The EHI Retail Institute and the National Retail Federation (NRF), were hosting the European Retail Technology Summit in Amsterdam on June 9 and 10 2009. The central issue in this IT conference was: How can retailers use IT in order to assert themselves? And how can they continue to prosper on the global market even under difficult financial conditions?
“The role of the scales in the food retail sector has significantly expanded in recent years. And without doubt, this trend will continue”, says Daniel Joha, METTLER TOLEDO head of retail marketing management. The actual weighing function is losing its importance in favour of other performance features. The scales are becoming increasingly important as an input and output device in the IT infrastructure.
METTLER TOLEDO – member of EHI and the Association for Retail Technology (ARTS) since 2005 – participated in the conference in Amsterdam. ARTS was founded in 1993 and is an independent National Retail Federation (NRF) committee. It devotes itself to the development and establishment of globally applicable open standards for the retail sector. The results so far are the Standard Retail Data Model, UnifiedPOS, ARTS XML, Standard RFPs as well as the ARTS SOA Blueprint.
Scales increasingly important for IT infrastructure
The scales deliver up-to-the-minute sales data to the inventory management, procurement logistics and controlling. They utilise extra information, maintained centrally or decentrally, to improve marketing and the sales process. Thus providing the central data source, as well as a staff and consumer-friendly interface to exploit the potential for savings on the one hand, and sustainably optimize business processes on the other. “Concepts such as service-oriented architecture, namely SOA, will bring a completely new quality into the processes”, according to Daniel Joha. “Services are defined and implemented that in turn interact completely independently of the operating system and platforms used. The availability of such services, as easily integrated into the business process and the value chain as possible, is becoming more and more important. In future that can help to adapt processes, from the receipt of the goods, across the service counter and to the check-out, even more flexibly to changing requirements.”
Using open standards and interfaces
Open interfaces and standards, like those METTLER TOLEDO have been using in their products for many years, and the development and implementation of which is actively supported by groups like ARTS, are indispensible prerequisites. Daniel Joha: “We see ourselves as a driving force behind the utilisation of such open standards in our own products and their further promotion in the retail sector.”
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