Advanced Solutions for Supermarkets - RMS

THE POSSIBILITIES ARE INFINITE
Advanced Solutions
for Supermarkets
Suppose the Lights
Went Out
Imagine. It’s Monday morning at 7:00 a.m.
The store manager unlocks the door, disengages
the alarm, triggers the light panel, and… nothing
happens.
It happens. And when it does, disbelief sets
in. The manager retries the switches half a dozen
times before finally dealing with the problem.
And in so doing, he is reminded that the
mundane task of turning on the lights activates a
highly sophisticated system – a system without
which the store cannot sell a single one of the
thousands of items that fill its shelves.
That’s the ultimate irony of superior
technology: it is valued most when it’s noticed
the least. And that’s why the systems you depend
on most are the systems you have to worry about
the least. Like lighting.
Or our ISS45 solution for supermarkets.
A System Designed
to Be Worry-free
ISS45 was created with a simple aim
in mind: to be so dependable and to
do things so naturally – in the precise
way you want them done – that it will
quickly become invisible. Because
whether you run a large chain or a
single independent supermarket, your
PoS system is as important as your
lighting system.
The unmatched speed with which
ISS45 moves shoppers through your
checkout lanes and its exceptional
shopper service features will heighten
their perceptions of your store. Its
advanced promotional features and
unrivaled customization capabilities
can enhance or even reinvent your
merchandising options. Its open design
and 100% application of industry standards ensures that you can leverage
previous system investments and take
full advantage of emerging future
technologies. And your ability to
employ a single system economically
in stores from 2 to 200 lanes
is decisive.
Of course, trying to deliver such
advantages is everyone’s goal. But to
deliver them complete in one system…
competitively priced… and with incomparable reliability, is the achievement of
only one: Fujitsu. Because we know
that while customers don’t come back
to your stores for the technology, they
do come back for its benefits. And so
do ours. Which is why we’ve become
the world’s leading supplier of Retail
Information Systems.
A Partnership Destined to
be Remembered
Among the most important benefits of
ISS45 is the experience and expertise of
the people who offer it. Whether from
one of our RETAILpartners or Fujitsu’s
own staff, these select people combine
an understanding of your needs and
our matching capabilities that is the
envy of the industry.
So your ISS45 system can be configured to ideally suit the design of
your current operations while positioning you for future growth and a wide
range of open options. In fact, the
ability to accomplish this task is the
most important criterion applied in
evaluating our own and prospective
RETAILpartner personnel.
That’s because we didn’t become
the world leader just by developing
superior systems; but by building
enduring business partnerships. These
partnerships currently span 6 continents,
more than 70 nations, and include the
successful implementation of hundreds
of thousands of PoS terminals that
process millions of transactions daily.
This unmatched record of successful partnerships – and our unwavering
commitment to them – are built on
understanding each grocer’s special needs,
store by store, company by company.
And then providing the open systems
solutions to match those needs. All are
embodied by Fujitsu and our
RETAILpartner, and embedded in ISS45.
A Complete
Business Solution
ISS45 combines the features and services
you want with the supermarket-specific
applications, customization tools and
advanced components and peripherals
you need to compete in today’s serviceoriented, cost-conscious grocery environment.
The result is a full solution using
industry-standard PC terminals to
provide flawless front-end operations.
TCP/IP, SIL and a wealth of bestof-breed applications ensure data
communications compatibility. Our
system configurations enable you to
migrate from older systems from IBM,
NCR, Casio – and ICL – for less money
than you’d expect, and in less time than
you’d imagine!
Specifically
designed to meet
the needs of grocery retailers,
from the largest
nationwide chains
to single stores,
ISS45 is both an
ultra-reliable
answer to the
known needs of today (i.e. modern
functions, more sophisticated applications,
easy connectivity) and preparation for
the unknown needs of tomorrow.
A Completely Flexible Answer
Whether you plan to add locations,
expand existing stores, install new formats, or simply improve the efficiency
and effectiveness of your current
operations, ISS45 provides the flexibility you need to address any and all
of these options.
Its powerful transaction-processing
architecture is optimized for the extreme
performance needs of the supermarket
business, while allowing ISS45 to be
economically scaled for stores of
widely different sizes and types.
Its modular design lets you custom
configure each terminal to maximize
available space and throughput requirements. And its built-in combination of
supermarket and general merchandise
features enables you to use a variety of
store formats and integrate them into a
single seamless system.
From day one, ISS45 delivers the
capabilities you need to manage information at store level, distribute it
throughout your company and communicate with other businesses – and lets
you use its power at your own pace,
according to your own needs.
