IoT GUIDE

Installing and deploying an RFID tracking system in your warehouse or supply chain takes an investment. To determine if the investment will be worth it, you need to know where you will find your return on investment—whether it’s labor, tangibles or intangibles.

How Much Does Implementing RFID Technology Cost

RFID Asset Tracking Systems Integrators like A2B Tracking, work very closely with their customers to get metrics to help justify these solutions. RFID technology is like any other technology implementation—the price tag can vary greatly. An RFID implementation could cost as little as ten thousand dollars for a small project or hundreds of thousands of dollars—if you’re trying to outfit a large warehouse with a lot of fixed RFID reading equipment.

How long does it take to install RFID technology?

The answer to this question depends upon the details and the scope of the implementation. If it's a purely mobile-play solution, it could be implemented within a couple of days. In contrast, if you are working on a large warehouse it could take many weeks. An example of a more challenging situation would be one where you're installing portal technology across thirty overhead doors. All the physical equipment would need to be installed and configured which could take a few weeks and then you would need to schedule additional training to get your personnel ready to take advantage of the system. A complex implementation of RFID technology may take a month or more.

Calculating Supply Chain ROI with RFID Technology

In order to determine your ROI before you implement an RFID technology, you need to start by looking at the labor savings. RFID technology can give you the ability to better utilize your staff to perform tasks that are more beneficial to your business than performing manual inventories or cycle counting. RFID technology is a very efficient system and will increase the speed and time of other warehouse activities, such as shipping, receiving or putting items away— as well as reduce the time spent on finding misplaced items. With RFID technology you can achieve a higher degree of accuracy and speed on your supply chain with less human oversight. For many warehouse and supply chain managers, return on investment is found in saving by a reduction of labor.

Another way to Calculate the ROI of RFID

With C-suite or executive levels inside an organization, particularly for commercial businesses, they assess ROI differently. Executives are not only concerned with the reduction of costs, but also with increasing the quality of customer service or the ability to leverage an improved brand in the eyes of their customers by using modern technologies.

Executives know that increased real time transparency with customer orders is central to good customer service. It is important that customers know they can walk into an operation and know exactly where their item is in the cycle and when to expect it’s delivery.

For example, if you take a company that services after-market items—they are going to have customers who might walk into their location and want an update, "Okay, where's my item? It's been a couple of weeks." Imagine if it took as much as a half an hour to an hour for your employees just to find the item for the customer. That would not only be embarrassing—that would also be bad for business. Customers today expect accurate, up-to-date information at a moment’s notice.

From that viewpoint, executives can look at where the organization is failing customers in the delivery of products or services and what this technology can do to solve that problem.

If you can manage the delivery of your products and services more efficiently, and customers can reliably engage with your operations and see this technology in action, it's certainly a competitive advantage for your business .

To learn more about how RFID could improve your operation watch our recent on-demand webinar: How RFID is changing Asset Tracking. In this webinar our CEO and CTO, Peter Collins and Darryl Lane, explore the benefits and challenges with a modern RFID implementation. Watch now (http://content.a2btracking.com/rfid-changing-asset-tracking-on-demand-webinar/) and learn the answers important questions that you need to know for your organization before you consider implementing RFID technology.