ICL has launched a family of electronic point of sale-based systems for front and back of store applications, aimed specifically at smaller supermarkets and general retailers. The new products come several months after STC’s January acquisition of Santa Clara, Californian Datachecker. The former National Semiconductor subsidiary specialises in systems for small food stores, and ICL has used this expertise in the Scanmanager software which originated with Datachecker. The new range comprises two products, a front-end Master family, and back-end Managers. The former includes Storemaster for food and general merchandise, Fashionmaster for clothing outlets, and Shoemaster for shoe retailers. All three run on ICL 9518/200 terminals from Fujitsu. Scanmanager and Branchmanager, which provide back-office facilities for food and non-food retailers respectively, are written in the Progress fourth generation language and run under MS-DOS, Xenix, and Unix on ICL DRS Model 45s or DRS Model 80. They may be used in conjunction with either 9518/200 machines or ICL’s Series 500 and 6000 terminals. The latter constitutes an entry-level system, and is cheaper than the Fujitsu machine which is equipped with a dual-purpose printer, credit card reader, item registration, price look-up for 40,000 items, multi-tendering, and currency conversion. Up to 24 terminals are connected in a daisy chain in a master and slave configuration. The master acts as a controller and holds the main price look-up file, which is supplemented by additional capacity on each slave for an extra 4,000 items, and an alternative Master terminal duplicates designated files. The personal computer runs proprietary applications such as staff scheduling or shelf edge labelling, and supervises any front-end terminal without disrupting operations. It is also compatible with ICL’s mainframe application, the General Merchandise System. Prices start at UKP2,500 per cash point, and rise according to machine type and facilities. ICL says that it is now committed to the retail market, and intends to dedicate two centres to retail operations within the next few months. The company’s most recent point-of-sale order is with Hydro-Electric, one of two Scottish electricity utilities. The contract, worth UKP960,000, is for 112 DRS Model 40 workstations and DRS 300 micros. The Model 40s have magnetic stripe readers and cash receipt printers, and will use ICL’s Retail Showroom System Environment software. They will be connected to the company’s dual-node 2988 mainframe at Aberdeen via the 300 systems over an X25 network. The contract was awarded to MicroSkil Ltd, an ICL third party trader, and ICL says that it foresees more retail business coming from its third party partners.
