RCS offers a complete suite of Server Applications that act as the backbone for reliable in-store Transaction Processing. With platform components that fully automate store operations, the store managers can again focus on the customer and achieving sales goals. The RTE and RCS Server Applications work in a fully-automated, unattended mode to transparently service POS transactions. Applications such as the Store Open/Close Manager, Store Reporter, Price Management, Cash Management, and Service Monitor are several that provide essential information to allow managers to react to customer needs and competitive pressures. Although the applications provide the business information, it's a solid technology backbone that allow store personnel to focus on selling and customer service, and not worry about systems that support the sales function. Mission critical applications, such as Price Lookup, Credit Authorization, Transaction Collection, Electronic Journal, to only name a few, require a solid infrastructure to ensure high performance requirements can be met. Again, a proven, reliable platform, such as the RTE has tremendous value as the central core of this backbone for performance.

 

Of course, with the store being just one consolidated selling point in a corporate network, the Server Applications would not be complete unless they were integrated with Host Systems. Information can freely flow between the Corporate Office and the store using Transaction Access Points (TAPs) to integrate in-store processors and applications to Corporate level systems. These TAPs can be leveraged to interface with a variety of middleware transports, such as Microsoft MSMQ and IBM MQSeries for real-time data exchange. Virtually any legacy integration is possible with the flexible architecture of the RTE and RCS Server Application Suite.

 

The future of Transaction Processing within Retail continues to change as new technologies emerge and others evolve. The technology backbone of the RTE positions our customers for the future as new approaches become viable and cost effective. Our State-of-the-Art architecture maximizes the benefit that O-O has to offer for component reuse and application extensibility. Application integration is the key to future success and no one can position a Retailer for integration better that RCS using the RTE.

Let's focus on an example - ActiveStore. The promise of ActiveStore is great, especially related to RBIs for integration. TAPs will enable our customers to capitalize on new technologies, such as ActiveStore RBIs, as they become available in the future. After all, the ActiveStore RBIs are definitions of Transaction Access Points. RCS has specialized in this level of integration for years and there is no better platform to enable application integration.