Dutch bookstore chain Selexyz is showing cost and revenue side improvements after it implemented book - not just pallet level - RFID.
"Introducing RFID at the item level cut the inventory process from four minutes per box to just seconds. That's significant, considering that Selexyz processes more than 7 million books each year across its retail chain."
"But the greatest benefit is the ability to improve customer service—and increase sales. The tagged books link into Selexyz's order-management system, which customers can access through in-store kiosks as well as the company's online site. Since each book can be instantly located, customers can purchase books online and pick them up at their local store—a handy benefit that still eludes U.S. booksellers. What's more, misplaced books in the store can be quickly located and re-shelved."
Read more at CIOInsight. Business 2.0 December issue also has a series of nice pictures which show the impact at the stores.
I'm glad to see people are starting to use RFID in a useful manner again. In a previous life I ran a project that used RFID tags to track razor blades in a store. The store was in Cambridge UK and I could read the data off a web page in my office in Cambridge MA. Using the data from the RFID readers we could tell in realtime
1. When the shelf had not been stocked
-- All of a sudden the supplier could tell when the retailer was not keeping up!
2. How to increase the profitability of the product mix
3. impact of promotions or other marketing events.
4. Buying (and theft) patterns
Our client lost interest when a bigger competitor announce a mandate on a slightly similar technology with a much lower value prop....
Posted by: Karl Waldman | January 29, 2007 at 09:44 PM