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ROI on the RFID Honor Roll
Issue #125 | Nov. 30, 2007 | by Andy Kowl
If you do public relations or marketing for your company, there is a free offer we have for you at the end of this – so don’t go away. . .
It’s bad enough that the mainstream press is still confused about RFID and assumes it is all about supply chain and Wal-Mart. But even some companies on the fringes of the RFID business have that impression.
We are hearing of ROI all over, especially asset tracking, real time location, WIP, automation, security, safety, cold chain, value-added and many more categories. (If you want to catch up with the latest ROI facts and figures regarding asset tracking, be sure to catch our webinar next week.)
But Wall Street Journal and the other journalists with RFID blinders on are not the only ones to blame. We in the RFID media must start doing a better job, too.
Here on RFID Street we try to pull our weight. This year we have written about RFID providing proven ROI through:
• IT asset tracking
• Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
• CPG retail promotions
• Tracking outgoing totes
• Asset tracking
. . . and many others.
We spend much of our day talking with both industry members and companies implementing RFID. So we know first hand – okay, second hand if you want to get technical – that companies and governments all over the planet are finding a positive return on their investment.
However here on RFID Street and, in particular, at RFID Switchboard, we do not strive to be a news organization. We leave that to my friends Will Smith of RFID Update; Pete Clark of Using RFID; Mark Roberti at RFID Journal; Chris Corum at RFID News; and David Zhou at More RFID. By the way, I use “friends” literally and I am proud to have excellent relations with all these good men.
The missing stories
Yet we have been doing a research project and have noticed what seems rather odd. In searching these websites, after about a dozen hours spent by my staff, there are few specific, after-the fact, detailed ROI stories to be found. I mean, after that much time I would have guessed we would have easily found 50 such stories. A couple dozen at the least. Not even close.
Oh, to be sure we found plenty of press releases promising ROI. There was story after story, how this industry and that market would and could save all sorts of money using one RFID solution or another. About how a particular product will, or even does, save you big percentages of costs or time. But, when the rubber meets the road, not too many specific stories about how a particular company saves a certain amount of, or percentage of, dollars or time.
Downright weird. Knowing those guys, at least a few of them are right now going to search their own websites to prove (at least to themselves) that I am wrong, because this will sound no more right to them than it does to me.
The healthcare factor
Another fascinating discovery is, that of the relatively few, specific, after-the-fact stories, more than 50% of them are about savings in hospitals. Wow. Remove the healthcare stories from the mix, and you are scraping bottom.
But this is dumb! We talk with people every day, it seems, who are achieving ROI with an RFID implementation they either bought or sold.
The RFID Honor Roll
We are going to fix this and challenge you to join us. Within the next couple of weeks RFID Switchboard is introducing a brand new design and format. Right on our new home page we are creating the “RFID Honor Roll.” This will be a repository of stories showing how companies are finding fantastic returns with their RFID investment. The headlines will scroll 24/7, linked to stories giving details.
That free offer I promised is this: if you sell RFID, write up a short story about the return your customers have seen and we’ll run it in the Honor Roll. One implementation per story, and if you give only generalizations then we will not run them. If you have no positive ROI story to share, either you are a new company or you are in the wrong business. End-users of RFID who are proud of the success they are seeing are welcome to submit stories, too.
We are determined to lead the way in getting the word out; but I also encourage my fellow RFID publishers to join in and start getting more specific, more routinely. If we do not shout the good news from the rooftops, shame on us.
To submit your RFID Honor Roll stories – there is no limit per company, keep ‘em coming – send your write-up to editor@RFIDswitchboard.com. For now it is that easy, although soon you will need to use a form we will provide. Help us spread the word far and wide. Please.
Last edited by AndreaC : 04-06-2008 at 10:53 PM.
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