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Currently, firms are trying to find pockets of ROI, and many believe that an ROI only exists when merging RFID with the POS and Inventory data found in a Demand Signal Repository. RFID is here to stay. The state of RFID is pockets of promising results in a morass of unpredictability. Operationally, raw EPC reads are being filtered and transformed into Application Level Events (ALE) and associated with supply chain location and operation activities. This increased event granularity enables a product to be tracked at numerous points through the supply chain, essentially supercharging the inventory systems.

Without an integrated view provided by a DSR, retailer EPC read data is typically loaded into isolated, stand-alone systems making it difficult to correlate with consumption or other supply chain activities. Leading edge firms are beginning to look for RFID analytic solutions that can avoid a hosted solution so as to keep in compliance with the Wal-Mart data sharing agreement, and merge POS and Inventory with RFID.

By merging RFID data with the context of consumption and supply chain data, the CP firm will be able to:

• Identify consumer demand that is outpacing the flow of product in the supply chain
• Identify where profiled lead times are inaccurate
• Identify false in-stocks, where the retailer’s system indicates that an item is in inventory but the consumption has radically declined
• Identify inadequate or inefficient shelf-space allocation due to frequent RFID read events in and out of the backroom
• Identify potential end-of-life or outdated products and reduce spoilage, obsolescence and out-of stocks due to unsellable products

None of these actions can be done with RFID data alone. To drive ROI out of RFID data, you must integrate the Application Level Events with the context of point-of-sale, forecast, merchandising and replenishment profile data in a demand signal repository. A demand signal repository is a single data factory where real-time granular point-of-sales, movement, demographic, synchronized item and other information sits. It is the foundation. It collects, harmonizes and prioritizes the information from the shelf.

To drive ROI from RFID, you will need to:

• Scale data collection and harmonization across multiple retailers. This will require a demand signal repository that can support multiple data sources (retailer portals, AS2, EDI, spreadsheets), multiple subject areas (point-of-sale, retailer forecasts, current inventory systems, merchandising and replenishment profiles, etc.) with a centralized “Command and Control” console to enable effective management and escalation.
• Cleanse data and apply retailer-specific business rules to interpret Application Level Events. Retailer by retailer, location by location, ALE data varies in content, attributes and context.
• Merge RFID with point-of-sale, forecasts, merchandising and replenishment profiles. Complex data harmonization business rules will allow an enterprise-wide view of the supply chain and place the ALE data in context of the demand environment.
• Provide an analytics interface that can support scalable performance against large data volumes with multi-dimensional segmentation and clustering. Analysts will need to have standardized exception reports and event notifications combined with the ability to drill-down and follow the data.
• Empower other applications in the supply chain with cleansed RFID data. Using the demand data router enables other applications in the supply chain to automate and scale responsive capabilities.

Viewpoint

“Enhancements within Vision Chain 3.2 will allow us to streamline the process of aligning retailer data so we can get to product insights faster.”
-- Category Manager, Cadbury Schweppes

“ Vision Chain support around market basket analytics will complement our on-going efforts to analyze consumer purchasing behavior and ultimately, assist in being more efficiently centered in our approach across all of our sales and analytic controllables.”
-- Senior Category Manager, The Dannon Company