NRF: ARTS Hits Its Stride

The Association of Retail Technology Standards has been around for 15 years, but it has taken the push towards Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS) to really bring the benefits of ARTS to the forefront.

At this week's NRF Conference, ARTS announced the latest release of its data model, a new ARTS data dictionary, and a new release of the ARTS SOA Blueprint. They also received praise from retail members El Corte Ingle's, Big Lots, and BJ's Wholesale Club who explained how the various ARTS tools have helped them implement technology.

In addition to the standards, ARTS has also developed templates for conducting software product reviews for applications that address Point of Sale, Work Force Management, Loss Prevention, Signature Capture, Warehouse Management, Price Optimization and Master Data Management. These templates give retailer teams beginning a new software acquisition or development project the tools they need to get started. The templates effectively address the "blank slate" syndrome that can prevent new projects from getting off the ground because the team members have not had previous experience.

One of the most significant announcement may have been the SOA Blueprint. As software vendors embrace the SOA technology, retailers can expect to easily connect software from different vendors. With the technical challenges solved, the more complicated challenge of a common business process model becomes the hurdle. Retailers want to be able to combine the best pricing module with the assortment planner, warehouse management and replenishment modules to create the overall business software platform that matches their way of operating. The ARTS SOA Blueprint provides the framework within which independent vendors can develop their own solutions so they will be compatible with other solutions. They avoid overlapping functionality and disputes over which software "owns" a particular data attribute.

Discussion Questions: How do you see ARTS tools being beneficial to retail organizations? If you've had experience with the ARTS tools, are there particular tools or processes you found most useful? How could ARTS be even better?

Author's comment: One of the challenges a retail CIO has to deal with is the communication between the business managers and the technicians in the IT department. I find the ARTS tools and standards a great way to begin the dialogue. One of the challenges an ARTS user must understand is that they are not getting a finished product. The tools are like the par-baked inputs to the bakery department or primal cuts to the meat department, they are a starting point. Retailers need to take the ARTS information and evaluate it against their particular needs and capabilities. It may be necessary to defer or enhance some areas because they don't fit in their environment. But they sure beat starting from scratch.

Keeping the ARTS effort going requires continued support from its retail members. It is easy to join, download the projects you need, and then go away. Retailers need to remain active and offer both personnel and resources to support the continued enhancement of the ARTS repository. It offers a huge payback for those who need to start a technology effort.

• ARTS Announces Release of Version 6.0 of the Standard Retail Data Model - NRF news release
• ARTS - Association for Retail Technology Standards - website