Aug 25, 2005This article was originally published by RFID Update.
August 25, 2005—Business-to-business systems integration firm SEEBURGER this week released a new service targeted at companies seeking an affordable solution for slap-and-ship compliance. Called IDnet, it is a hosted subscription service that matches barcodes to RFID/EPC codes, prints RFID/barcode labels, generates and transmits advance shipping notices (ASNs), verifies labels before goods are shipped, issues electronic invoices, and maintains a complete audit trail of all operations, including time of shipping and ASN transmittal as well as ASN receipt logs. The pricing begins at roughly $350 per month.
RFID Update spoke with Philip Calderbank, SEEBURGER's Vice President of RFID, who described how the service works. Upon logging on to the website, the user is presented with a list of his company's product codes (the list is built as part of the initial setup of the IDnet service). The user selects the product for which compliance labels are needed, and can then choose to have the labels printed locally if his company is equipped with an RFID printer, or he can print to the NCR Service Bureau, which will overnight the new labels back to him. (SEEBURGER has teamed with NCR to offer the integrated solution.) Calderbank said that an end-user can be set up on IDnet within one day. "It takes a couple of hours to set the whole system up and have it running."
Calderbank emphasized that the new service is essentially a basic mandate compliance system offered at a price point low enough to be accessible to even the smallest suppliers. "This IDnet hosted solution is purely to comply with what the DoD and Wal-Mart are asking their suppliers to do." He said that there are thousands of small DoD and second-tier retail suppliers under mandate for whom the software costs of compliance -- typically tens of thousands of dollars -- are too expensive. "We've talked to a lot of companies, and we think IDnet will help them overcome the barrier of the cost element." Even among larger companies that can afford compliance software, many are trying to hold off in the near-term. "IDnet is also aimed at larger companies who are saying, 'We need to go forward with RFID in the next few years, however we're not quite ready'" to invest considerable resources just yet. "IDnet is a great way to start," he said.
SEEBURGER sees a big market for IDnet. They estimate the number of active DoD suppliers to be about 45,000. With the DoD mandate coming into effect, said Calderbank, "That's a lot of companies that have to step up to the plate and do something with RFID in the next year or two." Furthermore, many of those companies are very small shops of less than ten people. With IDnet, SEEBURGER hopes to squarely tap that demographic by offering a simple, easy-to-setup compliance solution at a price any firm can afford.
