GK SOFTWARE AG announced the availability of GK/Retail 12, the newest release of it's Store Automation suite of products including functionality to support customer-centric store operations.

GK/Retail 12 supports a more flexible component-based technology model. Utilizing the constructs of ABC technology, the individual software components are encapsulated from each other and communicate via defined interfaces. ABC provides full Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) capabilities allowing for easy integration of GK/Retail with other applications and the ability to quickly add new software components or subsystems. Another feature of an ABC architecture is scalability. With GK/Retail customers can deploy components of the software in a distributed model to improve performance and utilize the benefits of a lean store architecture.

GK SOFTWARE supports the Retail Transaction Interface (RTI) schema developed by an ARTS work team, a SOA service interface schema and technical specification for the retail industry. With RTI GK/Retail Point of Sale transaction functions are available as SOA services and reused for other customer and associate touch points including customer loyalty, self checkout, kiosks, web shopping, mobile technology, and other complementary solutions.

GK SOFTWARE customers including Douglas Perfumery and Metro's Galeria Kaufhof are both taking advantage of this new architecture to integrate GK/Retail with cross channel functions as core plugins, including web store fronts and customer relationship management applications. GK/Retail business components such as price inquiries, promotions, and reports have been integrated with external solutions as web services.

GK/Retail 12 is packed with features that provide customer-centric processes to improve the customer experience in the stores. Customer-centric transactions including gift cards, gift certificates, coupons, customer returns, customer loyalty, and signature capture are engineered to be efficient and easy for the associate to learn and use. GK/Retail 12 has been enhanced to offer a wide range of integrated solutions related to customer service and customer loyalty including self-checkout operations, cross channel integration, mobile retailing, and mobile payments. To offer a broader range of features to support complete store automation, GK/Retail 12 includes a new integrated digital signage feature that allows corporate headquarters to manage and transmit digital content to unlimited output devices throughout the store landscape.

GK/Retail 12 supports the latest version of Java 2 Enterprise Edition to take advantage of many new features and improved security provided by the platform. The solution supports the latest version of all major operating systems, databases, and application servers to give the retailer flexibility and benefits of a low total cost of ownership.

GK/Retail 12 is fully PCI-DSS compliant.