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The
Big Picture: Trends
From
the batch-oriented environment of today’s legacy
mainframe systems, the retailing information management
infrastructure is changing to embrace real-time communications
and client-server computing. Eventually, a sales
transaction becomes a corporate information asset as
soon as it occurs, not 12 hours later.
Business-critical
use of information requires data to be timely, accurate,
and complete. Today’s traditional MIS systems
are still “islands of information” which lack
the appropriate integration and consolidation to yield
comprehensive information for strategic and tactical
decision support.
The
emergence of “data warehousing” which its
cross-functional view of data, will drastically change
the usefulness of the broad array of information generated
within and around the retail enterprise. At the
same time, the more sophisticated application of client-server
technology, such as group decision support, collaborative
computing/groupware, messaging/electronic data interchange,
and distributed object databases, will create a single
view of the available information instead of the current
duplicate, application-specific, and often proprietary
databases or data files.
The
blurring of local and wide-area communications in terms
of performance, immediacy, and cost will lead to universal
access and transparency of geographic location and distance.
Data will be accessible as quickly as needed, and at
a low per-transaction cost. This location transparency
will lead to a wider distribution of data and processing
capability, with clients interoperating and assuming
server roles as required. It will gradually eliminate
the bottleneck of communications when linking computers
together to process information cooperatively.
As
we bring together the power of tomorrow’s digital
communications with the capabilities of client-server
environments, the retail enterprise gains a more accurate,
less granular view of the activities and changes in
its organization. This improved information will
support faster, more accurate decisions, because all
decisions are the result of examining available information
and choosing a path of action.
In
terms of loss prevention, we can foresee a time when
free availability of information, in real time, will
enable the Loss Prevention team to detect and neutralize
crime virtually as it occurs. Aspect's LossPREVENTION
system is the first step in that direction.
Next:
Aspect Global AUTHORIZATION
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