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April 10, 2006

Small Victories

By Beth Bacheldor

Little companies face big challenges when deploying RFID. But by working with a systems integrator or managed services provider, they may be able to keep costs down, and even earn a return on their investment.

Article Excerpt

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Perhaps the newest RFID options are the managed vendor services, which promise to take the complexities out of an RFID implementation by essentially turning it over to a third party for hosting and management purposes. In January, for example, One Network Enterprises launched its RFID Fulfillment Network, an Internet-based network focused on the distribution of goods and fulfillment of orders. The network consists of applications to help the members manage RFID tag creation and shipment notification, as well as scheduling shipment deliveries.

The baseline service includes an RFID printer, a minimum of 500 RFID labels, a three-year maintenance contract and connectivity to the company's managed fulfillment network of about 1,100 companies— all for $620 per month. One Network's service also acts as a matchmaker, connecting various companies together and making sure they all speak the same RFID language. In that way, they can all take advantage of the information RFID data promises to provide: supply chain visibility, logistics tracking and more.

"We're attacking two of the three fundamental problems with RFID," says John Keenan, president and CEO of One Network. "For a supplier generating anything less than 1,500 RFID tags a month, they are probably spending about $3 to $4 a tag, and that's just hardware costs for the tags, printers, servers, etc. If you are shipping out cases of goods valued at just $40, then $4 a tag won't work. We're taking it down to a fixed price of $1.24 a tag, and that goes down when you get above 500 tags. We're also eliminating capital expense. We're removing the complexity of buying all the technology pieces and having to put them together. It is a complete, turnkey system."

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Read full article at RFIDJournal.com: Small Victories