Dec 04, 2008This article was originally published by RFID Update.
December 4, 2008—Aberdeen Group has released the latest installment in a series of reports on RFID adoption. Entitled Where RFID Meets ROI: Beyond Supply Chains, the report is available as a free download for a limited time. Following is the executive summary, contributed by report author Michael Dortch.
Where RFID Meets ROI: Beyond Supply Chains
This benchmark study offers information and recommendations to help business and IT decision-makers identify and pursue the strongest Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) deployment opportunities for specific business situations.
Best-in-Class Performance
Aberdeen used four business-critical measures of IT performance and business value to distinguish the Best-in-Class from Industry Average and Laggard organizations:
- Year-over-year changes in user satisfaction
- Year-over-year changes in employee productivity
- Year-over-year changes in overall infrastructure costs
- Year-over-year changes in time to information for operational / line-of-business applications
Competitive Maturity Assessment
The performance levels of the above measures are strong indicators of the maturity of RFID deployments and pursuits at surveyed companies. In addition, Best-in-Class companies identified for this study:
- Are more than 1.3-times as likely as Industry Average and more than 3.4-times as likely as Laggard respondents to have the ability to craft effective RFID Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
- Are more than 1.5-times as likely as Industry Average and more than 2.9-times as likely as Laggard respondents to have consolidated, integrated RFID performance monitoring in place
- Are more than 1.4-times as likely as Industry Average and more than 1.9-times as likely as Laggard respondents to have in place middleware or other solutions for integration of RFID-generated data
Required Actions
In addition to the specific recommendations in Chapter Three of this report, to achieve Best-in-Class performance, companies must:
- Ensure that incumbent IT and business infrastructures are "RFID-ready," including abilities to compare RFID solutions with alternatives fairly and accurately and to integrate management of RFID deployments and IT infrastructures
- Frame all RFID initiatives in ways that focus on business goals, needs and benefits, and that can be evaluated in terms of their effects on business performance and alignment of IT efforts with business requirements
- Identify, then pursue opportunities to integrate RFID-generated data with key line-of-business, operational, management and support applications, and to measure the effectiveness and ROI of such efforts
The full report, available free on Aberdeen's website until January 30th, discusses each of these points and many others in detail.
