April 14, 2003 - RFID is sometimes portrayed as some radical new technology that will transform corporate information technology systems. In fact, it is part of a clear line of evolution that dates back to the first enterprise computer.

There have been two common problems since the beginning of the information age -- getting good information into computers and sharing information among users. For much of the past 20 years, the real advances have been around sharing data. In many cases, information is still entered manually.

Personal computers changed corporate computing because people could input data easily and crunch numbers. But to share information, they had to pass disks around. The move to a client-server architecture helped, but led to what many called "islands of automation." Individuals within a department, such as accounting, could share information, but accounting couldn't get information about what was going on in receiving or human resources.

During most of the 1990s, most large and many mid-size companies began deploying enterprise resource planning software. ERP was an extension of manufacturing resource planning and was designed to help companies manage most administrative activities, such as product planning, parts purchasing, inventory management, interacting with suppliers, providing customer service, and tracking orders.

ERP linked many internal departments, so employees could share data within the company. That was a huge advance over client-server systems, but companies needed to share information with suppliers, so a new market segment called supply chain management (SCM) emerged. Another problem was providing information to sales reps in the field or in call centers. So along came vendors offering a set of applications broadly grouped under the term customer relationship management (CRM), which both provide information from ERP systems and help manage relationships in an organized way.