When some one makes a statement like this, the first comment is „Well, I've heard that before”, but then comes the question „What makes it unique?”. Let's try to answer it in a few paragraphs.

First let's look at it through the eyes of the management. For the manager Centara™ is unique in the way it covers so many sectors of retail and hospitality. Centara™ can handle supermarket checkout lanes, fashion stores, shoe stores, admission ticket sales, bars, fine dining, take-away, fast food, etc. just to name a few.

„How does Centara™ do this?” It is possible because of the way Centara™ can be configured to suit each operation perfectly. The screen layout can be modified, menus are flexible, reports can be tailor made, and the system can be hooked seamlessly to external systems. This means that although you're using a system that is used by thousands, it still has the company look and feel – it is unique to your operation. The adaptability also leads to reduced training costs as the till operation is intuitive and the cashier is immediately comfortable.

A part of that flexibility is the fact that Centara™ is truly international system. It has already been translated to a number of languages and adding more is a straightforward task. Centara™ can also handle the most demanding of fiscal requirements where the environment requires.

Centara™ is also extremely scalable. It functions just as well in a single store as in a chain of hundred (or thousands) of stores. A store can have a single till or 30 (or more) without affecting the performance of Centara™. These tills can have different layouts dependant on function, time of day or even operator. This means that Centara™ will grow with your operation - it is enterprise ready.

Another feature of Centara™ is the selective replication of data. This means total control of data distribution and collection for someone that operates a chain of retail or hospitality outlets. The data can be modified at headquarters and then distributed to the stores. The sales data can also flow back to HQ for data mining and analysis. These features lead to reduced operating cost as the data is flowing to and from the point of sale in a unified manner, regardless whether the till was in the cafeteria, the supermarket or the petrol station.

So for the management the uniqueness comes from:

• Multi-sector
• One system covers all aspect of the operation
• Scalable
• Enterprise ready
• International
• Company look and feel of the till screen
• Flexible menus and reports
• Extendibility
• Unified data flow
• Reduced training cost
• Reduced operating cost

So let us now look at Centara™ from a technical perspective. Centara™ is unique in the way it is designed. It is based on the ARTS (www.nrf-arts.org) data model and that in itself guarantees a system that is uniquely flexible and powerful. Centara™ has therefore built in not only the expertise found at HBI, but also the expertise of thousands of retail experts from around the world.

We have already mentioned some of the unique features of Centara™ such as its configurability. The screen layout can be modified to give the optimal performance that is needed, and to give a company look. Menus are easily configurable and can change according to the time of day, location of the workstation, even the operators themselves. The list goes on.

Similarly the report descriptions are not hard coded, but are saved in separate files, giving total flexibility of the reports that come out of the system. Reports can be generated interactively, but also scheduled at certain times of day. The output can be printed, displayed as a web page, sent as email or mobile text, etc. Reports can also be grouped so that only one action is needed to generate all the information that is required to operate the system.

Another unique feature of Centara™ is that it is essentially a giant retail macro processor. All actions are assigned to menus in this fashion, but that is not the only use of this feature. Centara™ has also the capability to allow external programs (Executables or DLLs) to return such macros and thereby affect the retail operation without worrying about the exact details of how it gets done. The DLL or external program gets full details of the current transaction and is able to become a part of the till function.

An example of this is to add specific cost or discount calculation to the sale of an item, such as calculating the cost of cleaning draperies and curtains at a dry cleaning business. Another example could be a hotel reservation system that would add the room charge to all the items that come from the bar, restaurant, gift shop etc. Then Centara™ would handle the payment phase using all the latest payment features.

These calls to external programs or DLLs are not restricted to the user pressing menu buttons, but they can also be tied to events in the till operation. There are a great number of events that can be used in this manner and you can normally request to be notified before or after an event happens (sale, total, payment, discount, print, ...). An example of this would be a pharmacy application that is notified after an each item is sold and it uses the information to check the sale for local regulation regarding which medication can be sold together – possibly voiding the sale of the last item.

The External Authorisation Socket Interface (EASI) is another unique feature of Centara™. It not only handles the standard EFT/EMV authorisations, but it can also handle all types of payment authorisations that are needed in a modern environment. It can query an accounting system to check whether a charge is allowed; It can accept payment through a phone; It can hook to a loyalty system and check the balance there; It can validate a gift card; ... The possibilities are endless, and this feature as allowed Centara™ to meet the needs of all our customers when it comes to their need for how to finalise transactions.

Centara™ also provides a hook to an information client, that can be used to query the till and even pass information back and forth as the till is operating. This we have already used to hook a gift card system into Centara™ providing unique features. We've also used this to create monitors for both service personnel and management giving indication of the status of each till in an enterprise.

Yet another feature of Centara™ is its flexibility in interfacing to other systems within the organisation. We have already mentioned how the workstation can be extended, but there are other ways of connecting to Centara™. First of all you can hook directly to the database. It is a relational database so standard SQL statements is all that is needed along with a knowledge of the ARTS data model. Centara™ also supports text interfaces, both XML (IXRetail) and CSV files, and there is the industry standard TRLOG format that was introduced with our HB-GPoS™ product, but has been adopted by many other software providers. All of this means that Centara™ becomes a part of the organisation, but with the flexibility that comes with well defined interfaces. Each component in the whole system is easily interchangeable, so that the organisation can adapt quickly to changes and progress without the pain of replacing all systems at once.

The selective data replication offered by Centara™ allows you to have full control over how the information flows back and forth. For a multi-tier organisation it means that it can be controlled at which level data is entered. Likewise the sales data can be aggregated as it is being passed to headquarters, minimising the volume of data that is stored, except where it is needed.

So for the technical team the uniqueness is found in:

• ARTS data model
• Connections to external programs and DLLs
• Retail macros
• Reporting to various media
• Event hooks
• EASI for external authorisations
• Information client hook
• Well defined interfaces (SQL, XML, CSV, TRLOG)
• Data replication control