VDC Research: RFID, Barcode, Retail Automation & Self-Service Market Blog

Miss Any Posts This Month? We've Got You Covered.

Starting this month, we will be posting a brief recap of our posts to give our readers a quick guide to what we've covered. Each post will be categorized by AutoID technology (RFID, NFC, Barcode or Other). Check back here in the last week of each month to see what you've missed!

 

(Read the full post by clicking on the title)

The New Balance Experience Store in Boston Runs Away with RFID

AutoID Technology Focus: RFID

The opening of New Balance’s newest store in Boston, The New Balance Experience Store, coincided with the April running of the Boston Marathon. The company utilized RFID on a number of fronts, both inside and outside of the store, to engage customers and extract valuable business intelligence (BI).

 

AT&T Enables Mobile Marketing Beyond Large Retailers and Brands with New Small Business Services Offering

AutoID Technology Focus: Barcode

AT&T recently announced that it will be extending mobile barcode services to its small business customers. As mobile barcodes continue to gain in popularity, businesses of all sizes including smaller retailers, brands, restaurants and enterprises will have an opportunity to deliver marketing content to consumer mobile devices.

 

Why Would Apple Wait ‘n’ See with NFC?

AutoID Technology Focus: NFC

“Will the iPhone 5 have NFC?” This is by far the most frequently asked question we hear when speaking with large enterprises considering NFC adoption. VDC has considered this issue carefully, and while we find it virtually impossible to make a high-confidence prediction about Apple’s intentions, we have identified a number of reasons Apple could continue in its current holding pattern, or perhaps completely pass on NFC.

 

New VDC Research Program Will Provide Valuable Insights into the Near Field Communication Market

AutoID Technology Focus: NFC

We wanted to let you know about an important new annual research program we are launching called The Voice of the Customer Series: Near Field Communication. The series, which is based on extensive primary research of enterprise and consumer behavior, will provide you with the information you need to help ensure you are making the best decisions possible in every aspect of your NFC business strategy.

 

Barnes & Noble Hooks Up the Nook With an NFC Upgrade

AutoID Technology Focus: NFC

NFC is set to make its debut on an e-reader device. Last week Barnes & Noble announced its Nook e-reader will support NFC in the near future—perhaps by the end of 2012. Historically, the vast majority of mobile devices with embedded NFC capability have been smartphones, with the exception of a few niche tablet offerings. This remains true today, although we expect to see increasing near-term availability of other NFC form factors.

 

Visa's Stance on Mobile Wallets vis-á-vis V.me

AutoID Technology Focus: NFC

Visa has ratcheted up the competition level in the European mobile wallet market—and will likely do so in North America before the year’s end. The company just announced that V.me, its in-house mobile wallet solution catering to both consumers and merchants, will launch in parts of Western Europe by Fall 2012. A rollout in the US and Canada is expected to follow shortly thereafter.

 

Stay tuned in June for even more expert coverage of the AutoID market.

 

The New Balance Experience Store in Boston Runs Away with RFID

The opening of New Balance’s newest store in Boston, The New Balance Experience Store, coincided with the April running of the Boston Marathon. The company utilized RFID on a number of fronts, both inside and outside of the store, to engage customers and extract valuable business intelligence (BI).

Although the dynamic is changing, RFID has not traditionally played a customer-facing role in retail. Instead, retailers have predominately used RFID for supply chain visibility and back-end inventory control systems. However, certain merchants, including New Balance, have integrated the technology into solutions that both attract and empower customers. For instance to promote the store, 6,000 RFID-enabled prize cards were distributed on the day of the marathon to invite customers to the store in order to discover what they had won. The cards, embedded with a Smartrac EPC Gen 2 RFID tag accompanied by an Impinj Monza 4 chip, were encoded with a unique identification number. By redeeming their prize cards at the point-of-sale (POS), customers learned if their card was a winner. 

InMotion Retail Marketing installed an interactive wall display on which a dozen shoe models are displayed. Next to the sneakers is a 42-inch touch screen and an RFID “hotspot,” a separate shelf where integrated RFID reader antennas are installed. Each shoe style is equipped with a Smartrac passive UHF RFID tag with an Impinj Monza 5 chip. Each tag’s ID is linked to the particular product’s SKU to which it is attached, and is stored in a cloud-based server hosted and managed by Freedom Shopping. When a shopper moves a particular shoe to the “hotspot,” a large image of the shoe displays on the touch screen along with the shoe’s features.

