Hosted RFID service targets mobile users

A new hosted service from SkyeTek is designed to apply RFID technology for mobile users and applications.

A new hosted service from SkyeTek is designed to apply RFID technology for mobile users and applications.

With MetaFi, sales and account management staff in the field can use RFID technology to track, monitor and manage products as they move from the factory to customer sites. This field data can be integrated via Web services interfaces with a variety of backend inventory, invoicing, and customer management applications.

The results are more current and more accurate field inventory data, faster invoicing, less time spent by sales staff on manual inventory updates and paperwork, and slashing both over-stocks and out-of-stocks, the company says.

RFID deployments are growing fast, with the most popular applications being asset tracking, personal identification, supply chain marketing, and retail management.

“Mobility is a kind of ‘next frontier’ for RFID,” says Michael Dortch, an analyst with Aberdeen Group, a technology research company based in Boston. “RFID tagging of pallets in warehouses is pretty much proven, but being able to track tagged items as they move, on a conveyor belt or across a yard or parking lot, presents an additional set of challenges.”

Chief among those challenges are technologies for capturing and integrating this data into an enterprise’s core operational applications and processes, according to Dortch. “It’s going to take solutions such as MetaFi to enable the integration [that] users want and need to take maximum business advantage of the data generated by RFID in motion,” he says.

And SkyeTek is not the only vendor seeing a mobile opportunity. By year-end, Microsoft plans to release BizTalk RFID Mobile, which will let Windows CE 5.0 and Windows Mobile 5.0 handheld devices collect RFID data, push it back to BizTalk Server, and from there to an array of other enterprise applications. The idea is to create a platform for mobile RFID application development.

SkyeTek’s idea is to minimize if not eliminate the need for such coding, by creating a ready-to-use, Web-based mobile RFID infrastructure, consisting of handheld RFID readers, software agents, and a hosted server with a Web-based console. The wide-area wireless connectivity comes from Wi-Fi or cellular data services and wireless handhelds, such as smart phones, loaded with the MetaFi agent.

One example of MetaFi in action is a manufacturer’s sales rep scanning his company’s products at a customer site with a portable RFID reader, transferring the data via Bluetooth to his cell phone, and then uploading it to the MetaFi Web service. Another option is attaching fixed readers to a shelf or retail display to automatically track items removed, and using an embedded WLAN or cellular connection to send inventory changes to MetaFi. The MetaFi console provides a user and management interface at the manufacturer’s headquarters.

The MetaFi agent running on the mobile device handles event, policy and data management, and offers a Web services interface to third-party applications.

The hosted service applies the benefits of RFID to mobile workers. Until now, RFID has been restricted to sites such as warehouse and distribution centers, with full-blown wired networks of readers, their attendant servers, and gateways to the enterprise backbone, says Martin Payne, senior vice president of sales and marketing for SkyeTek, based on Westminster, Colo.

This portable RFID system lets sales reps scan customer inventory stocks faster than with traditional bar code gear, according to Payne. The intelligent agent quickly determines, for example, that the customer has used five units of a given product, and triggers an invoicing workflow, as well as updating the corporate SAP invoicing system.

Because inventory management is easier, sales staff will do it more often, providing more accurate field data that can be used to predictably forecast product use, reducing out-of-stock situations for the customer, and reducing overall inventory costs. “All your financial metrics across the company start to improve,” says Payne.

The service is a major shift for the vendor, which was founded in 2000 as a maker of embedded RFID readers and software focused not on manufacturing supply chains but on optimizing how finished products are used and sold in retail sales relationships. SkyeTek’s customers wanted to use RFID data about inventory and invoices at the point of contact with their buyers, at the buyer’s location. After repeatedly writing custom code to make this possible, SkyeTek recast that work as a hosted service that can be applied across its customer base, according to Payne.

The Web application offers a series of customizable views of data being collected in the field. The data can be packaged in different ways for different groups of employees, depending on their requirements. And it can all be done without having to write new code.

The MetaFi service is available now, with pricing ranging from $50 to $350 per month per user. The price range varies based on factors such as the amount of data being stored (and how long it’s stored) on the hosted service, or what analytic programs are desired.