Barcode based Asset Tracking is for losers!

  

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

 delicious  

  

Using bar code to track assets? Do you know that’s forty year old technology? How old is your car? Is your TV black and white? If you are using bar codes to track your key assets, you are a loser…you are losing assets, losing money and losing precious time. Barcode and other similar manual processes eat away at time that could be used to add significant value to your organization.   If you failed your last internal audit you know how right I am, and you’re not only a loser – your boss thinks you’re incompetent.

The good news is RFID is here to make you cool again, and a superstar in your company. If you’ve read this far you are willing to change your ways, or at least consider it. ODIN can help, we’re the physicists in Maverick-like Ray-Bans. Geeks who know more about what’s cool than any of the Kardashian girls ever will. What is coolest these days, at least among CIOs , CFOs and Wall Street, is eliminating parasitic roles in an organization.

Anything that sucks value from your company’s bottom line is a parasitic role.

This short blog and the RFID eBook that goes with it will help you get smart about the technology. RFID asset tracking has taken off the past few months, but like Silly Bands they may be cool but there are still a lot of questions to be answered (is that the Stanley Cup or a Wedding Cake). ODIN lives to make RFID accurate and easy (it just works) and we live to make Supremely Satisfied Clients. So this blog  is all about answering your questions and helping educate you on how to get started with an RFID-based asset tracking program.

How can RFID eliminate corporate parasites?

The short answer is RFID works better than any other technology for asset tracking, but it requires investment in new infrastructure. RFID eliminates the need for line-of-site and you don’t have to touch or move any assets, most importantly when done right RIFD is five time faster than bar codes. RFID has been deployed for servers, laptops and key assets in some of the most demanding Fortune 50 companies – so it’s now well proven. 

Is RFID right for your assets?

The only way to know for sure is to plan out a proof of concept to see if RFID will provide value for your company. A proof of concept or POC should cost less than $25,000 to execute, and it should take under a month. The results should tell you if RFID can create value, and should provide the data to back up an RFID  business case.

If you balk at the idea of spending twenty or fifty thousand dollars for a POC then your company is too small to really benefit from RFID. Counting, searching, and moving assets adds no value to what you are doing, but you pay people to do it. Those are corporate parasites. You need to kill them.  RFID is the Orkin man of corporate parasites.

Five simple steps to execute an RFID proof of concept:

1. Buy a UHF RFID handheld and (optionally) a fixed reader portal
2. Buy some Passive UHF RFID tags
3. Get some software to collect the data
4.  Identify and document the process steps for taking inventory. 
5. Tag some assets and start timing  the with and without RFID – then arrogate the data

Building an RFID  business case

Now you should have seen the difference using a cool 21^st Century technology like RFID can make, but your boss knows that people tend to overestimate technology’s impact and underestimate the time and cost to get to that end state. So you want to be extra conservative building the business case.

With the data you have built from the POC you have a fairly accurate idea of what savings could be. You know how much you spend every year on performing inventory, you know how often someone goes looking for something, you know what it costs to replace an asset or back-up a server. Those are all the basis for potential savings.

Part II of this Blog will give the cost associated with RFID Asset Tracking and some parameters around what success looks like. In the meantime – throw out that New Kids on the Block T-Shirt and start taking your first step to being cool. We’ll get you there.

For the full RFID eBook on using RFID to be the coolest kid in the office download the RFID eBook PDF here.

PS - If you learned from this blog, please Retweet it to your friends and sign up for our email updates when a new blog comes out!