This RFID-enabled display provides both a unique shopping experience for customers and a powerful tool that enables New Balance to perform marketing analytics related to customer traffic and products preferences. Two RFID readers, installed above the display, detect and track product movement throughout the day. New Balance can leverage information provided by InMotion’s software to benchmark it against daily sales records, gain insight to consumer interest in particular products, how often that interest generated a sale, and whether promotional efforts are proving to be effective.

What makes this use of RFID compelling is that New Balance’s system delivers dynamic marketing and promotions while performing important consumer behavior and traffic monitoring simultaneously on the back-end. From the perspective of customer engagement and business intelligence applications, VDC affirms that RFID holds customer-engagement and marketing value propositions largely overlooked by retailers. This differentiation could give New Balance stronger footing against competitors.

AT&T Enables Mobile Marketing Beyond Large Retailers and Brands with New Small Business Services Offering

AT&T recently announced that it will be extending mobile barcode services to its small business customers. As mobile barcodes continue to gain in popularity, businesses of all sizes including smaller retailers, brands, restaurants and enterprises will have an opportunity to deliver marketing content to consumer mobile devices. 

The AT&T Code Management Platform enables small businesses to create and manage mobile marketing content. The platform provides customized, pre-made templates to easily create mobile-optimized web land pages. The results of scanning a 1D or 2D barcode can also be changed without replacing the physical codes to keep content up-to-date. After users have created their mobile barcodes, they can use the platform’s reporting tools to measure the effectiveness of any given campaign.

VDC’s research in mobile barcode scanning confirms that mobile barcodes are no longer a stranger to the mobile consumer. The vast majority of Tier 1 retailers and brands (i.e., Macy’s, Best Buy, Coca-Cola) have deployed some form of mobile marketing with barcodes. Meanwhile, smartphones are becoming more widespread with improved displays and cameras. These advances in consumer exposure and comfort with scanning and displaying barcodes using their smartphones will continue to help drive mobile marketing. 

VDC views the new offering from AT&T as a critical market enabler as AT&T is catering to an underserved community of Tier 3/4 small merchants that typically lack the resources and/or expertise required to launch a successful mobile marketing campaign on their own. The company’s extended mobile barcode services offers small businesses the opportunity to deploy an effective, lower-cost marketing strategy that leverages an increasingly popular behavior among consumers equipped with smartphones – namely, mobile barcode scanning.

We expect that mobile marketing services targeted at smaller enterprises will help increase mobile barcode scanning traffic among consumers. Furthermore, consumers want to do more with their smartphones in terms of mobile barcode scanning at more places. In fact, our research reveals that “the ability to scan barcodes in a diversity of stores” was rated the second most important factor in terms of scanning experience in retail stores, with an average consumer rating of 3.68 out of 5.  Given this consumer desire/level of interest, the new services from AT&T are expected to enable smaller business to better serve, target and market to their customer base. 

VDC recently published the “Mobile Barcoding, The Consumer & The Retail Enterprise” FastForward which provides deep insight into the expanding adoption of mobile barcode scanning. For more information on this report please click here: Mobile Barcodes & The Consumer.

Why Would Apple Wait ‘n’ See with NFC?

“Will the iPhone 5 have NFC?” This is by far the most frequently asked question we hear when speaking with large enterprises considering NFC adoption. Many assume Apple’s near-term support of NFC is inevitable, as if it is a required response to competitors such as Samsung, RIM and Nokia integrating NFC into a number of handsets already available today.  Certain NFC-related patents filed by Apple over the past two months have further boosted the belief that an NFC-enabled iPhone is inevitable.  VDC has considered this issue carefully, and while we find it virtually impossible to make a high-confidence prediction about Apple’s intentions, we have identified a number of reasons Apple could continue in its current holding pattern, or perhaps completely pass on NFC:

