The TrueDemand for RFID

Whatever happened to RFID?

That’s one of the questions I asked myself walking the aisles at ProMat 2009 a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t that there were no booths promoting the technology. I had a chance to see an RFID-enabled lift truck at M/A-COM Technology Solutions and to talk over dinner about asset management and real-time locating systems with AeroScout. But if you were at ProMat four years ago, you’ll remember that RFID was the main course at nearly every booth. Everybody wanted to talk about tracking pallets, cartons and even individual cans of cola in real-time through the supply chain. This year, it was more like the chips and salsa that get passed around while you make small talk.

TrueDemand is a great example of an RFID-related start up that evolved, and prospered, with the times. The company was co-founded by Eric Peters, a Manhattan Associates veteran, at the height of the RFID boom. The idea behind TrueDemand, at least as Peters explained it to me at the time, was pragmatic. Everyone back then was focused on how to read a tag in a warehouse or store. But the bigger question was: What are you going to do with all of that information you’re getting once you figure out how to make a tag go blink. In other words, what was in it for me?

Enter TrueDemand. “We started out with a focus around RFID because big customers had large initiatives around RFID,” says Peters. The company’s application took the RFID data that was collected when product entered a warehouse or left a storeroom for the floor and created applications that could make sense of it. Did your promotional pallets leave a DC for a store on time? Did they leave the store room for the floor when they were supposed to? Did the DC receive everything you think you shipped, or do you really owe a chargeback? These were practical business problems that could be solved with RFID data.

Fast forward a few years, and TrueDemand is still helping consumer packaged goods companies figure out if their products are moving through the supply chain the way they’re supposed to, especially whether they’re in stock on the shelf at their retail customers. But the focus now isn’t on data from RFID systems. It’s just data, however you choose to collect it.

“Quite frankly, RFID projects came out of the home offices of the big retailers,” says Peters. “At the DC and store level, which is where the rubber meets the road, the suppliers, DC managers and store managers just wanted to manage inventory more tightly and sell more product. They didn’t care whether you used RFID or not to get that result.”

Peters adds that RFID is not dead at the big box retailers. It’s just being done on a voluntary basis, and in a more selective way. As for TrueDemand, they have focused their efforts on helping their customers keep stock on the store shelves and in the warehouse at levels that maximize sales. 

“Our solution takes the retail point of sale information that’s shared each night,” says Peters. “We combine that with information the CPG manufacturer has access to, like inventory levels in a DC. We then can come up with a forecast of what demand should be and what they need to do.”

That may involve producing more product; it may involve getting more inventory into a distribution center; or, it may involve getting product from the store room onto the shelf. More importantly, RFID is not necessarily a part of that equation – which shows how far the company has traveled from its RFID roots.

“By looking at sales and inventory data, we can figure out the true demand for your product and make a link from the shelf to the warehouse to the plant,” says Peters. “We want to make sure we can help you run with the leanest amount of inventory you can and still meet customer demands and need.”