News

New IBM SurePOS features GS1 DataBar support

June 18, 2009

ARMONK, N.Y. — IBM has announced a new, more powerful version of its flagship point-of-sale software designed to help supermarket, hypermarket and chain store drug retailers reduce operational risk, lower costs and enhance customer service. This release of IBM's SurePOS ACE application for 4690 offers greatly enhanced promotion and administrative features that include GS1 DataBar coupon support.

Initially mandated five years ago, GS1 DataBar is the latest barcode type for space-constrained identification sanctioned by the Grocery Manufacturers Associate, the Food marketing Institute and GS1 U.S. North American retailers are required to adjust front-end systems to scan EAN bar codes used on product packaging in the rest of the world by January 1, 2010. With this announcement, the IBM ACE solution becomes one of the first applications in the industry to support both GS1 DataBar produce scanning and the advanced promotion capabilities of GS1 DataBar Coupons.

"This is about serving our clients and their customers," said Dave Irons, software strategy and marketing manager, IBM Retail Store Solutions. "Every new feature of this release was designed to help retailers of all sizes provide the best possible customer experience at checkout for today's smart shopper."

The powerful point-of-sale application combines check-out support, electronic marketing, data maintenance, account management and other business processes in a versatile, cost-saving package. Along with full GS1 DataBar support, the many new features of SurePOS ACE for 4690 Version 7 enable complex validation for offers, new methods for providing consumer discounts, coupon start and expiration date support, the ability to limit coupons to a specific retailer, the ability to disable multiplication for in-store manufacturer coupons, as well as both manufacturer and store coupon support. In addition to more powerful promotion capability, clients gain much tighter control over loss via a more stringent set of validation criteria at checkout.

Other key ACE software attributes include:

• SurePOS ACE Electronic Payment Support (EPS): Provides standard electronic tender support, including support for prepaid gift and phone cards, enabling retailers to capture new revenue streams. EPS software can be set to automatically prompt customers who pay with check cards to enter a personal identification number. SurePOS ACE software then processes the transaction as a debit, which typically costs significantly less than a credit card payment.
• Enhanced Employee Productivity Tool: A retailer can help increase manager productivity with a terminal monitor for viewing cashier actions on any active terminal. Selective item reporting allows retailers to build item lists quickly and create batches for updating prices. An electronic journal feature allows summary reports to be created from stored transaction logs.
• Terminal Off-line feature Helps Reduced Downtime: IBM SurePOS ACE for 4690's new terminal off-line feature enables POS terminals to offer sales, perform price look-ups and log transactions while offline from a store controller. This feature also reconciles sales data and is critical to single-controller environments, where it supports a lower-cost deployment of SurePOS ACE software, enhances redundancy and helps reduce the risk of downtime.
• Investment Protection: SurePOS ACE software provides strong backward and forward compatibility and leverages the same hardware family, host interface, data format and operator interface as the IBM Supermarket Application, so retailers can make a smooth transition with minimal operator training and lower cost.
• Advanced Security Features: IBM SurePOS ACE V7 supports complex passwords, such as those with alphanumeric characters and those that require periodic renewal, at both the store controller and POS terminal. The software also allows clients to create encrypted operator passwords that restrict access to specific functions, helping reduce fraud, and multi-tiered overrides that set limits for superseding specific operations.

In addition, IBM offers world class service and support for its ACE software via the IBM service business, including the National Retail Services Center, capable of helping with various aspects of software deployment, such as development, integration and other types of services. Authorized IBM Business Partners are also available to provide a wide range of professional and support services.

The IBM SurePOS ACE application for 4690 OS will be generally available on July 10, 2009.