Numerous Standard Applications
Innumerable Customizing Options
ISS45 delivers a full complement of features and applications that make it both
an ideal turnkey solution and an almost
infinitely customizable retail resource.
Important features such as reorganized receipts, coupon printing, cashier
age controls, transaction suspend/recall,
in-house charge accounts, WIC, DEA
over-the-counter drug limitations and
frequent shopper. In fact, ISS45 offers
three frequent shopper systems. The
Advanced Promotions option is generally
considered to be the most powerful and
flexible merchandising package in PoS.
Animated graphic advertising displays
and system-wide messaging operate on
an astonishing variety of terminal
hardware from many suppliers.
Of course, our hallmark back-office
system features complete, high-performance accounting and file maintenance
features, combined with capabilities like
a user-customizable browser interface,
simultaneous maintenance sessions,
delayed cashier balancing and data
handling and redundancy control of
unmatched elegance and your store gets
pause-free 24-Hour operation, too.
But you may find that CustomLinkTM, the ISS45 Query Language and
the ISS45 Presentation Manager are the
decisive factors in your choice. With
these advanced tools plus Visual Basic,
ODBC and off-the-shelf reporting
packages such as Crystal Reports – you
can do what no other PoS system will
allow: create and customize your own
clerk or manager screens, your own
reports, even your own special PoS
transactions, discounts and offers.
This transforms software, finally, into
something truly soft – a malleable information asset, easily shaped to meet the
specific demands of your own business.
Of course, such flexibility owes much
to our determined implementation of
industry standards throughout the system.
Standards like INTEL® processors, PCs,
Ethernet®, Windows® NT, Windows®
2000, MS-DOS®, “C” language programming, TCP/IP, OPOS, Microsoft SQL®
ODBC and RS-232 interfaces throughout. And when newer standards such as
USB and ActiveStore® arrive, ISS45 will
lead the industry.
Superior Connectivity
and Communications
Easy to Learn
Easy to Operate
Despite its formidable array of advances,
applications and features, the move to
ISS45 will prove as seamless as its operation. In fact, the odds are good that
personnel trained on your existing
system will find that ISS45 feels intuitive
and familiar.
Not only can the keyboard layouts,
prompts and screens be tailored to imitate
elements of your previous system, but
the transaction-specific screens and leadthrough prompts enable just about anyone who has ever operated a PoS system
to quickly feel at home with this one.
Controller
#2
Controller
#1
Fuel System
Controller
Ethernet TCP/IP LAN
ISS45 employs the grocery industry’s
favorite communications standard. For
example, SIL is available in a complete
implementation to provide the ultimate
in communications reliability, data
integrity, and crossplatform interworking. Of course, ISS45’s openness has
encouraged many other popular communications systems to build their own
seamless interfaces to this product.
Inside the store, an industry-standard
Ethernet 100/10-Base-T LAN is employed
throughout the system moving mountains of data between PoS, Controller
and Workstation services, no matter
where they are positioned. These
elements of the system provide so much
performance bandwidth and headroom
that you can rest assured that a high
performance store of more than 200
terminals is easily within ISS45’s limits.
P C PoS Terminal
(up to 250)
PC Workstation
(up to 8)
Other In-store
Extensions:
• Weight Scales
• Kiosk
• Café
• Phone Order
Center
etc.
Self-Checkout Lane
(up to 250)
Corporate WAN
Built-in Redundancy
Built-in Replication
ISS45 puts a new advanced redundancy
scheme to work protecting your allimportant central point store data. ISS45’s
industrial strength controller services
run in balanced, tandem operation with
both and full, constant control. So system
capabilities are maintained in case of
hardware failures a PC failure without
manager intervention and with no performance delays or impact to the your
front end. And when the controller is
restored to operation, it synchronizes its
data with the other controller, quickly,
automatically and without interruption
or manual intervention.
Other PoS systems may offer no
redundancy at all in favor of simple file
replication at each terminal. But of course,
ISS45 provides this too, allowing a terminal to be disconnected from the network
all day – at a sidewalk sale for example –
and return to the system that night with
full data and security safeguards, (and,
naturally, balancing to the penny).
It’s the Architecture
Grocers are constantly deluged with
sales pitches and extravagant promises.
Why is ISS45 different?
The big difference is that ISS45 is
a System-Based solution. Its Services
Architecture was developed for the
unique system requirements of PoS,
using powerful transaction processing
databases in an advanced client
server topology. So ISS45 gives you
the lightning quick performance plus
the data security required by missioncritical retail applications.
Compare this to a typical lanebased product where data positioning,
data integrity and full central point
data control and redundancy are afterthoughts.
ISS45 employs full electronic trans-
action logs and sophisticated secondary
processes that evaluate the data prior to
updating the central files with movement and transaction data. Not only
does this prevent file corruption but it
enables unparalleled data access.
