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Are Retailers Wasting Money on LP Technology?
The link below is to a white paper prepared by ECR Europe which discusses how LP technology's value is measured.
New: Measuring the Value of Srinkage Prevention Technologies — ECR's International Commerce Institute A quote by one of the authors Adrian Beck that caught my attention and peaked my interest in reading the white paper, "If retail loss prevention practitioners are to be taken more seriously by other functions within the business, then they need to show greater rigour and professionalism in the way in which they go about developing business cases for investment, and how they measure and monitor the performance of ‘solutions’ they recommend. It is hoped that this report will help them to achieve this"
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Archie The opinions expressed above are mine alone and may or may not be shared by my employer, my dog, my cousin Bill, that smiley faced preacher named Joel something, my neighbor, you or anyone else. Nothing written above should be construed as anything. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, except when it's intentional. Last edited by Archie; 03-25-2008 at 08:19 PM. Reason: typo |
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Agreed!
I had lunch with Adrian last year in London and we discussed this very issue. In general, he's not very impressed with most of the LP departments out there. So how do each of you make your financial case for new technology, etc? |
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I think that depends on the company. ORC groups at some companies are lean on manpower and highly effective.
It's also oversimplistic to look at ORC cases in terms of how "big" the "bust" was. If you shut down an active ring and recover $100,000 worth of merchandise, is that the extent of the bust? I would argue that if the investigation indicated that the ring was responsible for $50,000 in loss per month, by shutting them down even temporarily the ORC team has saved more than just what they recovered. By shutting down a mid-level fence you may also shut down boosters who have now lost their buyer. I'm not saying this is the case in every company but there are many out there who run lean enough and operate effectively enough to significantly add value to the LP department.
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Veritas |
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I know Target has invested significantly in ORC and has seen a significant impact on theft related shortage from it - or at least that's what I am hearing from them. |
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I think they overspend when they implement EAS in every single location. Not every location needs EAS. Currently EAS response in most companies is horrendous and needs to be revamped.
Anyone see EAS as more of a customer annoyance vs a theft deterrent? |
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Generally, yes...
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How about an employee annoyance? ...I've been in a few retailers where the employees don't seem to stop gabbing about who's-dating-who and ignore the EAS activation.
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"It's not enough to be good. You've got to look good and sound good, or NO GOOD!" Dr. George J. Thompson |
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This failure represents one of the primary reasons why I think EAS is viewed as an hinderance or annoyance more than a meaningful deterrent. I think too many in operations view EAS as a magic bullet. Tag the merchandise and forget about it. Over time it just becomes one more static security system in the store that nobody pays much attention to. I've been in stores with EAS that is ignored, locks on cases that were never locked because the locks were inconvenient, doors with keypad locks that were propped open, DVRs that weren't recording, product protection tools that weren't functioning because of something as simple as a battery in need of replacement and so on and so forth. Familiarity breeds contempt. And when a store decides that the positive impact the tool has isn't worth the minor inconvenience or extra step they have to take, they will likely look for a way to go around it. If the organization isn't committed to using the tool as a part of the operational day to day cadence or if they fail to maintain it's use as the standard it eventually does become nothing but a fixture. I'm not sure I believe the answer is to scrap the tool. I would want to evaluate whether there was a way to make the tool more user friendly, less obtrusive or find new ways to incorporate it into the store routines before I deemed it useless.
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Archie The opinions expressed above are mine alone and may or may not be shared by my employer, my dog, my cousin Bill, that smiley faced preacher named Joel something, my neighbor, you or anyone else. Nothing written above should be construed as anything. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, except when it's intentional. |
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