Getting Ahead of the RFID Market

Some solutions providers have instituted strategies not viable for the current state of adoption.

By Mark Roberti

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Jan 30, 2012—The economic downturn that followed the 2008 financial crisis caused some companies to put radio frequency identification projects on hold. This had a negative impact on solutions providers. But some of these firms are also struggling because they have adopted strategies inappropriate to the current state of RFID adoption.

Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado and other seminal books on technology adoption, suggests that providers of new technology must adopt different business models based on the current state of adoption. During the early market, companies must be project-focused—that is, they must be systems integrators and make money on every deployment.

After the market crosses the chasm and adoption picks up in specific industries (what Moore calls the bowling-alley phase), businesses need to offer what he calls solutions—that is, they must offer products, but each deployment must be highly customized. As adoption ramps up, they must then turn their solutions into out-of-the-box products that they can ship as fast as customers want to buy them.

In some industries, RFID adoption is nearing the bowling-alley phase. Adoption is picking up in health care (primarily active RFID-based real-time location systems), retail (mainly passive ultrahigh-frequency technology) and a few other areas. RFID is still in the early market, in which each deployment in these sectors is a customized project. But some vendors have abandoned their project strategy too quickly, and have jumped into creating solutions or products for which the market is not yet ready.

This is not unique to radio frequency identification. It happens all the time. Before I launched RFID Journal, I covered Internet marketplaces for The Industry Standard, a dotcom weekly. Most of the marketplaces we covered crashed and burned. One reason is that they expected to create complete supply chain solutions when the market needed a project-based approach to revamping supply chains based on the ability to leverage Internet data.

The RFID market is close to an inflection point. The challenge for RFID vendors is to understand the state of the market, and to not get too far out in front of it. Some vendors will not be able to hang on until adoption picks up, and will thus go under. Some might be able to stick it out with additional financing until the market picks up again. And, of course, there are those taking the appropriate strategy for the current phase of RFID adoption—they might emerge as the strongest players, even if they are relatively unknown at present.

The challenge for end users is to evaluate companies carefully, to ensure that they have the financial strength necessary to complete a project and stick around to support it. The last thing you want is to choose a solution from a company, only to find that you now own it and have to support it alone, since that firm failed to employ the correct strategy at the proper time.

Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog, the Editor's Note archive or RFID Connect.

USER COMMENTS

George Kraev

2012-02-06 03:49:43 AM

Not quite the case Moore's analysis assumes simple product and also looks at products from a purely retail/sales perspective. I would argue that RFID systems are not a drop in solution and for a few organizations an adjustment of business processes is needed. RFID solutions are business management ones and as such a full integration is needed with the rest of the business processes in order to achieve the best results. Anyway, that essentially makes solutions relatively custom made and you will never have a generic one that you can manufacture on a conveyor belt. It might be the specific management software or the customizations of the tags or some other aspect but there is always something that would have to be custom configured for the particular client or the particular sub market. However, you are absolutely correct that when choosing an RFID solution you need to look for a company who can provide you with support for years to come. I'd even add that you should be looking for a company that follows industry standards and really think twice if you believe that your application needs a custom made non-standards compliant solution. Even security applications most often than not do not truly need a systems like that. Also custom solution in RFID as in any other business are very expensive in the long run and are always a risk to your business.

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