Deloitte and BT have formed a new collaboration to ease the path to successful adoption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for global customers in the food, beverage and wider consumer products sector The two companies believe the new alliance will reduce project risks, reduce the costs of adoption and help clients drive substantial business benefits in handling efficiencies and enhanced traceability throughout the supply chain. Up to now, large corporates looking to implement RFID have needed to engage both a consultancy and a niche integrator. This has lead to confusion and a proliferation of proprietary technology. However, Deloitte and BT claims that their highly complementary skills will enable them to provide consumer goods companies with more affordable, scalable and reliable RFID solutions than any other implementation partner. These solutions will be based on open EPC global standards. Deloitte and BT will be offering an RFID discovery programme, typically a short fixed price project to determine Return on Investment (ROI) for implementing RFID, evaluate alternative technology solutions, develop a technology roadmap and build an implementation plan. The collaboration will also focus on helping manufacturers comply with the RFID mandates from leading grocery retailers such as Wal-Mart, Tesco and Metro in a way that offers a positive business case and delivers value to stakeholders in the supply chain. Julian Thomas, partner in charge of consumer business at Deloitte in Birmingham said: "This collaboration sends a strong signal to our customer base and the marketplace. "BT has over 100 years of RF engineering experience, a track record in deploying large scale infrastructure for corporates, and has invested in building the Auto-ID platform - a shared infrastructure specifically designed to manage RFID data incorporating middleware and Savant technology. "BT's deep RFID knowledge also allows them to recommend the right tagging, reader and middleware solutions for each customer. "The combination of BT's international deployment capability through telecommunication partners, and Deloitte's strategic experience in business case development, process design, systems integration, and project and change management capabilities, creates a powerful new combination of skills which will help customers achieve a new level of competitive performance." Frank Mills, regional director for BT in the West Midlands, added: "The joint BT / Deloitte initiative will be especially attractive from an ROI perspective as the offer includes financing solutions that fund the implementation project - all the user pays is a monthly rental. "This will be especially interesting to companies that are struggling to find the real business case based on more traditional project approaches or that are facing conflicts on investment priorities. "Deloitte's standing in the consumer goods industry as advisers to many major European and global players, as well as their ability to provide a broad range of consulting solutions and ensure investments are handled in the most tax effective way, makes them the ideal partner for BT." Meanwhile, BT has unveiled the timetable for the further arrival of broadband services in the West Midlands. The company is to bring broadband to exchanges serving virtually every home and business (99.8 per cent) in the region by July 2005. This is an increase on the current figure of 92 per cent. ADSL broadband is to be rolled out to a further 119 exchanges in the region that serve around 102,700 premises. The plans will see coverage reach 96.4 per cent by the end of 2004. | 
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