Internet Cash Register

Consensus Software Awards

Product description

The Transacta Internet Cash Register ™ is a revolutionary point-of-service system for small through to large retailers.  It has been designed from the ground up to support this new age of dynamically evolving Internet based systems.  Success in retail today requires systems that, on the one hand, distil the experience and lessons learned by past generations and on the other provide the technology to take advantage of Internet opportunities such as eMarketplaces and Internet ordering.  The Transacta Internet Cash Register ™ is such a system.

The essence of the Transacta approach is simplicity.  The system combines a novel user interface for both selling and back-office administration with an on-line connection to the Internet.  The system is as easy to use as a conventional cash register yet provides the full functionality of a latest generation POS and back-office system.  The benchmark user, in the mind’s eye of the designers, was a computer illiterate, limited-English milk-bar owner.

The Transacta Internet Cash Register ™ work surface is a programmable touchscreen that guides the cashier through the sales process.  In contrast, a physical keyboard typically assigns one function to a key; with many sales functions this can mean a complicated keyboard layout that is difficult to learn.  Because of Transacta’s cash register “look and feel” even casual sales staff are able to use the system with little or no training.

The system also simplifies the operational management of the store.  This is achieved by using a touchscreen work surface for the back-office administration system.  This is, we believe, a world first.

Because traditional retail POS systems use end-of-day polling to communicate trading results to head office, management finds out what happened yesterday.   Transacta systems, on the other hand, enable the concept of “retailing in real time” where stores are permanently connected to the Internet and selected trading information flows over a secure, real-time, message-based, communication fabric which can include a wide range of supply chain participants.  For the first time the retail store can be permanently connected to the head office or trading partners allowing the real-time flow of operational data, eg, sales, orders, invoices, payments, as messages over the Internet.

Innovation

The Transacta Internet Cash Register ™ is one of the first fully Java, platform independent, general retail POS and back office system actually in commercial use in the world.  Its n-tier architecture makes the system highly scalable.  Installations can be configured as “thin”, “lean”, “thick” clients (to the retailers’ head office systems or to Transacta’s virtual head office) or totally independent and stand-alone.

Transacta provides a unique form of centralised systems management through its ability to act as a virtual head office for an independent retailer over a VPN.  This provides capabilities such as off-site backup/restore, remote system update, retail product updates and centralised ordering.

The touchscreen back-office administration system is a world first.  This allows the bulk of back office functions to be undertaken at a touchscreen POS.  This suits the small retailer which predominate within Australia.

All Transacta systems can run in a standard browser.  This allows low total cost of ownership diskless workstations to be used as a POS for the first time in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere.

Transacta provides retailing in real time.  In-store transaction details are available centrally within seconds of their occurring.  Competitors process yesterday’s data creating operational inefficiencies and limiting management’s responsiveness.  Transacta can utilise a permanent communications connection (ie. virtual private network (VPN)).  This will profoundly affect the way in which retail stores are managed in the future.

B2C eShopping is fully integrated into the POS providing a common infrastructure for both “bricks” and “clicks” forms of retailing.  Internet-only approaches are not economic for smaller retailers.  Transacta’s approach of using the POS to generate an Internet presence eliminates the operational overhead of an independent eShopping web site.

Transacta provides for the new world of B2B integration.  A first in Australian retail, it is built to integrate with a wide variety of B2B exchanges and the emerging business models.  This is provided by a general purpose XML gateway providing the necessary flexibility to communicate with existing and emerging B2B Marketplaces.

In support of the POS system Transacta is seamlessly integrating a suite of merchandise management, category management and customer relations management (eg. loyalty, lay-by) systems which will be delivered over an Internet VPN on an ASP model

Performance

All Transacta applications are newly developed systems employing current industry best practice technology.  They have been developed, from the ground up, employing the lessons learned from the most successful retail systems world-wide.  An important implication is that Transacta does not have any baggage!  Today, Transacta is not constrained to support an installed base incorporating ideas that, with the value of hind-sight, have proved limiting. Transacta systems have been designed with the fundamental aims of ease of use and extensibility.

Transacta has taken advantage of the experience gained by its parent company Object Oriented Pty Ltd (OOP/L) in developing quality software systems.  OOP/L has historically dominated in the Telecommunications, Banking and Insurance industries where systems quality is a key requirement.  Quality is a fundamental aspect of a system that must be incorporated throughout the planning, specification and development life-cycle.  It is achieved through the proper application of a suitable software engineering process.  Process MeNtOR™ is a world-class commercial software development process for building component-based, object-oriented systems.  It has been developed by OOP/L with the application of over 80 person years effort over the last 8 years.

The use of Java throughout and the adherence to open device standards (unified POS) has resulted in a system supporting a very wide range of hardware platforms and peripheral devices.  The Java language and environment also provide superior support for easily distributable components.  Thus as enhancements are made to various parts of the Transacta systems they can be distributed to remote retail sites in a seamless and invisible manner – over the Internet.  Note that only the specific changes require transmission and not the whole application allowing quick and convenient updates.

Runtime performance is critical in a POS application.  This is an area of challenge for many Java applications.  The Transacta Internet Cash Register ™ can complete a single item sale in less than 5 seconds (MS/Windows 98 PC, 400Mhz Celeron, 64MB RAM) exceeding the performance of the majority of existing MS/Windows based POS applications.

