TrueDemand Software Announces Collaboration with Alien Technology for Delivery of RFID ROI LaunchPad Program
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TrueDemand to Integrate Alien RFID Hardware into Out-of-Stock Applications to Help Suppliers Achieve Faster Value from RFID Investment
LAS VEGAS, May 3 / TrueDemand Software, a leader in next generation supply chain solutions, today announced that they have collaborated with Alien Technology to deliver the RFID ROI LaunchPad program. The goal of the LaunchPad program is to provide suppliers with faster insights and value from their RFID investments and allowing them to gain value as soon as they start shipping RFID-enabled products. LaunchPad is the first offering of its kind that provides suppliers with a single, rapidly deployable combination of TrueDemand's leading suite of execution-based replenishment and forecasting applications and the Alien ALR-9800 WRDI-enabled Enterprise Reader, Alien Gen 2 tags and Alien training and services.
The benefit of this integrated solution is faster time to value in reducing out-of-stocks (OOS) and achieving benefits from RFID technology. Organizations can rapidly identify new ways to tap RFID data that can provide more insight into their supply chain operations and help them make intelligent, ROI-based product selection and RFID rollout decisions. The program is intended to enable organizations to drastically simplify the path from the first RFID hardware purchase to achieving supply chain benefits while reducing operational costs.
TrueDemand's solution provides real-time out-of-stock and profitability impact analyses to help suppliers prioritize which SKUs, categories, processes and specific problems to focus on with their retail partners in order to maximize the value of their RFID investment across the supply chain. The solution will automatically identify the causes of OOS by SKU and product category from the retail distribution center to within the retail store. TrueDemand's application is available to customers as either a web-based on-demand hosted service or as a licensed software application.
The RFID ROI LaunchPad enables suppliers to implement a scalable application foundation to test specific actions they can take with retail partners to improve store replenishment, reduce execution errors and improve on-shelf availability of their products. Based on the information and insights generated by the LaunchPad program, suppliers can achieve greater value from new product introductions and product promotions.
"Suppliers need a faster way to identify and realize value from their RFID investments," said Raymond Blanchard, VP of Business Development at TrueDemand. "The industry norm involves going step-by-step through the time-consuming processes of buying hardware, installing and testing equipment, selecting SKUs, evaluating middleware and data management software, identifying systems integrators and, finally, shipping the product. Under this model, organizations are forced to wait months or even years before they can capture, manage and analyze valuable RFID event information. The RFID ROI LaunchPad program, in conjunction with Alien, changes that by clearly outlining the steps organizations can take to generate and analyze valuable event data and achieve a rapid return on their RFID investment."
Using Alien's readers, antennas and tags in conjunction with TrueDemand's applications, suppliers will have the ability to track products throughout a promotion, time sensitive seasonal event or new product introduction. Alien's hardware provides RFID event data that will be combined with other enterprise data such as point-of-sale (POS), transaction and logistics data that is automatically analyzed and interpreted by TrueDemand's applications. As a result, suppliers will be able to gain timely insight into potential problems resulting from out-of-stocks, replenishment, inventory and execution errors. The key phases, products and services of the LaunchPad package include:
o Prioritize SKUs for RFID tagging: With some simple inputs on product line characteristics, the web-based TrueDemand SKU Analyzer helps customers select SKUs intelligently and automatically based upon potential ROI.
o Acquire RFID Hardware & Tags: Alien's ALR-9800-WRDI Enterprise Reader Developer's Kit provides Alien's intelligent, multi-protocol Enterprise Reader loaded with the IBM WebSphere RFID Device Infrastructure software to filter RFID data and communicate with corporate networks. Alien is also including 10,000 Gen 2 tags as part of the LaunchPad offering.
o Educated Team: Alien Academy is the industry's leading course on RFID fundamentals, providing users the valuable basics on RFID technology.
o Install Hardware: Alien Professional Services, Warranty and Support provide engineering and project management staff to configure, install and support RFID hardware infrastructure.
o Capture Insights: TrueDemand's Out-of-Stock Application provides
automatic OOS identification, profitability and lost sales analysis
along with preventive tasks to key stakeholders to help prevent
predicted future out-of-stocks.
o Analyze Results and Take Action. After an initial test and evaluation period, suppliers will know exactly which products, OOS problems and specific retail stores should be the focus for supplier RFID investments. Unlike some other RFID analytical tools, the TrueDemand application suite provides specific, targeted replenishment solutions to help suppliers take action and realize rapid and measurable benefits.
"We are delighted to work with TrueDemand, a real innovator in RFID applications," said Keith McDonald, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Alien Technology. "We believe their unique approach to automatic out-of-stock analysis, forecasting and replenishment has the potential to rapidly deliver real value for suppliers across the retail supply chain. Under this program, we believe our customers will have a clear path to achieving measurable benefits from their RFID investments."
About TrueDemand (http://www.tdemand.com/)
TrueDemand Software, a leader in next generation supply chain solutions, provides a new class of predictive supply chain solutions that help solve supply chain execution, replenishment and planning problems to reduce out-of-stocks and excess inventory. By combining event information with TrueDemand's business solutions, organizations can better manage the live replenishment of RFID-tagged and non-tagged inventory from production through sale across the supply-and-demand network. As a result, customers can better anticipate and proactively remedy supply chain problems before they occur, gaining greater value from their supply chain investments. The TrueDemand team includes RFID innovators and proven supply chain experts instrumental in the advancement of RFID technology and the efforts of the Auto-ID Center, now EPCglobal. Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, the company is backed by leading venture capital firms Mayfield and Bay Partners. Visit www.tdemand.com/ for more information.
About Alien Technology
Alien Technology provides UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) products and services to customers in retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, defense, transportation and logistics, pharmaceuticals and other industries. Organizations use Alien's RFID products and services to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and security of their supply chains, logistics and asset tracking operations. Alien's products include RFID tags, RFID readers and related training and professional services. Alien's patented Fluidic Self Assembly (FSA) technology and related proprietary manufacturing processes are designed to enable the manufacture of high volume, low cost RFID tags.
Alien was founded in l994 and employees about 235 people worldwide. The company's facilities include: its corporate headquarters in Morgan Hill, CA; an RFID tag manufacturing facility in Fargo, ND; the Alien RFID Solutions Center, in the Dayton, Ohio area, and sales offices in the US, Europe and Asia. Alien is a member of EPCGlobal. More information about Alien is available www.alientechnology.com/.
Source: TrueDemand Software
CONTACT: Dan Gaffney of Lois Paul & Partners for TrueDemand Software,
+1-781-782-5817, gaffney@lpp.com
Web site: www.tdemand.com/
http://www.alientechnology.com/
