One of the issues that RFID exponents will have to tackle in due course is what to do with the data it generates, and how to turn that into information. This is uncharted territory for many, and by the time RFID adoption is more widespread, best practice should have started to evolve.
In the meantime, fears over organisations' ability to handle data - or in some cases even know what RFID is - have been raised in a report published by three academics at Trinity College, Dublin. The report, "Too much data, too little information: the challenges of RFID implementation" is worth a read.
There are three main conclusions:
1. Marketers are already struggling to cope with their current information systems and would struggle with anything more advanced such as RFID.
2. Marketers continue to misunderstand how technologies such as RFID can be useful to them.
3. Many marketers are ignorant about what RFID is, with three out of four companies admitting to never having heard of it - though in the case of two of those companies, RFID trials have already been carried out in their UK stores.
Comments (1)
Thanks for the article reference. We have see growing pains at various organizations just in implementing asset tracking with bar codes, which is relatively simplitic compaired to the potentential data management issues with RFID. It will be a big challenge, but some advantages are that it may be less labor intensive than tracking by barcodes. That in itself may help increase success in implemting if sytems are used that are flexible enought to use RFID well.
Posted by Comco Asset Management | August 17, 2007 5:24 PM
Posted on August 17, 2007 17:24