A new whitepaper exploring loss prevention technologies and techniques being deployed by major retailers reports that retailers do, in fact, have the ability to reduce the negative effect that employee and customer theft—as well as organized retail crime—has on their profitability. The research was conducted by Cambridge Retail Advisors (formerly Boston Retail Partners).
The whitepaper, titled “Loss Prevention: Why Merging Technologies is Essential,” explores ways that retailers are or could be using technologies such as exception-based reporting, advanced video analytics, serialized RFID, blockchain, and 5G. It also looks at how these tools can be used together to essentially amplify the benefits to the retailer’s LP operations.
“LP is at a crossroads,” said Ken Morris, managing partner at Cambridge Retail Advisors (CRA). “Technologies such as AI, serialized RFID, smart video analytics, and 5G are starting to converge and complement each other.” Morris and his colleagues at CRA work with retailers to identify which techniques and technologies will provide the best results in their specific operating environment. “In a world with more sophisticated thieves and a challenging labor market, retailers need to get a maximum return on their investment in LP,” he added.
“As the retail landscape continues to be more and more competitive, retailers must take advantage of every option available to them,” said Marty Whitmore, managing partner at CRA, adding that retailers need to look at loss prevention as a key component to improving their bottom-line results. “Retailers who shy away from loss prevention because of cost will fall by the wayside,” he warned.
The research report provides significant detail on the evolution of exception-based reporting (EBR) and how retailers today are using the current technology to cut through massive amounts of retail data in order to find suspicious activities.
“LP teams today are all about driving profitability for the organization,” said Raoul Ricard, a retail industry executive with decades of experience in exception-based reporting technology. “EBR providers can help digest, curate, and normalize a wide variety of retail data types to help look at exceptions and trends across all areas of the business.”
Click here for a free download of this new whitepaper. The research report was sponsored by Avery Dennison, Agilence, and Hanwha Techwin.