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Q&A: Helping Retailers Adapt

The Association for Retail Technology Standards is working to develop data standards for retailers.

By Noreen Seebacher | Updated on March 26, 2009

The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) wants to help retailers reduce the costs of technology. Founded 16 years ago, the organization operates as a separate council within the National Retail Federation. The goal is to develop true open systems standards that:

  • Provide for cost effective integrated application solutions that protect investment;
  • Allow “best of breed” hardware and software components that will require minimal interfacing;
  • Enable the utilization of hardware and software technology at the rate it develops;
  • Create a global system of retail technology standards through a series of common interfaces.

Richard Mader is executive director of ARTS. Mader has more than 30 years of experience in retail information management, having served as SVP and CIO for Boscov’s and Bon-Ton Department stores, director of corporate systems for Federated Department Stores and manager of programming and operating systems for McCrory’s.

He led the development of the first Standard Data Model for Retail, now in use around the world, and the Unified Point of Service (UnifiedPOS) Standard, a specification for connecting over 30 different peripheral devices to a sales terminal with minimal, if any, programming changes or integration costs. He’s now leading the ARTS standard XML Application to Application messaging standard to reduce the time and cost of systems integration.

To date, fourteen different schemas have been produced and placed in the public domain and the POSlog schema has been downloaded by over 4000 unique users in 76 countries around the world. In the first of a two-part interview, GlobeSt.com talked to Mader about the progress ARTS has made to so far.

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