Following the presentation of survey results, a panel discussion addressed questions raised by the survey and how ARTS standards can help retailers achieve their business goals. Panelists included former ARTS board chairs Ann McCool and Jeannine Ralston, current board member Tim Hood of SAP and Greg Buzek of IHL Consulting.

Some highlights of that discussion:
Retail IT spending levels are notoriously low relative to other industries. The RIS/IHL study shows steady increases in IT spending at the store level. The question: is now the time to move systems into the standards-based 21st century? Or are spending levels still too low?

The NRF-AMR Research study reports total capital spending will increase 3 percent in 2008; spending on infrastructure and store hardware will rise 85 percent and 18 percent, respectively. Anticipated infrastructure spending indicates greater interest in SOA, so ARTS’ focus on SOA over the past 18 months was a timely investment.

ARTS provides SOA training, and the SOA Blueprint and Best Practices Technical Report are a guide to retailer implementations. These resources, along with implementation of the 17 available ARTS XML schemas, could lower infrastructure spending and permit reallocation of assets to other budget areas.

Controlling payroll costs remains a primary concern. It’s impossible to manage payroll effectively without workforce management software, and ARTS has a standard RFP template for WFM.

Without automated information, it is simply too easy to reduce payroll to the detriment of customer service. The updated RFP will not only help select the right vendor application, but guide retailers in implementing business practices that can have a positive bottom-line impact. The addition of task management to the RFP allows retailers to effectively manage payroll beyond the sales floor.

PCI Compliance jumps to the top of the priority list. No surprise here due to looming deadlines. PCI has forced retailers to divert IT resources from other projects with higher ROI. Protecting customer data has always been a very high priority with retailers, and many find the PCI Data Security Standard (PCS DSS) to be imprecise and without goals that can be objectively measured. NRF and ARTS are just beginning development of an IT best practices library that will start with PCI. This will be a huge benefit to tier 2 retailers and below — those who are just now attempting to implement the standard. Tier 1 has already gone through the pain, and will share its solutions for achieving compliance.

Retailers lose $93 billion annually to out of stocks. How can retailers meet these challenges? It begins with proper merchandise planning and replenishment. It is very important to have frequent communications with stores and suppliers, particularly on promotions, advertising calendars and seasonal plans. ARTS has developed several schemas to help with inventory management. We are also developing a data warehouse model that will store data to guide future purchases and identify new trends in product demand using key product indications.

POS software keeps getting more complex. The top three functions retailers want to add with their next POS purchase are CRM/loyalty management, inventory visibility and gift card activation. ARTS knows POS: Our data model defines the data and best practices for POS, item maintenance, pricing, customers and inventory/sales reporting, and our schemas present this data in a more modern format. ARTS developed the StoredValue (gift card) schema over three years ago, and POSlog, the de facto data capture standard for POS, contains all the information a retailer should capture and retain at POS. Loyalty is fully addressed in the Customer schema.

Self-checkout has no measurable effect on shrink. It is still mostly confined to food, grocery and mass merchants, but the study’s findings may hasten the rollout of self-checkout to other verticals. Our newest standard, Retail Transaction Interface, uses POSlog to expose core POS functions as services so that retailers can use core POS functions at multiple touch points. This allows consistent representation of policies and processes to the customer, whether in store or via the web, kiosk or other self-service device.