TrueDemand Software, a leader in consumer-demand driven network solutions, today announced a free service to drive adoption of RFID technology in the retail supply chain. Starting today, TrueDemand will make portions of its forecasting and replenishment software available free to qualified companies over the Internet as a hosted service. This free offering will enable consumer goods companies shipping RFID-tagged items to retailers to quickly identify the root causes for failures in store and shelf replenishment, promotions and new product introductions. This service, based on TrueDemand's award-winning forecasting and replenishment solutions, will enable consumer goods companies to identify and exploit areas for improvement in their supply chain and accelerate their time to value with their RFID initiatives.

TrueDemand's free service will provide trend analysis on RFID read rates, supply chain analytics including transit times, inventory levels, lost sales due to supply chain failures, and root causes for out-of-stock by SKU, store and day. As a result, consumer goods companies will develop a better understanding of the value generated by including point-of-sale, RFID and other retailer-shared information in the decision making process. TrueDemand will also have a premium service available that will help suppliers run their day-to-day business with many of the world's leading retailers.

"RFID has been stuck in pilot mode. Very few companies have even evaluated the ROI for RFID technology," said Eric Peters, CEO of TrueDemand. "In an effort to drive adoption we have decided to make basic parts of our solution free to Wal-Mart suppliers. Companies are already making significant capital investments in the technology. Why should they have to pay more to uncover the value? As a founding sponsor of EPCGlobal, we thought this could be our way of helping to jumpstart the industry and drive value."

Some of the leading adopters of RFID technology have already utilized TrueDemand's RFID analysis service over the past few months. Working closely on projects with several of the world's largest consumer goods companies, TrueDemand's research determined that true out-of-stock issues occur nearly twice as often as reported by retailers. The research also indicated that the root causes for out-of-stock errors change significantly over the course of a year, that nearly 10% of the lifecycle revenue for a product can be lost just during a product transition, and that a significant number of lost sales can be easily prevented by the consumer goods companies.