A new survey by the Aberdeen Group has isolated the challenges for retailers of RFID and predicted that best of breed players in the sector are already overcoming those challenges.
The report, "RFID in retail: The Truth behind the Hype", which is available here , says some of the challenges are 'significant'.
At the head of those challenges is the reaility that retailers operate on 'razor-thin margins' and so view technology investments as a cost that has uncertain potential for business benefit. That is not to say that that potential won't bear fruit, but sometimes retailers need to be dragged kicking and screaming to make it. Their perception that RFID is 'expensive, unwieldy and of uncertain business benefit' is one of the biggest challenges to retail RFID success, the report says.
Expensive is a word that's frequently associated with RFID, most commonly regarding the tags, but 'unwieldy' - well, there are are no doubt some that might agree, but any major technology investment implies change, which can indeed be painful. Could a move towards RFID be complex? Yes. Would it imply process change? Yes. Is it necessarily 'unwieldy'? Not so sure. Unwieldy tends to imply little long term benefit, and just a headache to implement. I think RFID ultimately offers significantly more than that.