• Apple may buy into the PayPal paradigm: For payments, the need for hardware (or anything tangible, including cash, checks or cards) is passé—cloud-based payment is the future.
• Apple could be taking a “wait & see” approach: Merchants’ infrastructure and application investment is a critical factor that will determine whether NFC will gain traction in B2C, consumer-facing applications. At present, investment has been lacking in most regions.  Apple is unlikely to put technology into its iPhone—which are generally replaced every 24-36 months—that consumers are largely unable to use currently.
• Crucial issues regarding secure elements have yet to be resolved: Where will the secure element reside? Which stakeholder(s) will own it? These questions are critical for applications that have security requirements—payment being an obvious example. Apple could be waiting for these issues to be resolved before making its move.
• Some believe NFC is “a technology in search of a value proposition.” For all of the many applications NFC can support and enhance, none really depend on it entirely—they can be enabled in other ways. If Apple falls into this category, the company may never support NFC…

Considering the NFC-related patents the company was recently granted, its massive database of iTunes accounts (over 200 million as of Q1 2011), and the credit card information associated with those accounts that it could leverage to enable a payment application, we think that Apple will ultimately get involved with NFC. However, whether Apple does so with the iPhone 5 or 6, or perhaps another device entirely is anyone’s guess. The iPhone 5 introduction is expected sometime in fall 2012, so until that time, there will be no certain resolution to the ongoing mystery that is Apple’s position on NFC. 

The uncertainty surrounding Apple’s stance on NFC is just one of many complex issues faced by stakeholders in the nascent, but rapidly growing, NFC market. To address the numerous and multifaceted questions and concerns enterprises have regarding NFC, VDC is launching a new research program called Voice of the Customer: Near Field Communication. This multi-part series will identify and analyze key trends in the NFC market from the perspective of B2C enterprises, NFC hardware/solution vendors and consumers, and will draw on extensive primary research of enterprises and consumers currently using NFC. Please contact us to learn more.

 

New VDC Research Program Will Provide Valuable Insights into the Near Field Communication Market

We wanted to let you know about an important new annual research program we are launching called The Voice of the Customer Series: Near Field Communication. The series, which is based on extensive primary research of enterprise and consumer behavior, will provide you with the information you need to help ensure you are making the best decisions possible in every aspect of your NFC business strategy.

We’ve designed this program to help senior IT and line of business executives responsible for NFC project deployments as well as consultants and systems integrators responsible for advising and/or implementing NFC projects. This service will get them up to speed on the latest information on how enterprises are approaching the big decisions of technology and vendor selection, project budgeting, solution roll-out and ramp-up and much more. We will also be offering insights into the consumer experience and expectations regarding their adoption of NFC. Some of the issues we’ll be looking at during the next 12 months include:

• Current and expected NFC adoption trends
• Assessment of the market for various NFC device types, enabling components and professional services
• Analysis of the NFC landscape and suggestions for clients looking to narrow their focus to a short list of potential vendor partners
• NFC adoption trends at the consumer level for a wide range of applications, including payment, ticketing, social media, mobile marketing and more

Want to learn more? Visit our website to download the Research Outline.

Barnes & Noble Hooks Up the Nook With an NFC Upgrade

NFC is set to make its debut on an e-reader device. Last week Barnes & Noble announced its Nook e-reader will support NFC in the near future—perhaps by the end of 2012. Historically, the vast majority of mobile devices with embedded NFC capability have been smartphones, with the exception of a few niche tablet offerings. This remains true today, although we expect to see increasing near-term availability of other NFC form factors.

Integrating NFC into the Nook will enable a diversity of applications intended to provide customers with a more engaging, interactive shopping experience, including information access and mobile marketing. For example, Barnes & Noble plans to display an NFC-tagged copy of each best-seller in its stores, which customers can tap to be directed automatically to online reviews and other information related to that title.

Essentially, this initiative will bring together the best aspects of online and offline shopping—that is, the ability to access reviews/product information with the potential to touch (and purchase) the item immediately—at brick-and-mortar locations. From the retailer’s perspective, these customer-facing applications are intended to improve online-offline sales channel integration, one of Barnes and Noble’s key strategic goals. We question, however, how likely Nook users will be to use their e-readers while shopping. Wouldn’t a smartphone application be a far more accessible option?

That said, in the context of an online-offline channel integration strategy, we think the Nook initiative is an innovative approach and, furthermore, represents an exciting development for the greater NFC ecosystem. However, if highly-available, in-store accessibility to these cross-channel applications is what Barnes & Noble hopes will drive online-offline integration, we recommend extending these same applications to other mobile devices, smartphones especially. Relatively speaking, Nook unit sales are a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to the smartphone market. Thus, bringing these cross-channel applications to leading smartphone platforms (e.g., Android) will maximize the total addressable market, thereby furthering the mission of online-offline channel integration.

