MarkS & Spencer Brings XML to pos Data Communications

While XML (extensible markup language) is getting a fair amount of attention lately in retail, particularly within standards groups like ARTS (Association of Retail Technology Standards), there aren't a lot of retailers making much use of the technology standard yet.

In fact, to find any retail chain aggressively employing XML, you may have to go across the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom. There, London-based Marks & Spencer, founded in 1884, has rolled out to its 300 U.K. stores (out of a total of 500 worldwide) an XML-based data messaging infrastructure. Marks & Spencer stores sell a mix of products, including general merchandise and food.

The company, which does around $13 billion annually, plans to install the system in franchised stores outside the U.K, but not company-owned outlets. Indeed, under intense fiscal and competitive pressure, the chain announced in March that it would sell many of its businesses outside Britain, including the Brooks Brothers clothing chain and Kings Supermarkets in the United States, and stop expanding into Continental Europe.

Spearheaded by its systems architect Philip Osprey, whom Americans may recognize for his participation in ARTS, Marks & Spencer's new system uses XML messaging to move POS data to headquarters in near-real-time, rather than in the traditional batch mode. POS data is, in effect, "wrapped" in XML and transmitted via an "information backbone." The 15-month project was completed last August but only fully rolled out this year.

Osprey initially spoke about the project, which cost the chain $1 million but from which it expects to derive $20 million in payback over the next few years, at the National Retail Federation's NRF.com show last fall in San Diego. His presentation took place at the same workshop where ARTS announced it was placing its XML data dictionary on its public Web site in order to spur retail interest in XML. Osprey recently updated the project in a trans-Atlantic phone conversation with RETAILTECH.

XML is a tool that tells a computer how to interpret a text file, in contrast with HTML (hypertext markup language), which merely tells it how to display information. XML messages like the ones used by Marks & Spencer are built on format schemas that incorporate the data being communicated.

ARTS has been spearheading an initiative called IXRetail aimed at developing standard XML schemas for data exchange between retail applications that would eliminate the need for costly interfaces. The initial release of these schemas, for such processes as price lookup and price verification, is expected as early as next month.

Need for speed: Batch POS data transmissions just weren't cutting it anymore for Marks & Spencer, Osprey explains. "We were finding the length of our season, which previously was at about 18 months, was shrinking. We had to become far more responsive to keep our customers interested."

Batch-based information was at least 24 hours old, and sometimes hung around for up to a week. "We wanted to move to an event-based or transaction-driven environment with the latency period dropped down to as near to zero as possible," he says. "That way the company could respond to events as they happened in the field." The chain also wants to build a database of events that would permit more measured analysis.

Marks & Spencer is comfortable with near-real-time rather than real-time data transmissions, finding the former to be "good enough in most instances," says Osprey. "There are only certain times when you need something synchronous in real time, such as when you're doing online authorizations."

In any event, Osprey decided that XML would be utilized to make the speedier POS data communications possible. It works like this: POS data from Marks & Spencer's POS system —Fujitsu-ICL's GlobalStore, which the chain had recently installed chainwide at a cost of $200 million, upgrading from a much older ICL system—is kept in a transaction log in an SQL Server in-store database. A separate component polls the data, wraps each transaction in the chain's own XML schema and creates an MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) message, which is designed to be secure and guaranteed of delivery.

The messages are then posted to a "messaging hub," which sits on a Windows 2000 server and transmits them via Microsoft BizTalk Server to headquarters, where a wide range of recipients is able to access them through a "publish and subscribe" model. BizTalk Server was designed to exchange XML-based business documents in a secure fashion within and outside the enterprise.

Osprey says that the POS data schema wrapped in XML is based on GlobalStore, which does not yet conform to an ARTS or any other XML standard. "I believe that ICL will go that way in the fullness of time and we'll pick it up that way," he says.

Under the publish and subscribe model, numerous people in the organization can subscribe to (access) published (transmitted) data messages at a single source. XML makes it possible for those people to "get what they really want out of that information. They can chop and change the information they take without the 'publisher' having to do anything," says Osprey. Moreover, because of XML only one interface need be produced, rather than an interface for each recipient—a key consideration given the "exponential" growth in the number of interfaces.

XML also appealed to Osprey because it's based on industry standards. "We didn't see the point of having something unique to Marks & Spencer or unique to one of our vendors," says Osprey. He also saw XML as a way of "future proofing" the system.

Other features that attracted Osprey to XML:

• It's technology neutral. "It protected us from technology change."

• It allows integration, independent of technology, at either end of the interface,

• It enables business processes to cross traditional company/vendor/ supplier/customer boundaries. This is key, he says, because "processes kept traditionally within Marks & Spencer have suddenly begun to creep outside our base."

• It supports legacy systems.

He also describes XML as extensible, maintainable, operable, scalable and resilient.

Osprey says he's frustrated by the small number of software providers who currently support XML. At the NRF.com workshop, he asked, "Does anyone out there have software with an XML interface today that a retailer can buy? I'll see you later."

He encourages retailers looking at XML to examine the schemas being developed by standards bodies like IXRetail and BizTalk.org. But schemas are only half the problem, he notes. "The other part of it is what component do I stick on the interface? What component will talk to this interface? You need to have some idea what components you need and how they will inteoperate with each other."