Nearly two-thirds (62%) of Best-in-Class companies surveyed are proactively and regularly testing and measuring performance of their Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and IT infrastructure deployments. These efforts helped those companies enjoy significant business benefits, including increased performance of their infrastructures and business value and ROI of their RFID investments, according to a new study by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE:HHS). More than 200 survey respondents answered questions regarding their business pressures and the actions being taken to address those challenges. Companies were divided into Best-in-Class, Industry Average and Laggard performers, based on criteria such as year-over-year changes in compliance with external Service Level Agreements (SLAs), unplanned downtime, and "time to information," or the time required to make raw data accessible and actionable for business users. Best-in-Class companies enjoyed an average of:

1. 75.4% year-over-year increase in the number of applications meeting or exceeding external SLAs
2. 16.7% year-over-year increase in IT infrastructure operational efficiency and business responsiveness
3. 1.92% year-over-year reduction of unplanned downtime
4. 6.9% year-over-year reduction in "time to information" for business intelligence

"The top pressures driving integration of RFID and IT infrastructure management include easing integration and maximizing the business value of RFID-generated data, and meeting SLA," said Michael Dortch, senior research analyst, Aberdeen. "Those companies are meeting these goals and setting the stage for more and better RFID deployments by effective monitoring, testing and optimization of their IT and RFID infrastructures." In addition, the study found that users are expanding the focus of those RFID deployments. When asked what items they are tagging or planning to tag with RFID technologies, IT assets were cited by the highest percentage of respondents (43%), ahead of more traditional manufacturing work in process, or WIP (35%) and inventory (30%). This demonstrates the growing use and business value of RFID technologies, according to the new study.
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http://www.aberdeen.com