ARTS Pavilion: New Look, New Features

This month at Retail’s BIG Show, the ARTS Pavilion 2010 (Booth 2037) will be sporting a completely new look, a bright, clean-cut appearance that we hope reflects the better times just ahead for retail.

Experts say that while the recession has technically ended, spending levels will remain below the boom years and retailers will need to operate “lean and mean” to achieve profits and growth.

The good news: There are applications and technologies becoming available that can help you attract customers, increase margins and operate efficiently, many of them built on ARTS standards by our sponsors and on display in the Pavilion.

Cloud Computing and SOA are changing the way your IT department delivers business support. Retailers around the globe have used the ARTS SOA Blueprint; this year ARTS has created a white paper on Cloud Computing with all the necessary information for renting software and computing power to supplement your IT environment.

Combined, Cloud and SOA can create an IT revolution — possibly reducing your IT cost to 1 percent of sales or less. Stop by the Pavilion to review the Cloud white paper; both Microsoft and IBM will be there to discuss Cloud, with IBM demonstrating Cloud Computing Solutions for Retail that combine rapid scalability and unprecedented self-service applications.

Mobile processing is coming on strong, and NRF and ARTS have formed a committee to write a white paper that will give retailers the information they need to effectively utilize these technologies. Discussions indicate that the first applications will be customer promotion and loyalty.

Third Solutions will demonstrate its promotion application using digital receipts — today on POS terminals, tomorrow on a mobile device utilizing the mobile version of the ARTS digital receipts standard now in development.

Use of mobile, promotions
And while in the Pavilion, ask Verizon Business about its vision for the new world of mobile in retail and for IBM to demonstrate Smart Mobile Grocery, an application to welcome shoppers to the store and effectively target promotions.

Efficient operations demand business intelligence. ARTS has written an RFP to guide retailers in purchasing the “right” BI application and provide guidance for building a data warehouse to store the necessary information. Profitbase has used the ARTS warehouse model to develop a BI application built on the Microsoft platform and will tell you the benefits of standards.

Collecting accurate information for your BI application and properly managing the price and inventory guidance it generates require a full-function merchandise processing application like the Retail Business Suite from Soft Solutions. Its applications embed the ARTS Data Model and many of our standard XML schemas: no wonder they are deployed in so many retail segments.

Focus on margin
When sales growth is slow or negative, retailers focus on margin. One margin-improvement method is development of private label products, which requires a product lifecycle management (PLM) application to manage design, manufacturing and shipping. ARTS is updating its standards for PLM: NGC is helping create these standards for incorporation into its application.

Epson and Bizerba hardware utilize UnifiedPOS, and their applications work in an SOA architecture. Bizerba, based in Germany, can integrate with mobile payments, digital receipts and fresh item traceability, while Epson printers and other devices can connect to any POS terminal, thanks to UnifiedPOS.

In tough times, loss prevention efforts can be a key to profitability. Stopping fraud at the point of sale and complying with PCI guidelines is top of mind for most retailers; to that end, MagTek will demonstrate end-to-end encryption and secure scan as built into UnifiedPOS.

If you’re looking to make 2010 a better year, make the Pavilion the No. 1 stop on your tour of the BIG Show exhibit floor.