Presentations from the Market Opportunities track at the Connections Summit, co-hosted by AIM, NFC Forum, and RAIN on March 7th, 2018. The Connections Summit was a one-day event featuring a series of speaker-led sessions that focused on how NFC, RFID, and AIDC make the world more connected. The full agenda included keynote presentations, panels, and IoT, Retail & Smart Products, Security & Blockchain, Healthcare, and Market Opportunities tracks. For additional details see: https://nfc-forum.org/events/connections-summit/

1. Market Opportunities Track
March 7, 2018

2. Achieving A Real Return On
Investment using RAIN
Chuck Evanhoe, President
Aware Innovations
(division of Evanhoe & Associates,
Inc.)
Tom King, PMP
IT Project Manager
U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

3. Agenda
USPTO RAIN Enabled IT Asset Management
•Background
•Goals & Requirements
•Implementation
•Return on Investment

4. Summary
• How the USPTO
achieved real ROI using
RAIN to track IT assets.
• The use case,
implementation and
integrator are keys to
ROI in labor saving and
asset visibility

5. About USPTO
• The USPTO is a fee funded performance-based federal government agency.
• Our mission is to administer the laws and regulations related to patents and
trademarks in order to promote industrial and technical progress throughout the
world.
• We carry out this mission by examining patent and trademark applications, issuing
patents and registering trademarks.
• We have nearly 13,000 employees, plus 2,000 contractor support personnel. Our
main campus is located in Alexandria, VA, and consists of eight buildings housed on
approximately 2.5 million square feet of office space.
• We also have four regional offices located in Detroit, MI; Denver, CO; Dallas, TX and
San Jose, CA as well as an underground storage facility in Boyers, PA.

6. About Aware Innovations
• A division of Evanhoe & Associates, Inc., a full service IT & AIDC Solutions provider
• Developer of ItemAware, a comprehensive asset and item management solution providing solutions for:
• Inventory Management
• Returnable Assets Management
• Work in Process
• Asset & Item Tracking
• Hospital Patients Tracking
• Medical Devices Management
• Professional Services:
• Consulting Services
• Standards & Best Practices
• Solution Design
• Site Surveys & Solution Architects
• Hardware & Software Integration
• Training & Support

7. Background
• Over 800 Property Custodians (PC) and 100 Property Accountability Officers (PAO)
• Labor intensive manual process
• Vulnerable to error due to heavy reliance on human interaction
• Asset Information:
• 121,100 assets tracked
• $122,600,00 total value
• Includes laptops, servers, routers, PDAs, etc.
• June 2012, a budget initiative was approved and included in the FY 2014 President’s Budget
• September 2014, a contract was awarded to:
• Perform site surveys
• Procure software
• Purchase/install the hardware

8. Goals & Requirements
• Goals
• Reduce number of PAOs and PCs
• Reduce inventory cycle time
• Increase accuracy
• Increase asset visibility
• Reduce asset shrink
• Requirements
• Minimally invasive
• Cost effective
• Integrate with ITSM-Remedy

9. Implementation
• Process Overview
• Define specific business needs
• Define expected business benefits
• Conduct and document a RF site survey
• Define and document projects requirements
• Define and document processes (“As-Is” and “To-Be”)
• Design the solution (Where the magic happens)
• Implementation & integration
• On-going Support

10. Implementation
• Engineering is the key
• Environmental Conditions
• Physics of Radio Frequency
• Asset Characteristics
• Hardware and Tags/label
performance
• 20 Buildings
• 181 floors
• 6 states

11. Return on Investment – Original Estimate
• Approximate Cost: $3M
• Annual Savings: $1.1M
• ROI: 2.75 years
Category Annual Cost Annual Savings Notes
PC Labor $501,311.20 $451,180.08 Expect 90% reduction
Asst Mgmt ~ Labor $365,367.83 $274,025.87 Expect 75% reduction
Loss Prevention $377,629.39 $366,300.51 Expect 97% reduction
Total $1,244,308.42 $1,091,506.46 Expect 88% cost reduction

12. Return on Investment – Results
Goals
• Reduce number of PAOs and PCs
Current status: presented plan to reduce PCs to 150 and PAOs to 40
• Reduce inventory cycle time
Current status: Reduced monthly cycle from 10 to 5 work days
• Increase accuracy
Current Status: 100% improvement due to data from RFID
• Increase asset visibility
Current Status: Our contractors are on notice that we can better monitor their performance
and our users (PCs and PAOs) greatly appreciate the reduced workload
• Reduce asset shrink
Current status: Reduced to zero on campus

13. Return on Investment – Results
• Approximate Cost: $3M
• Annual Savings: $1.1M
• ROI: 2.75 years
Category
Original
Estimated
Annual Cost
Current
Annual Cost
Original
Estimated
Annual Savings
Current
Annual Savings
Expected Outcome Current Outcome
PC Labor $501,311.20 $551,442.32 $451,180.08 $435,639.43 90% reduction 79% reduction
Asst Mgmt ~
Labor
$365,367.83 $401,904.61 $274,025.87 $233,104.67 75% reduction 58% reduction
Loss Prevention $377,629.39 $415,392.33 $366,300.51 $414,976.94 97% reduction 99.9% reduction
Total $1,244,308.42 $1,368,739.26 $1,091,506.46 $1,083,721.04 88% cost reduction 79% cost reduction

14. Future Activities
• Implement automatic check/flag for location data
• Increased automation (i.e. auto assign location and user data)
• Deploy newest release of the ItemAware in our supply warehouse
to increase efficiency
• Migrate current RFID system to the latest ItemAware release
• Potentially migrate all inventory functions from ITSM-Remedy to
ItemAware

15. Thanks
Questions?

16. Bringing NFC to the browser
with Web NFC API
Justin Ribeiro
Chief Executive Officer, Stickman Ventures Inc

17. Justin RibeiroCHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Stickman Ventures Inc
WEB, IOT, WEARABLES, WRANGLER
Google Developer Expert
@justinribeiro
Justin Ribeiro

18. Flashback

19. circa
2014

22. Wild West of the Web,
NFC Edition
Firefox still had an OS. Chrome had packaged applications with Native Client.
NFC did work, but it could be better.

