RetailT
It’s a challenge for retailers, as they have to question HR [human resource] policies, colleagues, people they work with. That admission has been a great revelation for those focusing on in-store loss.” However Ray Palmer, head of asset protection at
B&Q, felt during that same event that deterring and great customer service were the best way to reduce theft overall. “If a member of staff commits crimes, the value is higher than an individual who just comes in but I’m not sure it’s as high as [Paul Bessant] said. I think staff theft could amount to 25% to 30% of loss at most and that 80% still sits in our hands to resolve. We are overt in B&Q about what we do,” continued Palmer. “We have cameras on our checkouts and generally
we have a front-end dashboard that tells us what operators are doing, via data mining and CCTV. We use that as a deterrent and are really open with our employees about what we do and how we do it. And if they want to try it, we’ll involve the police. We had 1,700 external criminal arrests last year in B&Q. On average, internal arrests work out at about two employees per store per year over 365 stores.” This very issue has also been at the top of the
Argos agenda, as the retailer announced this summer it had invested in Sysrepublic’s SECURE solution, which monitors all transactions at the PoS, alerting investigators immediately to employee theft and fraud, business processes that are acting against the best interests of the company and even conflicting product pricing or promotions. “We were looking for a way of achieving higher
performance from our investigative team and sustainable loss reduction with no increase in costs for the solution,” explained Mark Driver, national investigations manager at Argos. Ray O’Connell, managing director of Carrolls
Irish Gifts, felt that internal theft should be at the forefront of retailers’ minds. Speaking at a round table during the Retail Fraud Dublin event in July, he said: “The director of a company has a duty of care to the board and partners to protect the stock. On top of that, the human instinct is to trust people. You have to have procedures in place. Staff need frameworks and structures,” he added. “You will grow good staff and minimise that
risk if you have good structures and processes for everything. The trends are always the same, friends or relations being served on the till for example, but having procedures in place, such as tills only opening in connection to a sale and every customer being given a receipt matching transactions, each process eliminates the danger.”
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echnology Pat Maw, LP manager at Woodies DIY, warned
during the same event that retailers must make sure they have truly understood the process, not just read through it. “For me, the most powerful thing when all of the processes fail is when you have a member of staff that is arrested and everybody sees someone being walked through the shop floor, it’s a really powerful message. It says ‘we will help you get it right and support you but if you choose not to do something, we will deal with you’.” Shoplifting is of course the other major concern
for retailers. Maw has noticed the creativity and organisation of criminals, going for the “big stuff” and using the fire exits. She feels acknowledging the customer in-store is a big deterrent, as is staff training. Weekend shoplifters are another new trend,
according to Peter Tokins, head of security at luxury Irish department store Brown Thomas. “Last year we had a girl flying in from France on a Friday and back on a Sunday to steal from us. When we lose one item it can be very expensive, so turning sales staff into shopkeepers ensures everybody takes responsibility. Customer service also acts as security.” Having made the crossover from elite criminal
to top level consultant, Tony Sales of Retail Knowledge had a number of tips to share with retailers at the Dublin event following a number of secret camera excursions into stores. Sales illustrated how carefully thought-out loss prevention strategies are just not carried out in-store. “Take the example of spider tags that were not fitted correctly,” Sales said. “You spend millions of pounds on security and item protection and someone ruins it by misusing spider tags on an object with no sticky label backup. You have the best gadget until it gets into the store and the store process lets it down.” Other examples included wire tags all set to
an obvious code, such as the end of a store phone number or shockingly, an example where all the plugs for the alarm systems on expensive electronic items were located under the pop-up cabinet. Data protection is another crucial factor.
Companies like Target, Domino’s pizza, Paddy Power or recently The Home Depot and Viator may have made headlines for all the wrong reasons, but it doesn’t always take sophisticated hacking to put customer data at risk. “Data is the new cash, for criminals,” said Sales
while showing examples of how he’d filmed ‘click & collect’ order books simply left on counters, with customer data in full view. “Criminals can take your reputation and livelihood through data.”
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