From an NFC adoption and awareness perspective, the Nook’s NFC integration represents promising early progress towards the types of information and marketing-related applications VDC believes will ultimately facilitate the transition to contactless payment. We have said this before, but it is an important point worth repeating: much of the media attention paid to NFC focuses disproportionately on contactless payment—often to the exclusion of other applications that are more viable in the now and near-term.

Although contactless payment and mobile commerce are tremendous longer-term NFC application opportunities, there are several critical pieces to the NFC payment puzzle that must fall into place before any broad-scale contactless payment activity becomes reality. Accordingly, we advise any enterprise considering investment in a B2C NFC solution to think beyond the realm of payment, as Barnes & Noble has done with the Nook. Contactless payment is just a small part of NFC’s broad-reaching utility—adjacent applications that provide compelling value and convenience to the consumer are what will drive adoption in the near term.

Visa's Stance on Mobile Wallets vis-á-vis V.me

Visa has ratcheted up the competition level in the European mobile wallet market—and will likely do so in North America before the year’s end. The company just announced that V.me, its in-house mobile wallet solution catering to both consumers and merchants, will launch in parts of Western Europe by Fall 2012. A rollout in the US and Canada is expected to follow shortly thereafter.

With a number of mobile wallet initiatives already underway in this region, including Google Wallet, O2 Wallet and the proposed Project Oscar (a European equivalent of the ISIS joint venture in the US; currently under evaluation by European anti-trust regulators) the mobile wallet competitive landscape in Europe was already fairly crowded prior to this announcement, considering the relatively low level of consumer NFC adoption in the region. Despite the small population of NFC-using consumers, companies like Google, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange have been keen to invest in mobile wallet initiatives.

Due to the present lack of consumers using NFC, any early-mover advantage established by pioneering mobile wallet providers like Google in respect to market share and consumer adoption is relatively inconsequential at this point in time. Although Google Wallet may presently lead the market, it is not necessarily the clear favorite in the future. Only time will tell which (if any) mobile wallet consumers prefer, but the answer will not be certain until NFC use reaches critical mass worldwide.

Until the time when the consumer user population grows to the point where a leading mobile wallet player emerges, VDC believes a key determinant of a mobile wallet provider’s future success will be the willingness of merchants to use that particular provider’s solution—after all, without anywhere to use a mobile wallet, what value does it provide for a consumer? Therefore, without broad merchant acceptance, a mobile wallet provider will struggle to convince consumers to use its solution.  A similar “chicken and egg” type of problem hamstrung early contactless payment card deployments such as MasterCard’s Paypass and Visa’s payWave. Visa’s opportunity to drive mobile wallet adoption via V.me—both at the merchant and consumer level—is a key aspect of this announcement’s significance.

VDC believes Visa’s entry into the mobile wallet market will ultimately prove to be a watershed moment in the evolution of mobile commerce and contactless payment. As the world’s leading credit card company, Visa has tremendous clout with banks/card issuers, merchants and card holders alike. By virtue of its entrenchment in all aforementioned segments of the worldwide payment ecosystem, Visa has unparalleled ability to influence the future of payment technology.

If V.me can effectively leverage the power of its parent company, we think it will vastly increase awareness and adoption of contactless payment across all of the aforementioned payment stakeholder categories, especially considering this mobile wallet works with all card brands—not just Visa. With NFC and mobile wallets, merchant participation is critical, but consumers still hold the ultimate veto power. However, if V.me delivers the convenience, ubiquity and value needed to spur consumer adoption, we think it has the opportunity to bring mobile wallets to the mainstream more successfully than any of its predecessors.

MBTA Gets Onboard With Mobile Ticketing

The MBTA, greater Boston’s public transportation system, just announced plans to deploy a mobile barcode-based ticketing solution across its entire commuter rail network. This solution, which will operate on Android, iOS and Blackberry devices, is expected to be operational by year’s end and will facilitate the ticketing process both for passengers and conductors. While passengers will benefit from an additional, always-accessible fare purchasing option, conductors’ jobs will be facilitated by reduced ticket punching and cash collection duties.

