Dec. 18, 2008 – CEO Rob Balgley discusses how Skyetek is helping companies extend their management of inventory from their own premises to "the field."

We all hear about supply chains so much, but Skyetek talks about "sales chain applications." Tell us a little bit about that.

BALGLEY: Sales chain refers to assets and inventory outside of a premises-based distribution center or warehouse – basically the idea of being able to manage inventory in the field, to manage something in a retail facility, a hospital or a manufacturing plant. Sales chain is known also as field inventory management.

The major difference being RFID in a warehouse supply chain is mostly a cost savings application; whereas productivity in the field, applied to a sales organization, can often provide a more compelling ROI because it increases revenue.

The obvious question is: The goods get "to the field," carrying a tag or embedded RFID in some sort of product or equipment. But in the field there might not be an infrastructure that relates to either that wave length, or to RFID at all. How is the connection made?

BALGLEY: You are right. In off-premises, field inventory management, the highly compensated field worker – salesperson – does not have access to wi-fi back haul data and does not necessarily have access to software running on the server.

The architecture, the application of the technology, has to be very different. What we do is provide a very small, inexpensive handheld reader with a hard-wired side that also contains bluechip capability: from the handheld reader with bluetooth to a cell phone. Most people have data plants in the cell phone. It is usually not an incremental cost.

The data is then transmitted back from the cell phone to corporate headquarters. We run a mobile agent on the phone. We host this service. So we actually are running a data center here in Colorado that will provide our corporate headquarter customer with a consult.

Just to be clear, we talk about wi-fi a lot as a frequency that active RFID often runs on; but you are not talking about using active RFID per se, are you?

BALGLEY: No, no, because in most of our applications we only do passive RFID. Most of what we work with are items that, economically speaking, makes more sense to use a passive tag. It keeps the cost down. My mention of wi-fi applies to the fact that our reps can't usually use the customer’s network; it is not our customers' premises. So, they are using their cell phone instead of having access to a network like wi-fi.

When you say handheld, you are also mentioning cell phones. Are these two separate items or do you empower the cell phones to become a handheld reader?

BALGLEY: You can do both. Strictly speaking we are talking about equipping a a sales rep with a small, inexpensive handheld. We find that works very well.

As for RFID reader equipped cell phones, I think it close; it is not quite there yet. The simplest, most effective answer is, just like you would provide a field worker a barcode reader, in this case it would be a small handheld RFID reader.

So field inventory management can't be done without field reps, is that correct?

BALGLEY: No, actually it is not. In fact, we offer two form factors. One would be a sort of a mobile form factor, where the rep is using a small handheld with a cell phone.

Again, that would be with the rep. What about if a rep was not there?

BALGLEY: If the rep is not there, we offer a hardware solution that combines both a reader and either a wi-fi, Bluetooth or cellular radio connection and it can be used to RFID enable a cabinet, a shelving system, a container, a tote.

In other words, if you have a cabinet in a hospital that is dispensing orthopedic implants, you might use both applications. The rep may only have access to that hospital once every few weeks. The cabinet uses a combination RFID reader and wireless connectivity, and they are able to get data by the minute. Just a hardware form factor would be different.

We see compelling ROI in tracking the use of promotional displays in stores, be they end caps or stand alone displays, that tie into advertising programs. What do you do if you were to work with promotions?

BALGLEY: I think it is no different from a cabinet in a hospital dispensing orthopedic implants. You would use the same type of kind of an RFID access point and would be able to collect instantaneous market data.

If, for instance, Olympus is launching a new camera, you would be able to receive real time information from that end cap, which would be more accurate, more timely and ultimately a lot of more effective.

Skyetek is known for making small readers for various applications. Is there ever a situation where you might have both tags and readers on the same unit out in the field, would that ever make sense?

BALGLEY: Absolutely. In fact, that is the fundamental premise. Using the same example, if you were launching four cameras, you might want to know which of the different models were taken off the display most frequently. So you are able to track movement of the items on the promotional display according to what research you are doing or what problem you are solving with your research.