IT vendors ready wares for retail crowd

By Ann Bednarz
Network World, 06/24/02

CHICAGO - With retailers shifting from a build-it-in-house to a buy-it-off-the-shelf mentality, vendors exhibiting this week at one of the retail industry's biggest network and IT conferences hope to snare some of their spending money.

Organizers expect the Retail Systems 2002/VICS Collaborative Commerce conference to draw between 3,500 and 4,000 attendees, which is roughly in line with last year's attendance; 272 exhibitors are lined up, down from last year's 340 exhibitors. The show consolidates two previously separate but concurrent events.

Experts say retailers' IT dollars are earmarked these days for point-of-sale (POS) upgrades, communications infrastructure, application integration and data analytics, among other areas. In general, there's a move under way from custom-built applications to packaged applications, according to a survey of 71 retail CIOs and IT executives conducted this spring by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Executive Technology. The survey found 49.3% of respondents expect to have mainly packaged applications within three years.

POS systems, in particular, are getting a lot of attention. In many cases, POS systems are 10 to 20 years old - and sometimes even as old as the cashiers operating them, PricewaterhouseCoopers analysts found. Aging POS systems are a constant drain on IT resources, can't support emerging applications and typically are poorly integrated with other systems. As a result, 59.3% of respondents say replacing or extending the life of POS registers is their No. 1 spending priority for customer-facing systems.

Just in time, retail software maker Retek will debut a POS product at this week's show. Retek traditionally offers software for CRM, supply-chain management, and retail planning and optimization. Now, through its April acquisition of Chelsea Market Systems, Retek has a new POS system to add to its portfolio: the Java-based Retek Point-of-Service product.

Microsoft and Intel also have their sights set on POS. Along with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the companies will announce at the show plans to deliver a POS system based on Intel's processors, Microsoft's operating system and Pricewaterhouse-Cooper's systems integration expertise. The goal of the trio's Extended POS offering is to let retailers and suppliers manage real-time information starting at the purchasing point and extending into the retail supply chain via kiosks, wireless devices and servers, the companies say.

Others announcing products at the show include:

Texas Instruments, which will show its new line of radio frequency identification (RFID) smart label components, which will let retailers track items at various points along the supply chain, including at manufacturing facilities, distribution centers and retail stores. A demonstration at the show will include a reader that can identify boxed RFID-tagged items - to show that line-of-sight is not required - and an in-store scenario with RFID-enabled shelves for quickly locating merchandise.

Brickstream, a start-up that launched in January with a suite of video-based monitoring software for tracking customer service and merchandising effectiveness, will unveil tools that alert retailers through wireless devices when certain events occur in their stores, such as long checkout lines, people abandoning checkout lines, or unusually high customer arrival rates. Brickstream Alerts will deliver an alert message to any e-mail-compatible device such as a PDA, cell phone, pager or in-store wireless phone.