2007 Could Be The Year RFID Gets "Minority Report" Smarter

RFID is poised to help retailers and service providers enhance customers' experiences and deliver precise ad messages, according to panelists at the National Retail Federation show. Soon, RFID could track items as customers pick them up from store shelves throughout America and immediately trigger displays with very specific information and advice -- like which top will match those pants you're holding and where exactly you can find that top. Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, is poised to help retailers and service providers tap into the seemingly infinite potential for enhancing customers' experiences and delivering precise ad messages, according to members of a panel at the National Retail Federation show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Panelists said that after a year of hype (2005) and a year of validation (2006), RFID will likely bring advancements in terms of how to apply the technology so businesses can glean and share information about customer behavior and their own inventory, then act on it. Early adopters are already beginning to show how it's done. Best Buy employees restocked and organized CDs and DVDs more frequently and more enthusiastically when RFID did some of their work for them. An RFID application that created a list of out-of-place and under-stocked items made the employees' jobs easier, said Mark Roberti, panelist and founder and editor of RFID Journal. The technology can trigger surveillance cameras in some stores when an item or box goes into a dumpster out back. It also can mark the time an item left a stockroom and vanished, allowing investigators and prosecutors to view video footage from that time to build theft cases. Now that the industry has published standards and moved the technology beyond its initial stages of development, companies are beginning to figure out how to use RFID to cut time and costs for customer service, training, and labor.