The biggest surprise, for me, was the number of retail suppliers earnestly taking notes and asking questions as industry experts and peers provided guidance in breakout sessions, and the number engaged in serious discussions with technology vendors. This makes sense, with more than a dozen US based retail pilots and/or rollouts underway, many suppliers have gotten on the bandwagon to gain early competitive advantage. Most of these suppliers are working on identifying their own business benefits, so that these projects don't become underwhelming "slap and ship" efforts, like many of the consumer goods company's efforts, whose RFID efforts heated up in 2004 in response to Walmart and DoD mandates, but progressed at a snail's pace. In fact, the story is quite different today for apparel manufacturers. Gerry Weber, the winner of the 2011 Best RFID Implementation award by RFID Journal, drove their initiative based on the benefits as a supplier.

I have to reiterate that I am convinced that the benefits are real for retailers, particularly vertically integrated retailers, who generally work with a limited number of suppliers, and can tag all products and roll out store by store, rather than having to go through the painstaking process of assisting suppliers, one by one. I am also convinced that RFID enables leaner store inventories, without sacrificing lost sales.

Retailers continue to resist being very vocal about the benefits they've received, arguing that they don't want to give up competitive advantage, but the numbers I continue to hear over and over include the following:

The bottom line is, doing physical counts and making sure shelf availability is managed appropriately is no longer primarily an exercise to make our accountants happy, but an exercise that enables better customer service. The value of improved shelf availability on the top line, on increased sales, is the best kept retail secret. The truth is there are so many factors that go into increasing sales for a retailer, that it is nearly impossible to pin a true value on sales lift due to an isolated initiative. Perhaps, Myron Burke, Director, Store Innovation and Electronic Product Code, Walmart explained success at the shelf best, "If the customer finds what they want and it goes into the cart, that's success.