Article by Sachin Singh
OverviewThree retail giants across two continents are among the true drivers of RFID technology throughout the retail industry. RFID chips at the pallet level have forced the entire industry to recognize the RFID’s time has come. Several factors are driving retailers to push for RFID implementation, but the significant advantage is the ability to remove inefficiencies from current supply chain management by using real time inventory information.
Retailer Advantages
Real Time Inventory Information: RFID provides retailers with real-time inventory information that can help to prevent stock outs, locate stock within a store to avoid ‘shrinkage’ of inventories, and can help to enable retailers to use more yield effective pricing strategies.A recent study cited in the Harvard Business Review looked at survey data from 71,000 consumers in 29 countries to decipher what shoppers do when they face a stock out of a desired product. The results confirmed what many retailers feared.Across the entire retail industry stock outs on average, cost each retailer approximately 4% of sales. Consumers are not patient with stock outs; in fact fewer than half will purchase a replacement item, with almost a third going elsewhere to find the item.Across the retail industry stock out levels remain near 8%, and represent a key issue that retailers hope to reduce drastically with RFID. Recently noted that if the company could reduce stock out levels from 8 to10% to more like 2 to 3% of sales, the return on investment in RFID would more than pay for itself.Lastly, the use of real time inventory information to track stock will enable retailers to provide a greater level of service and sales support. Sales associates will able to see when and where stock will be delivered to a particular store, thus avoiding the relentless request that customers ‘check back’ to see if an item has been brought into the store.Decreased Labor Costs: RFID provides technology that practically eliminates the need for human checking of stock. Labor reductions will be realized in the following areas of retail operations; receiving, stocking, check out, cycle counting and physical counting. Presence of RFID reduce a wide array of costs: receiving by 50 to 65%, stocking by 22 to 30%, checkout by 22 to 30% cycle counting by 40 to 60% and physical counting by 90 to 100%.
Prevention of Theft, Shrink and Inventory Write Offs: ‘Shrink’ is a retailing term used to describe inaccurate inventory counts as a result of customer theft, employee theft, inaccurate inventory counts due to misplaced items, and stock reordered because items are on a display shelf in another area of the store. The 2000 Retail Survey Report estimates that shrink represents 1.69% of sales for retailers. RFID technology has the potential to alert staff when items are being removed illegally, or when they have been misplaced within the store. This can assist in theft reduction and also provide real-time accurate inventory counts automatically.Inventory write-offs occur when goods are no longer fit for consumption, the goods are no longer in demand by consumers, or they have been damaged while in the retailer’s possession. RFID technology offers solutions to track sell-by-dates of each product on the shelf. The collection and utilization of this information will help retailers maintain a better inventory management system that can react to demand much more quickly than current systems.The implementation of RFID technology will seek to reduce retailer ‘shrink’ from 1.69% of sales to an impressive 0.78% of sales. Furthermore, they maintained that the implementation of RFID would reduce the cost of inventory write offs by as much as 20%.
Totally Integrated Opportunities: In addition to improving the Supply Chain, the advent of RFID technologies will offer retailers new and unlimited marketing opportunities. Tracking a customers’ purchases before they leave the store offers retailers information that can immediately be used for the cross selling other related products. In-store suggestive selling allows retailers to communicate with shoppers while they are shopping in an effort to encourage them to buy an additional and/or complimentary item.
About the Author
Sachin Singh
Client Service Executive- Technology operation
Agnicient Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
D-37, Sector – 63, Noida
sachin.singh@agnicient.com
+91- 9711989875
www.agnicient.com
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