A key aspect of Transacta systems is the concept of a customised personality.  A separate and distinct personality, maintaining a common code base, can be produced for a retail vertical or an individual retailer.  Considerable design effort has been expended to minimise the ongoing effort of producing and managing multiple personalities.  This is a key capability that allows Transacta systems to be relevant to a wide range of retail verticals.

Today, the most likely in-store configuration for a small retailer would be a stand alone fat client.  This removes the dependency on a communications link for operation.  A large retailer, able to afford a fast and reliable communications infrastructure, may wish to take advantage of a browser based thin client approach.  This reduces the hardware and support costs of in-store equipment (referred to as total cost of ownership).  Transacta provides a common code base the can be configured to support both these extremes – plus a number of intermediate variants.

The Transacta team strongly believes that technology costs can be dramatically reduced through adherence to industry standards.  All systems have been designed to support the emerging ARTS (Association for Retail Industry Standards) initiatives:

1. ARTS retail data model. A collection of entity and attribute names plus a set of relationships that define a wide range of retail activities.

2. UnifiedPOS standard retail device interface.  A platform independent way to interact with a wide range of real-time retail devices that incorporates both Microsoft’s OLE for POS (OPOS) and JavaPOS

3. REDX(IXRetail) standard XML retail messaging.  A collection of XML message formats that enable application to application communication within a retail environment.

Transacta systems provide built-in real-time product support.  The system incorporates platform independent (fully Java) remote control software to aid help desk support and training.  This software allows a help desk operator, over Transacta’s VPN, to guide an in-store shop assistant through a live customer transaction.

Potential

The market for Retail point-of-sale (POS) systems is characterised by small, niche market, vendors.  These vendors have limited financial and technical resources and typically obtain brand recognition only in the sector/s within which they operate.  Transacta’s strategy is to use its object-oriented software design to allow the POS and associated systems to be adapted to suit multiple retail sectors.

The Transacta architecture is based on the fact that there is both a high degree of commonality, and key differences, between the various retail verticals.  This has lead to an approach incorporating the following key subsystems collectively referred to as Transacta Core Technology:

1. A technical infrastructure which will support a wide range of physical configurations

2. A retail object model that realizes common retail concepts, relationships and business rules

3. A generic database that will support a wide range of retail activities

4. A highly customisable user interface fundamentally incorporating touch-screen technology.

5. An extension facility that allows country and/or retail vertical specific facilities to be incorporated with minimal effort.

This top-down, harmonised design supports multiple retail sectors and international markets.  Using current best practice object-oriented techniques Transacta has developed a generic model of a retail store that can be adapted to various retail environments.  This contrasts with standard bottom up approach which seeks to address one particular retail sector and then hope to migrate to others.

The system is fundamentally designed for internationalisation.   It has the ability to change language, business rules, tax regimes etc. providing a large market opportunity that is not seen in competitors.  The inability of even successful POS vendors to migrate to new geographic regions within a reasonable timeframe has severely limited their growth.

Transacta is pursuing a multi-pronged channels strategy.

1. Major Australia and South East Asian chain store retailers will require changes and enhancements to the Transacta system in order to adapt it to their operating environment and to give them a competitive edge.  This typically requires significant bespoke software development.  Note that considerable cost/effort savings in this customisation activity can be obtained by reusing components developed by a Global Retail Alliance partner.

2. A Global Retail Alliance is currently being created amongst a number of international retail software developers to share a common Java infrastructure and process framework.   Local customisations and vertical specialisations will be shared globally for mutual benefit of all the alliance partners.  This design and code reuse greatly increases the speed in which new retail markets can be addressed.

3. When the Transacta product has matured within a particular retail vertical an indirect marketing approach will be adopted.  This typically requires a low cost of sale with no software development and minor parameterisations.  This dealer approach is the only economical way to address small and independent retailers on a large scale.

4. Transacta will partner with retail industry sector leaders developing eMarketplaces by producing a variant of the Transacta system suited to the specifics of that marketplace.  Transacta has the technology while the partner has industry recognition/credibility, market share and knowledge.

Transacta intends to become the dominant player in a both a financial and brand/image sense by addressing a wide range of point-of-service market sectors.  This means that Transacta’s potential domestic market is therefore many times (possible as much as 20 times) that of our typical local competitor.  In addition, as Australia represents only 5% of the world POS market, the potential international market is 20 times that of the gross Australian market.  Transacta has a potential market in the order of 400 times that of a typical niche POS supplier in Australia.

Other information the judges should know

Transacta Pty Ltd is a subsidiary of Object Oriented Pty Ltd (OOP/L).  Both companies are proudly Australian owned.  OOP/L is one of Australia’s largest and most successful specialist provider of distributed component-based software and services.  It has over the last 11 years grown to more than 130 people with a presence in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Singapore and soon the USA.  OOP/L is a CMM (Capability Maturity Model) level 3 organisation and a Government Endorsed Supplier

Please refer to the following web sites:

www.transacta.com.au
www.oopl.com.au
www.processmentor.com 

Requested method of presentation

In Sydney at a time and place convenient for the judges

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