A rise in spending on supply chain solutions is on the cards, a survey commissioned by global IT services and technology business Unisys suggests. The survey reveals that 73% of companies plan to increase their investment in supply chain solutions in the next three years.
However, a lack of consensus exists on the value of investment in new technologies, with businesses divided on benefits of Radio Frequency Identification tag (RFID) track and trace technology.
Integration and partner collaboration were cited as the top investment objectives for 60% of companies. For many of these companies, RFID is also becoming an investment consideration, although there is a distinct split between those who are aware of RFID and actively evaluating and those within the same industry who have not yet heard of RFID.
Due to the relative immaturity of RFID, the survey says that few companies have already implemented it into their supply chain. However, a third of those businesses surveyed were actively evaluating RFID technology for supply chain applications and a further 12% will implement the technology within the next two years.
This strongly contrasts to the remaining 43% of executives who said they were not even aware of RFID, which suggests that despite the technology’s relatively high profile in the technology and retail communities, understanding of RFID’s potential amongst senior executives is not uniform.
Disparate levels of knowledge also transcended vertical business sectors with half of all senior executives within pharmaceutical companies unaware of RFID, whilst by contrast a further 26% were actively evaluating and 6% had already implemented it.
