RFID In Retail: Navigating The New Era Of RFID

UPC & RFID: Lessons Learned from an Earlier Evolution

It's difficult to overstate how enormous the impact radio frequency identification (RFID) technology will have on the retail industry. RFID's ability to imbue each pinhead-sized tag with a unique identifying code, and to have each tag be "read" virtually simultaneously without requiring the "line of sight" that a bar code needs, will affect every aspect of retail operations — from the point of manufacture all the way to the point of sale, and possibly beyond. In fact, nothing has had as widespread an impact since bar codes themselves became a fact of retail life beginning in the early 1970s.

As with bar codes, while the technology itself is revolutionary, RFID's effect on retail is likely to be evolutionary — slow overall, with sudden leaps forward. And again like bar codes, RFID has so many potential applications that it will be difficult for companies to know where to invest in order to achieve the biggest payback.

NCR is uniquely qualified to help retailers as they grapple with RFID decisions. NCR brings 120 years of experience serving the retail industry, with proven leadership in numerous areas that will be crucial in the RFID era, particularly bar code scanning and RF technologies due to its expertise in electronic shelf labels. In addition, because NCR was at the forefront of the bar code evolution, it has the people, the services and the technologies to apply lessons from the earlier transition.