RTLS the CFO can defend.

RTLS programme costs land in five buckets and finance teams routinely miss the last two. The visible costs are hardware (tags, anchors, readers, gateways, sensors) and software (location-intelligence platform, licensing, maintenance).

The hidden ones are integration into your existing stack (typically 20–40% of total programme cost), change management and training, and ongoing calibration, drift detection and quarterly audit.

A vendor-led quote usually shows the first two and minimises the rest. A defensible business case prices all five with sensitivities.

Five categories of return: recovered labour time (people stop hunting for things), reduced shrink and rentals (fewer lost or duplicate assets), higher utilisation (you buy or rent less),

lower error and rework cost (cleaner data, fewer mis-picks, fewer line stops), and avoided cost of non-compliance (passed audits, fewer recalls).

Each can be modelled per use case with conservative, expected and aggressive sensitivities. Most well-scoped RTLS programmes pay back inside 12–18 months on the conservative case.

Three contractual controls turn an RTLS commitment into a manageable risk. A gate-driven engagement (see the TRACIO Programme Method) gives you written go/no-go decisions at each stage.

A vendor-neutral architecture lets you swap suppliers without re-architecting. And an independent advisor (see our independence policy) holds the contract, the SOW and the ROI model — not the vendor whose target depends on the deal closing.

Forget 47-line spreadsheets. Boards approve when three numbers are credible: payback period in months, five-year NPV with a stated discount rate, and worst-case exposure if the programme exits at gate 2.

The TRACIO Programme Method ends every stage with those three numbers refreshed.

For a CFO, a locating programme is capital allocation competing with capacity, systems and working capital. Credible cases share these criteria:

• Five-year cash view — hardware, software, integration (often 30–50% of year-1), support, tag replacement and change orders modelled with sensitivities.
• Capex vs opex honesty — both paths scored at WACC plus a technology/adoption risk premium (typically +3–5%).
• Pilot-gated spend — go/no-go criteria written before hardware scale; exit exposure quantified at each gate.
• Benefit attribution — search labour, downtime, avoided purchases, shrinkage, throughput and compliance risk tied to your baselines, not vendor averages.

Vendor pitches optimise year-1 price. SI pitches optimise delivery hours. Big-firm pitches optimise programme theatre. Finance should demand the same TCO workbook from every bidder.

• Integration and internal labour omitted until after contract signature.
• Tag battery and replacement cycles ignored — TCO swings 30–50% on small assumption changes.
• Benefits booked on vendor case studies instead of a production-load pilot.
• Scale-out priced as a surprise: multi-site change orders 2–5× the implied unit rate.
• Adoption risk ignored — operators work around tags and the KPI never moves.

Industry guidance (including vendor-side business-case writing) is consistent: measure baseline friction first, include downtime and compliance risk, and compare five-year ownership — not the first invoice.

• Provide five-year TCO with tag growth, battery life, subscription escalation and change-order scenarios editable by us.
• What is NPV at our stated discount rate under base, optimistic and kill-at-gate-2 cases?
• Which costs are fixed-fee vs T&M, and who owns integration overruns?
• What data and configuration do we retain if we terminate — open format, not a proprietary dump?
• Are you compensated by hardware or software vendors on this deal?

We build the board pack as an independent advisor: TCO and sensitivity models, gate economics, and vendor scoring with no hardware or AMR SKU to protect. If the numbers do not survive contact with the plant, we say so before more capital is committed.

For a CFO, a locating programme is capital allocation competing with capacity, systems and working capital. Credible cases share these criteria:

• Five-year cash view — hardware, software, integration (often 30–50% of year-1), support, tag replacement and change orders modelled with sensitivities.
• Capex vs opex honesty — both paths scored at WACC plus a technology/adoption risk premium (typically +3–5%).
• Pilot-gated spend — go/no-go criteria written before hardware scale; exit exposure quantified at each gate.
• Benefit attribution — search labour, downtime, avoided purchases, shrinkage, throughput and compliance risk tied to your baselines, not vendor averages.

Vendor pitches optimise year-1 price. SI pitches optimise delivery hours. Big-firm pitches optimise programme theatre. Finance should demand the same TCO workbook from every bidder.

• Integration and internal labour omitted until after contract signature.
• Tag battery and replacement cycles ignored — TCO swings 30–50% on small assumption changes.
• Benefits booked on vendor case studies instead of a production-load pilot.
• Scale-out priced as a surprise: multi-site change orders 2–5× the implied unit rate.
• Adoption risk ignored — operators work around tags and the KPI never moves.

Industry guidance (including vendor-side business-case writing) is consistent: measure baseline friction first, include downtime and compliance risk, and compare five-year ownership — not the first invoice.

• Provide five-year TCO with tag growth, battery life, subscription escalation and change-order scenarios editable by us.
• What is NPV at our stated discount rate under base, optimistic and kill-at-gate-2 cases?
• Which costs are fixed-fee vs T&M, and who owns integration overruns?
• What data and configuration do we retain if we terminate — open format, not a proprietary dump?
• Are you compensated by hardware or software vendors on this deal?

We build the board pack as an independent advisor: TCO and sensitivity models, gate economics, and vendor scoring with no hardware or AMR SKU to protect. If the numbers do not survive contact with the plant, we say so before more capital is committed.