Reinventing the Retail Space
The OMG's Retail Domain Task Force facilitates the digital transformation of business models and practices in the retail space. The global pandemic accelerated the retail industry to undergo significant digital transformation and temporarily redefined consumer behavior as a result. However, according to a recent study pre-pandemic consumer behavior somewhat returned as in-store market sales rebounded by 8.2%, outperforming 2019 figures. Whether mitigating risks via a variety of revenue streams or producing new customer experiences in stores to entice customers, one thing is certain, those retailers who embrace and implement more tech-driven solutions that offer more streamlined services will be the most successful. The Retail DTF can help redefine your retail business.
Mission:
Increase benefits and reduce costs, risks and timescales of using IT within the retail sector by:
- Developing and promoting standardized retail business models and practices that foster a shared understanding of retail business principles, terminology and data between retailers and their suppliers.
- Establishing technical standards, specifications and best practices that enable communication of business data within retail enterprises and between retail enterprises and their suppliers.
- Creating standards for the integration of IT applications and devices in retail business systems.
- Communicating the requirements of the retail industry to IT suppliers and users, inside and outside OMG.
NOTABLE DELIVERABLES:
- Unified Point of Service Retail Peripheral Architecture (UPOS): An architectural specification for application interfaces to point-of-service devices used in a retail environment, which defines the structure of application interfaces to retail devices (e.g., scanners, printers and scales) and describes range of functionality in these devices that would typically be needed in a range of POS software solutions, whether physically attached or accessed over networks using web services.
WORK IN PROGRESS:
- Digital Receipt API v1.0 RFP: Solicits proposals for a simplified digital receipt API in which retailers can enable the following: 1) API specifications that support sharing complete digital receipt data in a secure manner between various parties (e.g., retailers, consumers, product manufacturers and service providers); 2) Streamlined standard which specifies a common core of elements to be used in a digital receipt API, which can then be enriched and extended in a standard fashion with local requirements; 3) Provide information and evaluation items list that indicates the actual use cases and digital receipt data.
- UnifiedPOS Fiscal API v2.0 RFP: Solicits proposals for the following: 1) A platform independent behavioral model to describe interactions between fiscal devices or services and applications that consume them; 2) A standard Fiscal API to register retail transactions on a fiscal device or tax authority service; 3) A standard Fiscal API to store data into a fiscal journal.
- UnifiedPOS v2 Model and POS Printer API RFP: Solicits proposals for the following: 1) A platform independent behavioral model to describe interactions between device services and applications that consume them; 2) The new model should address the shortcomings of the UnifiedPOS v1 and provide a foundation for exposing devices as services; 3) An API to query POS printer capabilities; 4) An API to print information on paper rolls using receipt and journal stations of the POS printer; 5) An API to print information on a form (typically a check or credit card slip) on the slip station of the POS printer.
RESOURCES:
- Business Process Models (BPM): Help a retailer make decisions on how to do business, and the models are a tool that can help identify strengths and weaknesses on how to manage business and strategy.
- Data Warehouse Models (DWM): Complements ODM and helps retailers identify and track key performance indicators that inform better decision-making and analysis.
- Operational Data Models (ODM): Incorporates transactional information used daily in retail stores - everything from inventory and price management to sales reporting and workforce management.
- Schemas: Build on the ODM and provide defined structure that helps different applications speak the same language. When software conforms to a schema, retailers can add new applications to existing infrastructure. That makes it easier to implement new customer services (e.g., loyalty programs, inventory searching and price-checking).
- Template RFPs: Do you start every project with a blank sheet of paper? What if you could begin with a template to jumpstart your research on new technology?
GET INVOLVED:
If you're an OMG member, have a member account, and want to get involved, you can Subscribe to The Retail DTF Mailing List to receive frequent group email updates and/or contact [email protected]. If you don't know if your organization is already a member, check the OMG Member List, Request An Account, and follow the prior steps, if your organization is a member, to get engaged. If not a member and interested in getting involved please visit our Membership Overview Webpage and/or contact [email protected]