NRF introduces mobile intelligence upgrade

The National Retail Federation announced the release of Version 2.0 of its Mobile Blueprint, which provides significant updates to the original document published in July by the Mobile Retail Initiative (MRI).

According to spokesmen, the MRI brings together the collaborative strengths of NRF’s IT standards division, ARTS; digital division, Shop.org; marketing division, RAMA and NRF’s CIO Council to provide the retail industry guidance in successful use of mobile in marketing, commerce and internal operations.

Mobile adoption in retail is moving rapidly, ABI Research reports that through December 2010 mobile commerce excluding travel will have grown 143 percent from $1.4 billion in 2009 to $3.4 billion in 2010, requiring a major update to the Blueprint. Version 2.0 includes: 

* A revised executive summary describing the latest mobile retail trends and applications of value along with a maturity model that forecasts how mobile will continue to impact the business of retailing.

* A significant improvement to the mobile payment section that describes more than 35 alternative payment methods, the potential impact of mobile on chip and pin (EMVco) security and the expected growth in the number of NFC contactless phones enabling expansion of the use of mobile wallets.

* An expansion of the operations section to describe new mobile POS applications including digital receipts that holds the promise of “mobile self checkout.”

* A revised Implementation Strategies section that describes how cloud computing and other new technologies can accelerate implementations of secure mobile services and drive down costs.

The Blueprint, which contains input from more than 30 companies, will be one of the foundations for MRI educational webinars and conference tracks throughout 2011.

“We are very grateful for the number of new companies who contributed to the second version,” said Richard Mader, Executive Director, ARTS, who chaired the effort. “Each company provided additional perspectives to make the Blueprint the comprehensive guide to mobile in

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