Thinking Global? Think ARTS

Retailers and vendors weighing international expansion to increase their markets should participate in ARTS. Whether you are a retailer or a vendor, global success requires knowledge of the differences in customs and legal requirements. Perhaps this is why a recent survey of members found that an RFP for defining International POS requirements is second only to Business Intelligence on their wish lists.

International requirements vary by country and customer but are most often legal regulations. Examples include:
• Multiple languages (Switzerland has four official languages; India has 21)
• Multiple currency capabilities
• Fiscal printers to permit audits
• Receipt retention policies ranging from one to 10 years
• Digital signature required to use electronic journals
• Requirements that certain items be the same price in all stores
• Returns and sales often may not be combined on the same transaction/receipt

German health and beauty retailer Parfumerie Douglas recently selected a new POS application to provide an interface that communicates consistent rules for operations to employees and explanation of policies to customers — all while complying with POS regulations in the more than 20 countries in which it operates. Giorgio Armani followed a similar course a few years earlier.

ARTS identifies global requirements and incorporates them into our standards by successfully soliciting participation from retailers and vendors that operate in all parts of the world. At the recent ARTS XML and Data Model meetings Alpha Bay hosted in Salt Lake City, IBM Germany made a presentation on the recently-released RTI standard for implementing SOA in stores and identified modifications required to fully support its pilot implementation in a leading German retailer.

Downloaded in 90 countries
Attendees from Japan outlined their intention to enhance XML-POS and POSlog for Foodservices to support operations there: ARTS recently completed an agreement of cooperation with Open Foodservices Consortium (OFSC) in Japan and has maintained an eight-year relationship with OPOS-J to ensure that ARTS standards meet Japanese requirements.

ARTS standards have been downloaded 31,000 times in more than 90 countries, resulting in many suggestions and comments that continually enable ARTS to enhance our standards for the global perspective.

On a typical day last month, companies from Venezuela, Canada, Philippines, Denmark and China downloaded ARTS standards. ARTS holds an annual international meeting in Europe (October 13-14, 2008 in Berlin, for example) to facilitate face-to-face discussion of unique business processes and the impact on IT support.

The Annual Retail Technology Summit held in Europe (October 14-15) provides global case studies on the use of IT in retail and the opportunity to network on new international requirements. Several ARTS-standard XML schemas have been translated into Spanish, thanks to Spanish retailer El Corte Ingles, an implementer of multiple ARTS standards, and Argentina based SyntheSiS Information Technology.

Join ARTS for global perspective
I don’t want to give the impression that international requirements are all about EMEA and Asia Pacific, however: ARTS standards remain the definitive guide to POS in the United States and Canada for companies based outside North America seeking to enter this market. The POSlog technical specification now contains more than 6,900 line items and 428 use cases. The success of several European POS vendors is at least in part attributable to their use of ARTS standards.

How can you learn about global requirements for POS and the many other retail applications? It starts by joining ARTS, attending one of our quarterly meetings and participating in a standards development work team. As a work team member you help build business use cases to define the standards that are tested for true global applicability via the full membership review process, all the while networking with key retail executives from around the world.