Hidden Cost of In-Store Technology
While everyone's pretty much up in arms about the benefits of RFID - from total visibility of the supply chain, to insane control over in-store promotions and loss prevention, little do the pundits speak of the hidden costs. If you're running a business that's been around for more than 10-years, you most likely have a hodgepodge of in-store infrastructure that can barely keep up with the demands of your POS, inventory, merchandising and fulfillment needs. I wouldn't be surprised if most in-store infrastructure is still non-ethernet networks, using some long dead protocol to creep data from one place to the next, let alone corporate HQ or the varied suppliers that are hungry for POS data. To realize the prophesies of RFID, most in-store infrastructure will need a complete overhaul, then connectivity to corporate HQ will need to be expanded. That done, centralized IT will have to figure out how to collect the massive data dump, aggregate, analyze and make sense out of the whole mess. I know one thing for sure -- this ain't going to happen anytime soon. I'm willing to bet that 10-years from now, we're still going to be hearing from consultants of the promises of RFID.
While everyone's pretty much up in arms about the benefits of RFID - from total visibility of the supply chain, to insane control over in-store promotions and loss prevention, little do the pundits speak of the hidden costs. If you're running a business that's been around for more than 10-years, you most likely have a hodgepodge of in-store infrastructure that can barely keep up with the demands of your POS, inventory, merchandising and fulfillment needs. I wouldn't be surprised if most in-store infrastructure is still non-ethernet networks, using some long dead protocol to creep data from one place to the next, let alone corporate HQ or the varied suppliers that are hungry for POS data. To realize the prophesies of RFID, most in-store infrastructure will need a complete overhaul, then connectivity to corporate HQ will need to be expanded. That done, centralized IT will have to figure out how to collect the massive data dump, aggregate, analyze and make sense out of the whole mess. I know one thing for sure -- this ain't going to happen anytime soon. I'm willing to bet that 10-years from now, we're still going to be hearing from consultants of the promises of RFID.
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