Mobile ticketing is not a new concept, despite that its relative nonexistence in the US suggests otherwise. In fact, mobile ticketing solutions enabled by mobile barcode and NFC have existed for years in other regions, including Europe and Asia. As is often the case with the adoption of new technologies (or, in this case, technology applications) the US is simply a laggard. In fact, some media sources claim that the MBTA initiative is the first of its kind in the country.

From a technology selection/system specifications perspective, we are not surprised the MBTA selected a mobile barcode-based solution rather than one that leverages NFC. Although NFC is certainly gaining traction as an enabling technology for contactless ticketing applications, the fact is that most consumers, particularly in the US, are not yet familiar with the technology—never mind own an NFC-enabled smartphone. Mobile barcode scanning, however, is a technology that is both highly accessible and very familiar to consumers.

Keep in mind, however, that mobile barcode has its limitations, with a key issue (in the context of transportation ticketing) being throughput speed. In the case of this MBTA solution, throughput is a non-issue, because the system will be used exclusively on commuter trains, where there are no turnstiles and fares are collected onboard. However, should the MBTA evaluate mobile ticketing for its subway and/or bus networks in the future, we think a mobile barcode-based solution would be a poor choice.

Whereas subway/bus networks have higher ridership volumes and passenger queue points (i.e., turnstiles on the subway, door-based readers on the bus), a mobile barcode-based solution would considerably slow throughout and create longer queues. Just imagine the time required to take out a smartphone, open up the MBTA app and then display and scan a barcode—relative to the contactless and paper tickets currently used, this would certainly reduce throughput, not to mention create a requirement for barcode imagers/scanners at all ticketing portals. In the case of subway and bus ticketing, NFC-based solutions, which can leverage the existing HF contactless ticketing readers in place throughout many public transport networks (including the MBTA), are a more logical choice.

Early NFC ticketing pilots are already underway here in the US (and the rest of the world), such as the one led by New York City’s MTA in partnership with Nokia. As NFC smartphones increasingly reach the hands of consumers over the next 24-36 months, we expect NFC ticketing activity will gain momentum. In the interim, however, considering the respective strengths and weaknesses of mobile barcode and NFC, we expect ongoing mobile ticketing opportunities will exist for vendors utilizing both of these technologies.

US EMV Migration…Opportunity Abounds, but Will it be Fulfilled?

With April upon us, the one year countdown to the first step in the US EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) migration mandate has begun. The April 2013 deadline, which requires acquiring banks to upgrade their systems in order to accept EMV transactions, primarily impacts the financial institutions that process card payments on behalf of merchants. Next year’s milestone, which is the first point on the migration roadmaps of Visa, Mastercard and Discover, primarily impacts acquiring banks, which function as an intermediary between the merchant and the card network (e.g., Visa). As a result, we expect this imminent requirement, along with others looming further ahead in April 2015, will precipitate a rapid increase in compliance-driven demand across the US during the next several years.

From a hardware perspective, EMV migration in the US creates an obvious need for contact/contactless chip cards, EMV capable payment terminals and EMV reader modules that can be integrated into self-service solutions such as ATMs, self-checkout solutions and kiosks. Leading EMV vendors such as Oberthur Technologies have anticipated this emerging need and already have begun shipping limited volumes of EMV cards and related solutions. Whereas the majority of EMV hardware demand will be driven by the April 2015 deadline, when merchants must upgrade their payment solutions and card issuers will move to EMV-capable cards, VDC expects the preceding 2013 directive—which affects only acquiring banks, not merchants or card issuers—to have relatively little impact on the EMV hardware market. On the other hand, as April 2015 approaches and merchants work towards EMV compliance, we expect demand for EMV payment solutions will increase significantly.

In contrast to hardware vendors, EMV software providers should expect significant demand growth during the entire migration process.  This increase will be driven by all payment value chain participants, including card acquirers, merchants and card issuers.  Near term opportunities will be driven primarily by acquiring banks making compliance-related upgrades to their systems on the back-end of the payment value chain. As the 2015 deadline approaches, however, demand will be driven largely by merchant upgrades of front-end payment solutions and integration of these systems with adjacent transaction automation, customer engagement and inventory management solutions.

