RFID-ROI-SME Project Promises Big Help for Small Business

Following the pilots' successful completion, the project will assess each RFID deployment's return on investment (ROI) and other financial benefits, as well as any effect it might have on privacy, vis-à-vis the EC's recommendations for the implementation of privacy- and data-protection principles in applications supported by RFID (see European Commission Issues RFID Privacy Recommendations). Following the evaluation, RFID-ROI-SME endeavors to publish and disseminate blueprints and best practices regarding RFID deployment for SMEs across various sectors.

In carrying out the above tasks, the consortium includes one research institution—namely, Athens Information Technology (AIT)—which will lead the evaluation task. AIT is also a contributor to the AspireRFID open-source RFID project, and will thus support those pilots by helping them leverage AspireRFID libraries for their deployment.

Furthermore, the consortium includes four national SME associations (in addition to UEAPME, the project coordinator): the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies (BASSCOM), the Italian National Confederation of Crafts and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises—Milan Division (CNA), the Spanish Asociación, Empresarial del Sector TIC de la Comunitat Valenciana (ESTIC) and the United Kingdom IT Association (UKITA). All of the SME associations will actively engage in publishing and disseminating the project's solutions, best practices and blueprints to their members, while also ensuring that requirements from SME communities are adequately addressed in the scope of the pilot deployments.

We believe that the successful conclusion of RFID-ROI-SME will substantially contribute toward enabling small and midsize enterprises to understand and fully leverage the benefits of radio frequency identification.

Sebastiano Toffaletti is the secretary general of PIN-SME (an association representing the interests of Europe's information and communication technologies in the SME sector) and the coordinator of the RFID-ROI-SME project. John Soldatos, an associate professor at Athens Information Technology (AIT), is the initiative's project quality manager, and will lead its efforts to assess the pilots' technological, economic and privacy impacts.