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The Market Leader in Instore Broadcasting
Technology.
The backbone of Radio Retail's technology can be subdivided into three support pillars:
- A clear understanding of the customers' business.
- A qualified team supporting the customers' needs.
- An Open Source Technology system.
A clear understanding of the customers' business:
As much as the Laws of Nature stay the same, we know that businesses will change and evolve to accommodate the changing commercial climates and trends. To make the assumption that the same blue print of a solution can fit all businesses, is definitely a short-sighted approach.
From this understanding, all the businesses through which Radio Retail operates require a clear understanding of the business being transferred to Radio Retail before a solution is offered to the retailer. If Radio Retail could offer solutions before even fully understanding the business it's going in partnership with, the service provided by Radio Retail could not be guaranteed.
The technological infrastructure that is being used by Radio Retail is not dictated by the latest trends and fads, but rather by the requirements, budget and necessities to make the retailer's business grow. In the retail business, technology is sometimes being seen as an inherent limitation, due to high costs and complexity.
Radio Retail's business is not dependent on the once-off purchase of a single asset or on the delivering of a service that would only be required once in the client's lifetime, but the health of our business rather lies in the continual improvement of our relationship with a healthy and growing client. As our clients are growing in size, so are we.
It is thus of utmost importance that the team servicing each client not only understands the business they are in partnership with, but also understands detail such as:
- Terms and Language specific to the business
- People and their Beliefs
- Languages of Preference
- Customers and Client Services
- Environment in which the client operates
Without the correct personnel in Radio Retail's business the needs of our clients cannot be met.
Open Source Technology system
To understand best how open source technology is developed, we can compare it to traditional closed source software produced by companies such as Microsoft.
Open source software is based upon the idea that the user cannot only view, but can also change the source code of an application.
Closed source software is hidden to prevent the user either viewing or changing the code.
After initial production, open source software is released to the developing community and is undergoing a secondary phase of evolution. It is scrutinized by thousands of professional developers across the globe, who are highlighting potential flaws, bugs and security glitches. These suggestions and improvements are fed back to the developer, who then considers them for inclusion in his application.
In contrast, closed source software is developed in isolation with only a small team of developers. It isn't possible to build a team of hundreds to check the code, because the code is deemed proprietary and secret. Bugs and security flaws thus often aren't found until after the product has been launched and a steady stream of security patches and updates are required.
Open source isn't just about having your own applications de-bugged for free. By releasing new applications to the community, we are also helping new generations of developers to learn how to do software coding. These new developers create their own applications, which are fed back to the community and thus rapidly advance the growth of the whole system.
It is open source technology that has fuelled the growth of the Internet over the last six years with key applications such as Sendmail, Linux, Apache and WebStore, as well as languages like Java and Perl, and mark-up languages such as HTML, WML and XML.
It is these same open source methods that have made eXtropia the standard for web applications and the head of a global open source development community.
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