RFID Baseline Data Could Spead Adoption
It's time for researchers to shift their focus from proving whether the technology works to helping companies build a business case.
By Mark Roberti
Aug. 1, 2009—The RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas has been working with Dillard's and other apparel retailers to find out whether tracking items with RFID tags could affect inventory accuracy and potentially sales. Now, the center is aggregating the results of these pilots and those conducted by other retailers to create baseline data—or averages—to determine the benefits RFID can deliver to apparel retailers. Such information is critical to helping companies develop a business case for adopting RFID technology, and should be the focus of more academic research.
Bill Hardgrave, director of the RFID Research Center, says retailers that have run pilots have offered to share their results with the center in exchange for information about the average benefits other retailers have seen. This will let them determine whether their results are above, below or near the average. These retailers are allowing Hardgrave to use the data in aggregate, but not to disclose their individual results. (The results will be revealed at RFID Journal's RFID in Fashion 2009 event in New York, on Aug. 12-13.)
This aggregation of data is valuable because companies evaluating RFID have struggled to ascertain what their return on investment will be. Numerous retailers have run pilots to learn whether the technology can reduce out-of-stocks and increase sales. Each pilot proves it can, but still more retailers go through the time and expense of running pilots.
Aug. 1, 2009—The RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas has been working with Dillard's and other apparel retailers to find out whether tracking items with RFID tags could affect inventory accuracy and potentially sales. Now, the center is aggregating the results of these pilots and those conducted by other retailers to create baseline data—or averages—to determine the benefits RFID can deliver to apparel retailers. Such information is critical to helping companies develop a business case for adopting RFID technology, and should be the focus of more academic research.
Bill Hardgrave, director of the RFID Research Center, says retailers that have run pilots have offered to share their results with the center in exchange for information about the average benefits other retailers have seen. This will let them determine whether their results are above, below or near the average. These retailers are allowing Hardgrave to use the data in aggregate, but not to disclose their individual results. (The results will be revealed at RFID Journal's RFID in Fashion 2009 event in New York, on Aug. 12-13.)
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This aggregation of data is valuable because companies evaluating RFID have struggled to ascertain what their return on investment will be. Numerous retailers have run pilots to learn whether the technology can reduce out-of-stocks and increase sales. Each pilot proves it can, but still more retailers go through the time and expense of running pilots.
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