23. Then a funny thing happened.
Let the extensible web be all the api things.

25. Progressive Web Apps

26. Generic Sensors
API

28. Users just want things to work.
App downloads and deployments are hard. The web offers the low friction
with growing roots to fill use cases that were often reserved for the native
app world.

31. Use Case: Inventory Tracking
Because no one wants to spend big budget on bar code scanners and RFID.

35. We still have a ways to go.
While the PWA story is coming to the big browsers, NFC and most of the
connectivity we’re discussed is still only available in Chrome.

36. Not all supported (yet)
Type 1/2 are in Chrome behind flags now, but type 3/4 in specification not
yet implemented.

38. Thank you!
Questions? Comments? Pitchforks? Tomatoes?

39. SMART Products +
Digital Consumer Interaction
Scott Krynock
Director, Product Marketing, Smartrac

40. SMART Products +
Digital Consumer Interaction

41. 87% of business leaders see digitization as a priority for
their company.
Source: CEB Digital Enterprise 2020

42. Only 5% of organizations feel that they have mastered
digital to a point of differentiation from their competitors.
Source: Accenture, Digital Tranformation in the Age of the Customer

43. How can Brands master digitization and harvest the
benefits it creates internally as well as turning them into
an advantage in the market place?

44. So if Brands want to gain a competitive advantage with
digitization, it should start where the action is.

45. Start with products.

46. The product is the common denominator along
the complete supply chain

47. Why use NFC?
• Proven robust technology
• Passive - no battery
• Security - encryption option
• Very versatile form factor - small footprint, packaging options to withstand
environmental conditions
• Large installed infrastructure - 1,9b* NFC phones, large and growing UHF reader base
• Transponder production is industrialized
*Source: statista.com

48. The product becomes the datacloud
Supply Chain Data
Operational Data
Consumer Data
Authentic Unified Data

49. c o n n e c t c o n t r o l context

52. 523/20/2018Smartrac • connect things

53. Leveragin
g Data
Deliverdynamic
user experiences
bymaking useof
real-worlddata

54. DYNE is a US-
based, luxury
men’s
sportswear
company
currently sold online
and through high-end
retailers globally.
DYNE is here to
empower a new
transition for

55. audience
Cust
omer
In Store
Employee
In Store

56. location weathertime
New
York
City
10:30am
Hong
Kong
11:30pm

57. Physical Products as
Digital Experiences
573/20/2018Smartrac • connect things
Insight
Brand Benefits
CRM Capture Item TraceabilityImpact & Monitor Net
Promoter score
Customer Insight
User Benefits
Dynamic Interactions Loyalty Sign-upsAuthenticity
Customer Journey
Dynamic Content
Not a video Deals in a phone

58. 583/20/2018Smartrac • connect things

60. This is digitization.
From the ground up.

61. We’re Smartrac.
And we digitize your products, so you can
digitize your business.
Scott Krynock
Director, Product Marketing
Scott.Krynock@Smartrac-group.com
+1.919.271.8661

62. New paradigm for NFC
Sylvain Fidelis
Marketing & Applications Manager, STMicroelectronics

63. New Paradigm for NFC
63
Leverage all of NFC technology!

64. Close Encounters of the 5th Kind
• Activation energy
• Improving NFC user experience
• Ubiquitous NFC: connecting more “Things” to the IoT
• From factory to consumers
• Interoperability and consistency
64
The NFC Forum recently added Type 5 tags to their specifications

65. 65

66. Activation Energy
the Lower the Better!
66
1.5 A/m 0.15 A/m
Type 5 tags are lower power, enabling better range

67. Type 5… an Extra Boost
67
Rule of thumb:
Type 5 Range = Reader’s antenna size
NFC remains near field communication

68. 68

69. Type 5 Makes Discovery Much Easier
69
Tag detection area

70. 70

71. Near field communication
Type 5… an Extra Boost!
71
Enabling smaller antennas for near field communication

72. Ubiquitous NFC
It is all About Integration
72
Small antennas, a better fit for IoT

73. 73

74. From Factory to Consumer
Bridging RFID and NFC
74
1 meterfew feet
ISO15693
NFCType 5

75. 75

76. Consistent User Experience
Better Interoperability
76
NFC Forum Certification Program extended to Device & Tag

77. ST is a Proud Member of the NFC Forum
77

78. From Smartphone to IoT
78
3Bu*
30Bu*
Type 5 is the opportunity to expand NFC footprint
ThingsSmartphones
* Prevision for 2020
Sources: IHS
10x

79. 5 Paradigms of NFC Type 5
79

80. From NFC for Payment…
80

81. … to NFC for IoT!
81

82. 82
Oh and by the way…Solutions for NFC / RFID Tags and Readers