Violence, theft, fraud, and even poor process design and execution are killing retailers across the globe. Now more than ever, your retail organization needs you to be the resident retail security and loss control expert. You are expected to know how your total retail enterprise operates, and most importantly, how it’s actually operating in various changing environments across the nation and globe.
It is in this critical and complex context that you must assess your LP program and performance wins and gaps. This is your first step. You’re looking to cost-effectively support corporate goals and operations. You’re trying to protect people, your brand, and company assets. You’re working to make it all happen, which means you have got to win.
To win, you need an operating model or strategy. It needs to be carefully designed, but simple in concept and operation. Its impact should be quantifiable, and readily explained above and below you—by you and your team. And it should be designed to work.
A loss prevention organization should be designed and operate to support the retail enterprise, and all its people and initiatives should support corporate objectives. Those levels can look something like the descending action points below:
– Fully understand and map out all corporate goals and supporting processes.
– Align and map LP goals to support each relevant corporate goal and program.
– Set up the LP strategy, process, technologies, and team structure to support these LP goals.
– Identify and develop overall LP team knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics to support the LP strategy and programs.
– Identify and develop individual LP team member knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics to support your focused LP teams and programs.
To learn more about using research to build better loss prevention strategies and tactics, reach the Evidence-Based LP column in the January-February 2016 issue.