The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) has announced the public release of the IXRetail Worker Management schema. This schema will support the Workforce Management (Time & Attendance, Staff Scheduling and Task Management) RFP template and is the first of two schemas to facilitate integration of workforce management applications. Coordinating the RFP program with IXRetail provides maximum support to retailers purchasing and implementing new applications.
Today's retailers use a variety of labour sources--employees, contractors and casual labour--to perform the tasks necessary to operate an efficient retail enterprise. The Worker Management schemas provide a single standard interface from these multiple data sources to workforce management applications to ensure the right people are doing the right work at the right time.
The IXRetail Worker Management XML schema is designed to support any retailer, regardless of how its employee data is stored. Using vendor-independent standard XML messages, the Worker Management schema allows retailers to pull together information necessary to set up, schedule, pay and track attendance for their employees. These standard XML messages enable a retailer to manage the complexity of communication between other worker management applications such as Task Management, Human Resources, Payroll, or even POS and ERP systems.
"Using the Worker Management schema to integrate purchased Time and Attendance, Staff Scheduling and Task Management applications will reduce the time and cost of implementation," said Richard Mader, Executive Director, ARTS.
The scope of the initial Worker Management schema focuses on basic needs such as set up, scheduling, pay rates and tracking. It also enables management of worker information such as availability, assignments and qualifications.
The development of the Worker Management schema was accomplished by a team of retailers and vendors under the leadership of Bob Clements, VP, Product Development, 360Enterprise Workforce Management, 360Commerce. Team members included Paul Gay of Seiko Epson, Doug Jones of Target, Hannah Lawrence of HHL Consulting, Frank May of Microsoft, Monty Moncrief of Blockbuster, Jeff Sheldon of Datavantage and Richard Halter of ARTS.
"We have been a tremendous supporter of retail and industry standards since our company's inception and our customers have benefited from the resulting lower total cost of ownership," said 360Commerce's Bob Clements. "We are pleased that we are able combine our support of standards and knowledge of retail labor management to play a role in the development of this schema, and also be the first to implement the new schema in a live customer environment."
All ARTS standard XML schemas and their charters are in the public domain and available for download at no charge from the ARTS website at www.nrf-arts.org. Technical documentation describing use cases is also available, free to ARTS members and for a nominal fee to nonmembers.
The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) of the National Retail Federation is an international membership organization dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards. Since 1993, ARTS has been delivering application standards exclusively to the retail industry. ARTS has four standards: The Standard Relational Data Model, UnifiedPOS, IXRetail and the Standard RFPs (in partnership with NRF). Membership is open to all members of the international technology community-- retailers from all industry segments, application developers and hardware companies. For more information contact ARTS by email at arts@nrf.com or by calling 202-626-8140.
The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association, with membership that comprises all retail formats and channels of distribution including department, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet and independent stores as well as the industry's key trading partners of retail goods and services. NRF represents an industry with more than 1.4 million U.S. retail establishments, more than 23 million employees - about one in five American workers - and 2003 sales of $3.8 trillion. As the industry umbrella group, NRF also represents more than 100 state, national and international retail associations
