Company News • 11.11.2014

Significant updates to Data Model Standards

The Association for Retail Technology Standards announced the approval of the ARTS Operational Data Model version 7.0, and the ARTS Data Warehouse Model 3.0.

“ARTS released its very first version of the Data Model for Retail in 1994,” said Tom Litchford, vice president of retail technologies for NRF.  “Today’s release of the updated models represents the most significant expansions to both models in over 10 years. Both offer support for retailers to better understand customer behavior, and sets the stage for future work in the areas of promotion management, customer interaction, social networking and other aspects of the consumer-retailer conversation.”

The ARTS Operational Data Model is a retail-specific roadmap that allows a company to plan how it organizes and uses its transaction data. Additionally, it offers a basis for building integrated applications or selecting off-the-shelf retail solutions, and for helping application developers and analysts understand retail business principles and terminology.

“The Data Subcommittee worked hard to make the documentation for the models easy to use, and we are excited to be able to release these substantial updates,” said John Glaubitz, principal architect at Vertex Inc., and chair of the ARTS Data Subcommittee.  “The HTML version of the operational model combines the diagrams and offers explanations of what the model contains and how it can be used.”

A data warehouse is a database used for reporting and analysis within retail. It stores current and historical data, and is used for creating trending reports for senior management such as annual and quarterly comparisons. Like the Operational Model, the ARTS Data Warehouse offers companies a template that retailers and their vendors can use to create their own data warehouses.

Every version of the ARTS Data Warehouse includes a section on calculating performance measures and key performance indicators.  KPIs are benchmarks that can be used to assess whether a business is performing well or poorly. The KPIs for version 3.0 were greatly expanded and allow retailers to review their business based on customer behavior. Some KPIs, for example, show whether loyalty customers purchase more than non-loyalty customers, and how they respond to advertisements.

Leadership for the ARTS Data Subcommittee, which maintains and develops the models, was provided by current Subcommittee Chairman John Glaubitz of Vertex Inc., and Data Warehouse Work Team Chairman Allison Troop of Beall’s Department Stores. Volunteers from all segments of the retail industry and from around the world have participated over the years in developing the model with support from the international retail technology vendor community. The ARTS Operational and Data Warehouse Models for Retail are available to NRF, ARTS and Shop.org members at no charge on NRF.com.

Source: National Retail Federation

 

channels: data management, data analysis, data storage