For example, multiple price maintenance sessions can be operated simultaneously from a virtually unlimited number of system PC workstations. Price
changes made by remote file maintenance or FM verification packages are
automatically applied simultaneously to
all controller file systems – as well as all
terminals – with a single open-system
call without the out-of-synch data
problems which frustrate so many other
products systems.
Loss of any system function has
been made virtually impossible, from
checkout to reporting to file maintenance to communications to applications. And you don’t have to wait until
closing time for information: current
sales, pricing and movement data are
instantly at hand from the central
controller services at any time. Your
price changes are executed to all
terminal and controller services instantly,
and without performance impact to
any terminal.
Speaking of performance, ISS45 is
phenomenal by any standards, with
the fastest scan-to-print response times
in the industry of merely 100 – 150
milliseconds. And you can get this performance all night long and since ISS45
provides automated pause-free 24-hour
Flexibility
Drives Down Costs
store operation with unattended store
close and delayed cashier balancing.
ISS45’s controller services are nondedicated and can run totally in background. This makes controller PCs
available for general non-PoS office use
at the same time they are in full store
operation and control. Since either or
both of the redundant central-point
controller services can be assigned to
PoS terminals, ISS45 can provide a
complete, dual redundant store system
with full in-lane PoS file replication on
just two PC PoS terminals with no
additional hardware.
ISS45 supplies a complete PoS feature set with real depth and flexibility.
(These are the critical items taken for
granted until you realize they’re missing.)
That’s why there are over 170 screens of
configurable parameters and operations
choices, HALOS, limits, minimum purchases, security and controls. And only
with ISS45 can you customize the
system yourself. You can programs the
actual PoS transaction set and our
unique user-definable PLU file. You can
even add entire sets of SQL database
tables for your specific use. The ISS45
customization tool set is exactly the
same set of functions and software tools
we use ourselves to
develop the ISS45 system. After all, today
you want features which that nobody
was thinking about five years ago; and
five years from now, you will want things
that no one has imagined today.
ISS45 will do them.
A Final Word
The “Open Systems” Dilemma
In everyone’s rush to cash in on the
latest technology buzzword, you’ve
probably heard the terms “Open
Systems” and “Industry-Standard”
dozens of times. But what do they mean
to you once the sales pitch is finished?
Well, a truly Open System is greatly
desired, quick to be promised, but
almost never delivered. That’s because
a real open system needs three things:
System Access, Data Access, and
Functional Access.
System Access is usually achieved
by using industry standards, and with
ISS45 you have this in spades. From
the use of PCs and Windows, Standard
ports at the terminal and the Ethernet
TCP/IP LAN, ISS45 is built upon
worldwide standard platforms. What’s
different is that ISS45’s elegant system
engineering makes it easy to put these
standards to work with its many readymade software and hardware interface
methods. And when ActiveStoreTM is
ready, ISS45 will be there with truly
deep support and compliance for this
powerful international standard.
But the next requirement, Data Access,
is where most systems begin to turn either
difficult, risky or downright proprietary.
Just using an off-the-shelf database
won’t help unless you have a complete
understanding of the source code and the
system-wide spider web of data interactions. Wandering through a PoS database
trying to execute your own file updates is
like stumbling around the floor of the
New York Stock Exchange: you might
eventually succeed in executing a transaction, but you’ll break a lot of rules and
waste a lot of time in the process.
To be of any use, open Data Access
requires standard data systems and methods like you get with ISS45. If you want
to buy stock, call your broker; if you
want to change a PLU price from your
own software application, have it call
the ISS45 function for that purpose. All
controller files and terminal files across
the entire redundant system will be fully
logged, tested, replicated and updated
with just one command from you.
Finally, a system’s not really “open”
if you can’t change the software, add
features, or modify transactions. The
Functional Access and true customization
tools for ISS45 are simply unavailable
anywhere else in the PoS world. No one
else offers systems that you, the user, can
modify yourself; quickly, efficiently, practically.
So, products that fail these fundamental tests can always fall back and talk
about how they use “industry standards”.
But then there’s ISS45. When it comes to
Open Systems, it’s the real thing.
11085 North Torrey Pines Road
La Jolla, CA 92037
Phone: 800-340-4425
Fax: 858-457-2701
visit us at:
www.fujitsu.com
or www.fjicl.com/retail/iss45
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to ensure that the information in this
document is correct and fairly stated,
but does not accept any liability for any
error or omission. The development of
Fujitsu-ICL Systems Inc. products and
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information may not be up to date. It is
important to check the current position
with Fujitsu-ICL Systems Inc. This
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agreed.
ISS45-2001