What the arrival of SOA means for retail

PRIL (Polaris Retail Infotech Limited) in partnership with IBM, recently launched its integrated store management package, called 'Intellect Store.' The SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) infrastructure-based solution was long awaited in India and certainly comes at a time when the need for greater understanding of the requirements of Indian retailers is felt on the part of the IT solutions providers.

The adoption of SOA has been negligible in India, primarily because there is an apparent lack of awareness about its potential, as an integrated business solution, rather than a form of technology.

SOA is essentially a collection of services that communicate with each other. The communication can involve either simple data exchange or could involve two or more services coordinating some activity.

Talking about PRIL’s Intellect Store, it is an open-standards-based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure solution, which differentiates itself from the rest in that it provides a one-stop solution for the retailers, meeting their entire ‘services’ requirement under one platform. It is different from the proprietary software services that have been a prevalent practice in India so far.

An Indian retailer, if wants to avail an RFID service and wishes to integrate it with his hand-held billing device in a situation where both these service providers are different, goes through a tough time sorting out the matter with both the vendors. Often a consequent lack of proper integration results in buckpassing of responsibility by both software service providers and, inefficiency and inflated total costs for the retailer.

This and many such problems have been a major deterrent for retailers in India, which has probably kept them from utilising the potential of IT in their businesses, to the fullest.

The benefits offered under a SOA based solution, like the Intellect Store, is that a retailer need not pay for the proprietory software services, which primarily work on the principle of getting the software deployed and, later adding on customisation as a separate consulting engagement (and thus charging the retailer a separate fee for the consultation).

SOA solutions work on an open-source software service basis, which focuses on giving enterprises a custom fit. By deploying this package, the retailer, by default, gets a large number of services available to him. These services are applicable across retail verticals and channels. The difference is that he does not need to pay for the services unless he has made use of them. For instance, a retailer will have to pay for only two services out of the multitude, if he uses only RFID and Shopping Assistant devices services.

Thus, under SOA-enabled solutions like the Intellect Store, a retailer may choose from a large number of services that the partners of the SOA community provide, and make the payments on a pick-and-choose basis. The model thus reduces the total cost of ownership of IT-driven products and services for a retailer, while at the same time being scalable.

Mohit Oberoi, director and CEO of Polaris Retail Infotech Limited states that Polaris chooses its business community partners on the basis of two most important criteria: the extent of retail knowledge of the partner and its technology competence and expertise; the infrastructure competence of the latter however, also matters to a great extent.

Another major advantage of the SOA platform is that it is perfectly suited for organisations where constant innovation is a requisite and where multiple complex systems need to be integrated on to one platform to ensure smooth functioning.

Oberoi informs that the SOA enabled ‘Intellect Store’ also offers enhanced flexibility to a retail set-up, allowing the retailer to choose his desired service, and also get customised solutions as and when required. The turnaround time also gets significantly reduced with the integrated store solution.

While Polaris Retail Infotech Limited in collaboration with IBM has successfully come out with a trailblazing solution for the retail industry and, expects revenue of one million dollars in the first year of operations itself, what remains to be seen is how SOA – like any technology-driven enabler of retail efficiency – finds acceptability and moulds itself to the complexities and challenges of India’s fledgling modern retail industry.