RFID end user survey: Nearly half to increase budgets in 2010

NEW YORK, USA: Every year, ABI Research conducts a comprehensive survey of companies currently using, deploying, or piloting/evaluating RFID. This year more than 115 qualified organizations from across the world responded to ABI Research’s annual RFID end-user survey.

Nearly half (49 percent) of those respondents currently using, deploying, evaluating, or piloting RFID report that they expect their RFID budgets to increase in 2010. “ABI Research considers this a welcome result in these difficult economic conditions,” says practice director Michael Liard. “Moreover, 100 percent of those organizations with rollouts currently in progress intend to increase their RFID budgets next year.”

The picture is fairly rosy in other parts of the market too: nearly another one third of respondents report that their 2009 RFID spending levels will remain unchanged in 2010, while only about 11 percent intend to cut their RFID budgets.

As in past years, the overwhelming majority of respondents rated “business process improvement” as the number one driver for their adoption of RFID. The second-most important driver was considered to be the need to reduce non-labor costs.

ROI timeframe is also a critical consideration for most companies considering RFID deployment, and comparing the ROI assumptions reported in 2009 with those from 2008, the survey found that considerably more companies – 48 percent as opposed to 37 percent in 2008 – expect their investment to be recouped within 12 months.

“Shorter ROI timeframe expectations are yet another sign of users’ growing confidence in the RFID business case,” notes Liard.