Using a wireless standard solution provides consistency and efficiency of every retail process; from payment processing and partner integration to streamlined point of sale and reporting and inventory management -- making data analysis much easier.

This wireless solution has primarily been adopted by retail stores in order to provide consumers with the best and most efficient service. Sales are faster and there is greater efficiency in reconciliations and billing and tracking inventory and locating any issues has been a lot simpler.

Along with better customer service, the wireless technology allows retailers to analyse data and trends in consumer purchasing, inventory and so on. This will help with future processes, business intelligence, marketing tools, and automated inventory to the latest in strategic integration.

It also puts retailers ahead of the game with growing and adapting to the changing technology and trends in the wireless industry.

Standardisation is the process of establishing a technical standard. This could be a standard specification, standard test method, standard definition, standard procedure or practice, etc. Organisations including WAVE2M and Zigbee are working to develop standards for use in the M2M industry.

The development of standards in a number of industries aims to enable the interoperability of machines or technologies so they can communicate effectively with one another. There can be a huge number of systems trying to communicate at the same time, so it's important to limit the amount of confusion and ensure effective and efficient exchanges between systems. Unfortunately, at present there is not a simple one-to-one relationship between industry standards and interoperability.

The IEEE Glossary defines interoperability as:

"The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged."

There are a range of standards in a number of industries being developed and the list of standards seems to be continuously growing. There are a number of competing standards and for people working with this on a regular basis the number of specifications can be overwhelming. This could effectively lead to more effort being spent on the interoperability between different standards, rather than working on the standards and interoperability of systems themselves.

Wireless technology standards continue to be an area for development and testing in some industries, but we can already see how well they are working in the retail sector.