Just when the economy seems to be turning around from the crash of 2008 and the resulting Great Recession, a mere six years later the retail industry seems to be committing loss prevention suicide. This is the observation of Dr. Richard Hollinger in his Academic Viewpoint column as it relates to the recent outplacement of several veteran loss prevention executives.
In his Future of LP column, Tom Meehan, CFI, talks about the EMV chip-and-PIN cards that were introduced in the US recently as a required data security tool. He provides a review of the European experience with EMV cards – both good and bad – as well as some of the issues faced by U.S. retailers who are currently rolling out the technology.
“I have one hand in the day-to-day and one in the future…because it’s important that our core business continues to do well. Because that is what allows us to aggressively invest in longer-term things.” That quote from Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mike Schroepfer prompted Steve Sell, CMO for USS, to compare that point of view to the loss prevention industry in the Strategies column.
Long-time loss prevention professional Eric Mickelson, now a data analyst and software trainer, encourages current LP professionals to learn the basics of data analysis as both a means of improving their current contributions to their organization as well as avoiding hitting what he terms the “digital ceiling” in advancing their careers. His comments are in the My Turn column.
Other columns in the March-April issue include:
– “Take Some Notes” by David Zulawski, CFI, CFE and Shane Sturman, CFI, CFE
– “Retirement and Thanks” by Claude Verville, LPC
– “Helping Loss Prevention Professionals in Their Time of Need” by Gene Smith, LPC
– “Watch Trends to Plan the Future” by Read Hayes, PhD, CPP
– “In Terms of Professional Development, Relevance Is a Product of Evolution” by Jacque Brittain, LPC
– “The Audacity” by Jim Lee, LPC
The contents of the print magazine are available online here as well as in a PDF version via the Print Archive.