For those of us who know him, saying that Richard Mader, Director Emeritus of the Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS, a division of the National Retail Federation), is “outspoken ” is a bit of an understatement. It is the force of his character – and his vision – that made the organization such an influential voice in the community in the last 20 years. But time marches on, and so after many years of service Richard finally announced his retirement in 2012. I for one don’t believe that for a second, and so I reached out him to get his perspective on both the past and the future of retail technology, and to find out where we should expect him to be in the near future.

First, a little background: In the 1990’s, Mader was the CIO at Boscov’s, a privately owned department store chain centered in Pennsylvania (USA). I met him sometime in that decade, because he wanted to solicit my support for standardization of POS system device interfaces – in an effort to reduce the cost and time associated with “onboarding ” any new piece of gear in the store. Back in the pre-USB port days, retailers had to wait for their technology suppliers to certify any new POS device before it could be used – because of proprietary physical, electrical, and interface protocols for things like printers, scales, and scanners. This inevitably limited retailers’ choices and raised the cost and the time required to onboard any new equipment. That was the initial problem that Mader and a few like-minded CIOs set out to solve.

Just to show how far that idea spread, nowadays no one thinks twice about pin assignments or voltages when it comes to plugging something into a POS terminal. That’s the initial problem that ARTS solved in the ‘90’s, and in the 21^st Century the organization went on to develop and promote a standardized retail data model, a standard retail XML schema, model RFP’s for key retail systems, and business process models, all in addition to what is now referred to at the Unified POS standards guiding the interfaces between devices. All of these standards were developed by an amalgam of vendor and retailer technologists on a volunteer basis – and it was Mader’s influence that made that happen.

The Past Is Prologue

A question that I put to Richard was how, absent his persuasive powers, will the NRF continue to keep all of those volunteers engaged. But according to the technology leader, the business value of continued participation is proven and accepted. “You can always get a vendor’s attention when you have the power of the P.O., which I had when I was a CIO, ” Mader said in our conversation last week. He further explained, “I gave that up, but was able to get their attention and keep their interest by presenting the value to them to building the standards. The clear value to a vendor is first, that it enables the smaller vendors to integrate to the big guys’ products. Over the years I’ve seen that innovation usually comes from the small guys. So the standards ‘leveled the playing field’ and allowed everyone to participate in building the best total applications for the retailer. By standardizing the points of integration, we gave them all back a lot of time and resources, which in turn enabled them to lower their bids, to be more effective, and to win more business. “

But the work isn’t done; Mader cautions retailers to stay focused on standards: “It’s just amazing, isn’t it? Integration continues to be a huge issue. The most recent publication that ARTS put on the street is about mobile integration. Here we are again. Twenty years later, and we’re still talking about ‘integration’. So we still have some work to do to standardize data in the retail community. “

The New Beachhead: Mobile & Social Media

In retail right now, all things “mobile ” are hot: mobile shopping apps for consumers, mobile assisted selling apps for employees, and of course, mobile payments. The ARTS group has been in front of the “mobile ” issue – as a matter of fact, efforts to define mobile for retail began 5 years ago. To put that into context, that was 2008; The first iPhone had only recently been released in 2007, and the first Android-powered phone wasn’t sold until late 2008.

Mader: “A little more than five years ago, we said, ‘here comes this mobile thing, and we need to see what needs to be done’. ARTS always wants to be able to say, ‘how can we make it easier for retailers to implement a new technology?’. So we got some CIOs together from the (NRF) CIO Council and asked them, ‘what are you looking at, and how can we help?’ I’ll never forget, one CIO said, ‘we don’t have any idea, so the first thing we need is an education. The Marketing guys are starting to bring this stuff to our door but we don’t know what’s involved!’ “

Subsequently in 2010, the ARTS group published the “mobile blueprint “, seeking to establish a baseline for mobile in retail. The blueprint identified use cases for marketing, operations, and commerce – including payments. But, according to Richard, “mobile is ever-changing, and we could see that some of the things that we had just published needed changing too. For example, we could see social networks coming, so we planned to append a social blueprint to the mobile document (we ended up publishing a separate document in 2012). We wanted to emphasize that social media (with mobile) enables consumers to spread word-of-mouth at the speed of light. We saw this as a conduit for retailers to stay involved with their customers anytime and anywhere. But that led us to talk about how mobile and social would integrate with backoffice applications, and so in 2012 we also published a mobile integration blueprint. “

And that brings ARTS up to the moment, as retailers are grappling with just those issues, right now in 2013.

The NFC Debate

One of the hot topics for mobile payments right now is the fate of near-field-communications technology, or NFC. This has surfaced for two reasons: first, in October 2012 Mike Cook of Walmart stated that as of now, the retailer sees no reason to add another player to Walmart transactions. Instead, Walmart is betting on its Merchant Customer Exchange, the merchant-backed effort to create a mobile payment platform – and that platform won’t support NFC. The second reason is that Apple did not deliver NFC with the iPhone 5, although it had been widely anticipated.

Mr. Mader has doubts about the doubters. “I met the people at the NFC Forum in 2009, and it’s a good technology. We’ve all seen it work over in Japan and throughout Europe. In Japan it’s a way of life; people use it as their wallet. But in 2009, there were a couple of stumbling blocks. First we had to get the chip into the phone; number two, retailers had to get a new reader at the point of sale. “

Richard continued, “I’m not sure that NFC is dead yet. Since July 2012, Google says that there’s more than 1 million phones a week going out the door, and they have NFC chips in ‘em. And it got a boost with the VISA announcement about EMV and mobile last year. We’ll see- Paypal has certainly made inroads by simply using codes and numbers, and there’s no need for the chips or the new readers. But my new Verizon phone has an NFC chip onboard, and I like it. “

As to the VISA EMV announcement, Mader is optimistic, since that will “solve ” the new reader problem. So, EMV cards or mobile? “Think about it “, said Richard, “why would an issuer spend a buck or two to put out a new card with a chip on it for every customer when it can be done more cheaply with a smart phone? “

But what about Apple? Mader: “Not too long ago, people said, ‘we have to wait until we know what Apple is doing.’ But I’m not so sure now. Today, Droid has 60% of the market while iPhone has about 30%. Droid is moving forward, and Droid is Google, and Google is NFC. Apple had already launched iTunes, and they already had millions of people’s credit cards on file – maybe there just wasn’t the same incentive for them. Instead of waiting to see what Apple will do with NFC, people ought to be looking at the patents that Apple has been granted for the use of mobile – that’s where you have to watch. “

Not Quite Retired

It was recently announced that Richard is representing the Retail Business Technology Expo ( “RBTE “), a UK based event and Europe’s fastest growing retail show. His involvement with the RBTE began three years ago, when the group provided the ARTS Group with booth space and some press support. Returning the favor, Mader is spreading the word about the emerging event (this year’s RBTE will be held in London, March 12-14). A big focus of the event will be “payments ” (RSR will be presenting its findings from the upcoming benchmark report on the state of retail payments).

Said Mader, “they (RBTE) spread the word about ARTS, and so I’m going to pay them back. I do think that they’re a great bunch of people, and there’s a definite need for an event in the UK. They’re providing a service, they’re doing it reasonably, and they’re doing it well – so I’m trying to support them. “