
32 CHAPTER TWO
Sharing RFID Data B2B
Once companies integrate RFID data internally and adapt their business processes to lever-
age that data, they will find reasons to share it with their business partners and will begin
to provide business-to-business services based on the data. Consider an RFID-enabled
pharmacy. A pharmacist working in such a pharmacy might be able to retrieve up-to-the
minute FDA warnings or other relevant information about a drug just by carrying its con-
tainer close to an information terminal. The pharmacy’s point of sale (POS) system could
request a web service provided by the drug manufacturer or some other information inter-
mediary. The drug company could obtain complete tracking information on every drug
that it has manufactured and shipped to a particular region by enabling the distributors,
shippers, and pharmacies to transfer this information to its tracking systems.
Any of these scenarios assumes the capability of these respective companies to share infor-
mation. Of course, “one-off” solutions exist to enable these B2B workflows, but long term,
these are not the most cost-efficient, the most flexible, or the quickest ways to share infor-
mation. Sharing information and workflows across enterprise boundaries is not a new
phenomena. As we will see later in this chapter, a host of options are available for accom-
plishing it. In addition to the technology options ...