National Retail Services Center

Services
The National Retail Services Center (NRSC), part of IBM Retail Store Solutions, offers a wide range of services including software customization, in-store integration, store-to-enterprise integration, and IT consulting.

Through customization, retailers can modify point-of-sale (POS) software to look and act a certain way in order to meet customers’ changing needs. The NRSC can customize offerings from IBM (including the complete set of IBM 4690 POS applications), IBM Business Partners and other vendors. The NRSC also can leverage pre-existing software assets — such as the IBM StorePay™ payment system, the Electronic Marketing Enterprise (EME) loyalty solution, GSA and CDSA Promotional Pricing solutions, or clean receipts for the IBM 4690 Supermarket Application — to enhance your current POS application.

This range of services covers a wide variety of opportunities. Projects may involve integrating customized POS software with existing POS hardware and peripherals. Retailers may engage the NRSC to enable back-office applications to integrate with POS applications or gain access to data generated at the POS. The NRSC also can help retailers extend proven POS applications to Webpads, self-scanners, PDAs or wireless kiosks. Common examples of in-store integration projects include integrated pharmacy accounting, implementation of self-checkout systems, fuel system integration, line-busting applications and personal shopping systems. In addition, because the NRSC helped develop the IBM Store Integration Framework, the group is well-positioned to deliver solutions based on this technology.

Through enterprise integration, retailers can extend the POS and POS data beyond the “brick-and-mortar” store to enterprise-level applications. Examples are numerous. Retailers may want to integrate POS software with applications for customer loyalty, inventory management, and multi-channel transactions, including Web-based applications. Retailers also can establish an enterprise-level electronic marketing program. Some may need to integrate the POS application to support debit, credit, check, gift cards, EBT transactions, or other payment systems across the enterprise. Or some retailers may require specialized middleware that simplifies enterprise-level integration, such as a real time T-log trickle, integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, such as SAP, or integration between the POS and in-store processor (ISP) systems.

The NRSC offers IT consulting services to help retailers with a variety of needs. The NRSC can structure consulting workshops focused on a specific in-store problem or integration requirement, or create a more comprehensive session designed to help identify and prioritize objectives. Consulting engagements provide an external perspective as well as technology recommendations based on the desired objectives of a specific solution. The NRSC also provides package selection services.