Four questions for your loss prevention strategy.
Retailers globally have a series of common barriers preventing the adoption of innovative data solutions designed to improve loss prevention operational efficiencies. Our experience in the sector identifies five key questions our clients have had to answer in order to understand if technical solutions for digital loss prevention align to their business needs, helping to make a business case for the necessary change management to reduce in-store theft.1. Where are you in your loss prevention data journey?
Conservative estimates indicate 60-70% of retailers have not yet moved to digital surveillance systems. While they are no longer recording CCTV on VCRs and tapes, many analogue systems still record information on proprietary systems, inhibiting the benefits of automation.
Cost, legacy infrastructure and integration concerns often lie at the heart of this inertia. By properly examining the issues around each of these, and agreeing what a successful implementation will look like, organizations can address each area effectively.
By implementing digital loss prevention technology, retailers can see a marked reduction in shoplifting, with less human intervention required. At the same time, implementation costs are far lower than the savings directly attributed to the technology. As an additional benefit, positive results can be achieved faster than via traditional detection mechanisms.
2. Who owns and implements your security infrastructure?
Data strategy often focuses on how organizations collect and use existing data to inform decision-making. Where ‘analogue’ practices such as CCTV camera networks are not properly integrated within existing infrastructure – meaning highly valuable in-store data is not being captured – a range of business influencers need to be engaged with the objective of activating and sharing loss prevention data across stores. Today, collaboration is critical.
By doing so, retailers can build rich and contextual pictures of organized retail crime activity and known individuals. But organizations need to navigate internal barriers between security and IT.
Digital loss prevention analyses, centralizes and delivers powerful and actionable real-time loss prevention insights through simple mobile alerts and a central dashboard.
In order for it to be effective, the information collected in stores must be shareable with authorized loss prevention personnel. DXC and Hitachi understand the business considerations of sharing alerts to someone’s phone, including the legal and privacy considerations. Our combined deep data, software and hardware integration capability stands out in the market as does the ease and speed of deployment of our solutions.
Together, we collaborate with all relevant team members: IT, security and any other relevant parties to overcome internal barriers and put the right solution in place.
3. Are loss prevention workflows or processes reactive or proactive?
How advanced are your retail organization’s loss prevention workflows? Does the technology in place proactively draw the attention of a security or loss prevention employee to persons of interest in real time?
Covert loss prevention tactics perform a necessary but reactive task, with the limitation of time and expense preventing them from being available everywhere all the time. Organizations with control rooms, actively monitoring stores, are already ahead of the curve, making it easier to put tools in place for reducing theft.
However, not having advanced technology in place already should not prevent organizations from evolving their loss prevention abilities. Digital loss prevention enables the fast identification, prevention or apprehension, and prosecution of offenders targeting retail stores. Moreover, it is possible to utilise or complement existing technology and infrastructure to evolve organizations’ current solutions, without noticing any difference to how things work – other than becoming more proactive and effective.
4. What does the future of digital security look like for your organization?
It has been said that 90% of the world's data has been created in the last two years-- but that we're using only a fraction of it effectively. DXC and Hitachi’s focus on better data strategy means we can prevent that statistic from applying to loss prevention.
Analytics, AI, automation and machine learning are changing the world. As technology evolves, the tasks humans have manually done in the past are becoming increasingly automated. The question is, what does an organization’s vision of the future look like and how does loss prevention fit into it? To address this concern, partnering with future-looking organizations like DXC and Hitachi helps retailers align strategy with business performance: we focus on data strategy that solve business issues as part of a much larger picture, embracing varied, advanced technologies.
In the loss prevention world of the future, data can be processed much more quickly.
Is it possible to understand where criminals are going and what goods they’re going to target? The answer is yes: the combination of trend analysis and the power of digital loss prevention is allowing organizations to begin calculating this information before theft takes place.
A single question remains: with this data at an organization’s fingertips, what will they do about it? The future of surveillance is a game-changer. DXC and Hitachi partner with organizations to turn this future into reality.
Conclusion
It is possible for retailers to carry on as they are, but retail losses will only increase over time as criminals become more sophisticated or emboldened and organized retail crime becomes more audacious.
Rather than waiting for crime to take place, detecting crime at the earliest possible point not only helps stores target shoplifters, ensure prosecutions stick, and make stores safer for shoppers; while also improving the bottom line. It also reduces the risk of potentially dangerous criminals harming people, while keeping valuable goods on the shelves for shoppers to buy.
This is a sponsored blog by Aaron Terrey, Principal, Smart Spaces Video Intelligence, DXC Technology.
Aaron Terrey is a Principal in ANZ for Smart Spaces Video Intelligence for DXC Technology, the world’s leading independent end-to-end IT services company.
Prior to joining DXC Technology in July 2018, Aaron spent 25-years specialising in Video Management & Surveillance, more recently specialising in Physical Space Analytics and Fraud & Loss Prevention.
Aaron has held senior management positions over his career, and built and lead teams to successful partnerships and project rollouts with numerous blue chip companies around the world including Emirates Airlines, Jumeirah Group (Burj Al Arab), and Formula One.
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