Back in May, I recounted a panel discussion at the Retail Business & Technology Exposition (RBTE) in London, regarding “RFID (Radio Frequency ID) in Real Life”. The discussion included representatives from Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, and River Island, and the speakers were remarkably candid about the benefits of item-level RFID tagging. As I recounted in the May Retail Paradox Weekly piece, “The numbers are compelling. River Island… has been able to improve stock ledger accuracy from about 75% to 99%. Similarly, M&S… has been able to measure a 14% improvement in inventory accuracy. That level of accuracy delivers three benefits <at John Lewis>: sales lift, stop-loss improvements, and a 30% productivity improvement in store associates’ cycle counting and replenishment activities… the productivity improvements are important because store associates can redirect their efforts on more selling activities that improve customer service.”
Despite the benefits that RFID adopters report, most retailers have not yet adopted RFID. From the May article: “the 2016 RSR study showed that it’s still early days for the technology; while a majority of retailers indicated that ‘RFID for item-level inventory’ and ‘RFID for supply chain inventory tracking’ have ‘a lot of value’, only 30% of Retail Winners (and less of everyone else) report ‘implemented and satisfied’ status.”
It was with these dueling perspectives that I attended the annual U.S. meeting of the RAIN (RAdio IdentificatioN) Alliance meeting in Seattle last week. The alliance is an organization dedicated to the adoption UHF RFID technology, including integrated chips, tags, readers, and software (no long winded explanation of these things – just the short version: RFID integrated chips are connected to antennas that are embedded into tags, which produce a signal that can be read by either handheld or fixed positions readers, which then deliver the resulting message to some software). The alliance boasts 154 member companies globally, and the vision of the group (according to RAIN Alliance president Steve Halladay) is to “identify, locate, authenticate, and engage ‘things’ – connecting billions of everyday items”.