OATSystems Launches Solutions for Tracking In-Store Product Promotions

By Claire Swedberg

March 21, 2007—RFID system provider OATSystems has released a real-time tracking system for in-store product promotions, designed to alert consumer packaged goods (CPG) providers immediately if a promotion is not placed on the retail floor at the appointed time. Health and hygiene product maker Kimberly-Clark is the first CPG company to use OAT's Real-Time Promotion Execution (RPE) software and Mobile Tag system.

Paul Cataldo

OAT's Mobile Tag solution and RPE software enable Kimberly-Clark and other CPG companies to track RFID-tagged promotional displays. Interrogators deployed in the back rooms and front areas of stores, as well as at box crushers, gather data related to the displays' locations. The system sends that data to the companies so they'll know when their displays are being placed at the front of each store, and when they're removed. The companies can then compare this information against the actual schedule for the promotion.

OATSystems' Mobile Tag consists of software for managing the tagging and encoding process, as well as exchanging data between a firm's remote facilities and corporate headquarters. It also incorporates ADASA's Mobile Tagging Station, which consists of ADASA's PAD3500 mobile RFID tag encoder, which can be worn on a belt and used to commission Gen 2 RFID tags; a laptop computer running OAT software; and a Motorola handheld interrogator able to read both RFID tags and bar-code labels.


K-C's contracted promotional-display manufacturers are using the OAT Mobile Tag system to tag promotional displays. The Mobile Tag software provides K-C with tracking data and can work independently of the RPE solution. However, RPE gives CPG companies and stores the added ability to aggregate data and share it with retailers and other parties. It also provides them the data they need to react to problems at a store as they happen. RPE software can send an alert as soon as the time and date of a scheduled promotion display begin if the display is not where it should be. That data (and the alert) can be sent to either the CPG, the store itself or both.