Major Food Retailers Join ARTS

SN Staff

WASHINGTON – Costco Wholesale, Wal-Mart Stores and Whole Foods Market have recently joined the Association of Retail Technology Standards, the technology standards division of the National Retail Federation here.

In addition, John Collier, Wal-Mart’s vice president of architecture, has recently been elected to the ARTS board. ARTS was established in 1993 to develop educational materials, best practices and technology standards to enable rapid and effective deployment of IT within retail.

“ARTS membership growth parallels the increasing business role of IT in retail, moving from records-keeping to driving the business through e-commerce, price optimization, CRM, business intelligence and a menu of other IT applications,” said Richard Mader, executive director of ARTS, in a statement.“Our educational whitepapers and requests for proposals on leading edge technologies such as mobile, cloud computing and SOA [service-oriented architecture] are primary motivations for becoming a member.”