infrastructure requirements for successful mobile processing, including m-commerce, remote payments and other business processes.  Review the presentation...

ARTS Announces Release of Business Intelligence (BI) Standard Request for Proposal

The Association for Retail Technology Standards is pleased to announce the release of the Standard Request for Proposal (RFP) for Business Intelligence (BI) Applications, the eighth in a series of Standard RFPs. RFPs assist retailers in selecting the right software applications for their specific business processes. NRF and ARTS Standard RFPs are available in a format that allows retailers to tailor them to their exact needs.  Read more...

ARTS announces new project to separate the payment process for the POS application to enable global standards and support mobile payments. Charter is now available for review and we encourage all members to sign-up to participate in this important project.

ARTS Executive Director Richard Mader recently made a presentation to the Epson Partner conference on the state of retail. Tired of all the bad news? Review this presentation for some upbeat information

UnifiedPOS version 1.13 is available for public review (Request for Comments). This version will be available for at least 30 days. Please be aware this download is over 11 Megs. Please send all comments to ARTS@nrf.com

Version 1.13 of this specification, released at NRF in 2009, includes updates that reflect feedback from device service developers and application development programmers as a result of using Version 1.12 and previous versions of this standard.  Version 1.13 does not contain any new POS peripheral devices. 

Extensive changes have been made to the XMLPOS section which should be reviewed carefully for those planning on applications that use XMLPOS.

Log into the Members Only area and download your copy of PCI Best Practices developed for NRF and ARTS by David Taylor of PCI Knowledge Base, along with David's January 2009 presentation on the topic to the NRF CIO Council in New York. Once you log in, go to the section with links to schemas, RFPs and Best Practices.

Release 6.0 of the Data Model will be available in late March – watch the ARTS website for the exact release date for the Model and all documentation.  In the meantime, click here for more information on the ARTS Data Model.  Download Committee Chair Kirstin Wright's presentation on the Model and the Dictionary here.

Version 1.2 is the second update since the initial release in January 2008. ARTS SOA Blueprint updates include: adding Plan to the domain model; a SOA Maturity Model describing the growth path for SOA from Pilot to Full Implementation; and a description of Web services expanded for alternative methods. Updates to the SOA Best Practices Report include: expanded Business Process Management Notation (BPMN) section; an updated description and usage guidelines section for UDDI and WSDL, principal components of web services; and enhanced descriptions of the SOA Tenets, the basic rules for SOA. Read the press release.

WS-POS is a new standard currently under development as part of UnifiedPOS version 2.0, planned for release in late 2009. WS-POS enables POS devices such as printers, scales and scanners to be connected to multiple transaction touch points such as POS terminals, mobile devices, virtual POS terminals and enable the retailer to use the power of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to allow access to POS peripherals anywhere in the store or enterprise. Click here to read the press release. The technical specification will be posted and available before the end of January. 

Cy Young Chair of the ARTS Board provided a very informative presentation on PCI Best Practices at the VeriFone Annual Payment Conference. This presentation is a precursor to the NRF-ARTS PCI Best Practices library that will be open for review and comment in January 2009. 

ARTS Consolidate Development Process has been updated to expand the description of the Charter section 5.1.3 for new standards. Of particular importance is the Business Scope that requires the work team create 2 business benefits for posting to the Solution Center. 

Executive Director Mader provided the keynote address at the Retail and Manufacturing Forum October 2nd in Phoenix. The presentation on Emerging Technology, highlighted Mobile processing, Video Intelligence/Analytics and SOA. Mader challenged the group to become “revolutionaries” to think outside the box in utilizing these new technologies to benefit their businesses. View the presentation. 

Greg Wilmer, Co-Chair of the ARTS SOA Blueprint committee and VP of Technology at Big Lots, gave an excellent presentation on implementing SOA following the guidance offered by ARTS.  Mr. Wilmer’s presentation includes tips for overcoming the obstacles to achieve a successful SOA implementation.

 

Greg’s presentation along with others from NRFtech, August 10 – 12 are available here. 

This new release has been expanded to provide additional information on migration to SOA and required tools.  The accompanying SOA Best Practices 1.1 will be available by the end of August. 

ARTS Scandinavia Launch great success

ARTS Scandinavia Launch great success, thanks to PCMS, ProfitBase and GK Software for their contributions.  See presentation

ARTS UnifiedPOS 1.12 is the new standard

UnifiedPOS version 1.12 has been approved by the ARTS Board, reviewed by users and committee members and has been promoted to standard. Click here to download the specification as a pdf file (15.9 MB) or click here to download a zip file (8.8 MB).  Click here to learn more about the standard and read the press release. 

Upcoming ARTS Standards Releases

April 17:  Standard Data Warehouse for BI

April 24:  Transaction Tax Schema

April 30:  Retail Transaction Interface Schema

May 29:  New ARTS Data Dictionary