The greatest market opportunity US EMV migration creates may be for services and integration providers—those with the knowledge to deploy EMV and the ability to make it work across each step in the payment value chain. Unlike EMV hardware and software, integration knowledge and experience cannot simply be manufactured—it must be learned and developed. We think this could lead to an EMV knowledge gap within the US, resulting in a backlog of unfulfilled demand for EMV service and integration. During our recent visit to Cartes North America, EMV software and service providers from the UK and Brazil described similar phenomenon during the migration processes in these regions.

Considering the US is an EMV laggard, we see no reason circumstances will be any different here. Accordingly, as EMV gains momentum in the US, VDC believes in-house integration and service capabilities will be significant differentiators for hardware/software vendors.  Suppliers looking to capitalize on this emerging opportunity should position themselves as a complete end-to-end EMV solution provider—rather than simply as a source of hardware/software.

Company Spotlight: austriamicrosystems Seeks Growth by Tapping the NFC market & Acquisition

Austriamicrosystems is a rapidly growing provider of RFID reader ICs. In stark contrast to many RFID chip vendors, austriamicrosystems ignores the tag market entirely, focusing strictly on more sophisticated reader ICs that highlight the company’s considerable R&D and manufacturing abilities.  Two recent strategic moves, in conjunction with the company’s vertically integrated operational structure and well-established track record of innovative, high-performance ICs, have led to rapid share gains and revenue growth. Although austriamicrosystems might not yet be among the “household” names in the RFID market, don’t be surprised if that changes during the next 1-2 years. Despite the low profile austriamicrosystems has historically maintained, VDC expects the combination of rapid growth with ongoing innovation (especially in regards to the performance/size ratio its ICs offer) will drive increasingly strong awareness of this company in the near term.

Over the course of the past 24 months, austriamicrosystems has pursued a multifaceted growth strategy that encompasses cooperative partnerships with complementary technology suppliers (e.g., Infineon, NXP), acquisition and product portfolio expansion. We believe this strategy, combined with the company’s operational and product differentiation, has been instrumental in driving its recent market share and revenue growth.

Unlike many fabless IC/semiconductor firms, austriamicrosystems operates its own manufacturing and testing facilities at its Austria-based headquarters, resulting in a vertically-integrated organizational structure that affords complete control over the R&D, manufacturing, testing and QC processes. Due in large part to the end-to-end visibility and deep product knowledge the company’s vertically integrated model affords (and its ownership of all IP used in its products) austriamicrosystems’ reader modules are among the highest performing offerings on the market. The company is further differentiated as one of the few providers that offers ICs for multiple frequencies, including HF, UHF/EPC and NFC.

In regards to inorganic growth, in July 2011 the company completed the acquisition of Texas Advanced Optoelectronic Solutions (TAOS), a provider of optoelectronic sensors that simplify the measurement and analog-to-digital conversion of light for a range of devices, including smartphones, tablets and notebook computers. The addition of TAOS materially extends the breadth of austriamicrosystems’ product line and already has resulted in significant contract wins with smartphone OEMs such as Samsung. We expect this accretive activity, combined with in-house product development, to drive significant near-term growth.

From an internal development perspective, austriamicrosystems recently introduced two NFC IC offerings, leveraging its expertise in RFID ICs to develop enabling components for the nascent (but rapidly growing) NFC market. The company is targeting its NFC IC at automotive, payment, ticketing and access control applications. In our opinion, entering the NFC market was a strategically sensible move for austriamicrosystems. Not only does NFC overlap with the company’s existing RFID business, it also positions the company to capture a share of the exponential near-term growth expected in the NFC market.

For 2012, austriamicrosystems faces some strong expectations. In its 2011 consolidated year-end financial results (representing all its businesses, not just RF), austriamicrosystems issued guidance that forecasts 25% revenue growth for 2012, after posting 32% revenue growth during 2011, representing annual revenues exceeding $383 million. While this is certainly an ambitious goal, VDC expects this target will be met, if not exceeded. Not only is the company riding its 2011 momentum, the aforementioned Samsung contract (to provide light sensors for the Galaxy smartphone lineup) won in late Q4 ’11 is expected to drive additional growth not reflected in last year’s results. Provided austriamicrosystems does not deviate significantly from the strategically successful path of innovation, partnership and acquisition that it has pursued thus far, we think it has a bright future ahead.