In Touch With Retailing

Solving the Retailing Interoperability Challenge

By Austen Mulinder, President and CEO, Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc.

An explosion of consumer-facing devices, in and out of the store, is driving a pervasive retailing future – where consumers increasingly expect personalized interaction on the device of their choice, anywhere, any time and every time.

In an ideal world, all of these devices enable real-time interoperablity. But in the “real” world, these pervasive devices, and the applications that create value from using them come from many different vendors on multiple platforms. Getting these disparate applications and devices to work together effectively is an enormous challenge, especially when recognizing the need to integrate them with legacy systems.

While meeting this challenge can be a daunting task, the benefits are significant. Offering consumers the opportunity to shop and buy when and where they want, and recognizing them as individuals with personalized interactions, creates huge opportunities to differentiate the shopping experience and to drive increased sales.

This vision is not a new one, but most people assume it is still out of reach. In fact, it can be – and is being realized – today.

Store Systems vs. POS Systems

The first step to solving the real-time retailing interoperability challenge is to break some current paradigms about traditional point-of-sale (POS) systems. Available technology has forced retailers to buy discrete point solutions for their stores – such as POS, self-checkout and kiosk – and then create point-to-point integration. This approach is time consuming and results in a system of patched-together software and device, making future additions or upgrades a time-consuming and costly headache.

More often than not, potential market innovations are left on the drawing board because the enabling interopeability is too difficult and costly.

Connecting stores to the enterprise, Web and each individual customer demands a “store system” with capabilities far beyond a traditional POS approach. Such an environment requires a unified framework of software, tools and services, all based on open standards that simplify the interoperability of disparate devices components.

But a true "store systems" can only be achieved with the right combination of engineering know-how to fully exploit five key technologies required to integrate this complex mix of multi-vendor devices, applications and platforms:

• Software Engineering – to build and/or integrate applications that enable all aspects of store operations with full interoperability between applications and devices, and between the enterprise, online channels and the store.
• Hardware Engineering – to integrate and deploy devices and systems that make it easy for consumers to shop wherever they want, whether at home, on the go, or in a traditional store setting.
• Mobile Engineering – to incorporate the latest hand-held devices and mobile phones, so retail personnel can better serve the shopper.
• Network Engineering – to assure the security and privacy of networking solutions that connect devices within the store, to the enterprise, to the Internet and, of course, to the shopper who wants answers – and purchases – in real time.
• Lifecycle Services – to simplify and lower the cost of maintaining and supporting a wide range of in-store technologies from multiple vendors.

These five engineering disciplines, in and of themselves, however, are not enough. Understanding how to extend legacy systems is also required. Retailers cannot be expected to rip out and replace their existing systems as they invest in newer ones. Building a store system for tomorrow must take advantage of what's working today.

"Store Systems" Examples

As and example of a store system, rather than a traditional POS approach, a leading European grocer cut its self-checkout system installation time in half. The grocer used a virtual point-of-sale messaging framework – or software code – that significantly enhanced communications between the front-end cash registers and the self-checkout systems. By embedding this software code into the retailer’s POS, the self-checkout system went live in just 57 days after vendor selection.

Another leading retailer can can now access its corporate headquarters inventory data to find the correct size, color and style of a garment in real-time at another store, thus selling that item right then to the customer, who either picks it up at the other store, or receives it in the mail.

Taking a standards-based "store systems" approach to the traditional POS system decision enables retailers to transform the shopping experience by delivering compelling, personalized interactions that inspire more shopping – and buying. And with a platform designed to leverage legacy systems and integrate with pervasive devices and applications, the benefits include a happier base of shoppers and a higher technology ROI.