customer relations management could benefit greatly B u s i n e s s F i n a n c e

Zhang, X., Nickels, D. W., & Stafford, T. F. (2010). Understanding the organizational impact of radio frequency identification technology: A holistic view. Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 2(2), 1-17.

Purpose (What are the objectives for writing the paper?):

Provide an overview of RFID technology and its uses and to propose its effects on an organization’s IT infrastructure, business intelligence, and decision making.

Design / Methodology / Approach (How are the objectives achieved? Include the main methods used for the research and the approach to the topic.):

• Provide a comprehensive overview of RFID and its current uses
• Propose general effects of using RFID on IT infrastructure, business intelligence, and decision making in the form of propositions
• Propose a theory dubbed the “IT Decision Chain” employing and linking the propositions

Main Points / Findings / Conclusions (What are the main points? What was found in the course of the work, and what are the major conclusions? This will refer to analysis, discussion, or results.):

• RFID is a diverse architecture with unlimited uses for tracking objects
• RFID presents challenges to existing IT systems during design and implementation
• RFID can increase the level and efficiency of real time data in a retail supply change
• There are assertions (propositions) that can be made regarding the effects of an RFID based system on IT infrastructure, business intelligence, and decision making.
• The effects (propositions) on a business using an RFID based system can be linked into a decision chain
• The creative use of the data from an RFID system is the real value, not the technology itself.

Implications to Practice and Knowledge (What outcomes and implications for practice and knowledge as well as applications and consequences are identified?):

The contribution to knowledge consists of a comprehensive literature research summary of RFID technology and its uses. The literature research is used as the basis to assert propositions to the effects that an RFID infrastructure and the resulting data can have on the firms overall IT infrastructure, business intelligence, and decision making. The propositions are then linked into an information technology decision chain that establishes a hypothesis for understanding the organizational impacts of employing RFID.

Critique (Which parts of the paper you like, and which parts of the paper you don’t like? Why?):

The article overall read well and flowed nicely through three major phases: literature research, establishment of the propositions, and IT Decision Chain hypothesis. One key area for IT that appeared to have been somewhat overlooked in the literature review was the use of RFID for security of assets outside of the supply chain. Transferring and moving of capital assets within a company not related to supply chain operations for large companies can benefit greatly by the establishment of an RFID infrastructure, perhaps a secondary benefit to establishing the infrastructure from which value could be attributed to. Proposition 1 includes data abstraction at the data source but this is fairly well established already as the basic tag has just a simple number while the data system can return detailed information about the tagged item. The paper and hypothesis also seem to be directed specifically at retail supply chains although that is only explicitly detailed at times. It does appear that retail supply chains would benefit most by current RFID infrastructure while tracking of small parts and raw resources for manufacturing would benefit only at the container level.

I did like the assertion of the propositions. They progressed logically through the establishment of the infrastructure and data gathering up through the high level decision making process. In particular Proposition 4 regarding the increased use of data mining appeared the most important proposition established. Data mining especially for customer relations management could benefit greatly by more “real time” data management. This aspect of the data gathered by the infrastructure could be the most valuable as now more than ever companies try to establish a competitive edge realized by more up to date customer data. I am not that versed in business intelligence so I had to take Propositions 5 and 6 at face value as they do make logical sense. I thought overall that the logical progression through the eight propositions assisted in establishing the benefits of moving to an RFID infrastructure as there is value established by the propositions at all three levels: infrastructure, business intelligence, and decision making.