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January 4, 2008

ARTS and NRF Announce Major Update to Workforce Management RFP, with 600+ New Features

For Immediate Release
Contact: Kathy Grannis or Ellen Davis (202) 783-7971
Email: grannisk@nrf.com or davise@nrf.com

ARTS and NRF Announce Major Update to Workforce Management RFP,
with 600+ New Features

Washington, January 4, 2008 – The Association for Retail Technology Standards and the National Retail Federation have announced a major update to the standard request for proposal for selecting Workforce Management applications, now including a section on Task Management. In addition to enhancing sections on associate management, forecasting, budgeting, scheduling, and time & attendance requirements from earlier versions, ARTS has updated the workforce management RFP with more than 600 new features for retailers to consider in selecting a workforce management system.

A Big Ideas session at NRF’s Annual Convention on Tuesday, January 15 at 11:00 a.m. will show attendees how to maximize use of the NRF and ARTS RFPs. The workforce management RFP will also be available for review at the ARTS Pavilion on the EXPO floor January 14-15.

“Task Management is a critical ‘hot button’ issue for retailers seeking to focus more of the ‘right’ labor on customer service at the right place and time—while at the same time maintaining or even improving labor-to-sales ratios at the store level,” said Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partner of RSR Research. “The RFP committee is performing an invaluable service to the entire industry through their work on data and RFP standards, saving time and money for both retailers and responding solutions providers, and also helping retailers to consider functional requirements that could be tremendously beneficial to them in the future.”

Beyond adding additional features and functions, ARTS has been focusing on revising existing RFPs for ease of use. Each feature and function has a unique number to permit automating the RFP within special tools such as those developed by C-Core Consulting or generic tools like Excel. This enables retailers to tailor the RFP to their business model easily while retaining the ability for vendors to respond quickly and accurately by matching to pre-prepare responses.

“The ARTS/NRF RFP offers retailers and vendors the opportunity to lower the cost and time investment of researching new applications while benefiting from the combined knowledge and best practices of retailers and vendors worldwide,” said Ann McCool, Chair of the RFP Committee.

Every ARTS/NRF RFP has two sections: Master Agreement to guide negotiating and contracting and the Features and Functions section to identify the specific business processes and policies that must be supported by the selected application. The committee for this RFP included members from Agilysis, BearingPoint, C-Core Consulting, Oracle, RadioShack, Reflexis and SAP.

Since its release in April 2004, the Workforce Management RFP has been downloaded by hundreds of retailers. As a benefit of membership, NRF and ARTS members may download the updated RFP free of charge.

The Association for Retail Technology Standards 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 three standards: The Standard Relational Data Model, UnifiedPOS, ARTS XML 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.

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, independent stores, chain restaurants, drug stores and grocery stores as well as the industry's key trading partners of retail goods and services. NRF represents an industry with more than 1.6 million U.S. retail establishments, more than 24 million employees - about one in five American workers - and 2005 sales of $4.7 trillion. As the industry umbrella group, NRF also represents more than 100 state, national and international retail associations.

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NRF is pleased to grant complimentary registration to editorial staff members of the press. Click here to register online for NRF’s Annual Convention & EXPO, or call Kathy Grannis at (202) 626-8189.

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