Don't Shoot The Big Bad Wolf - He's Just The Messenger!
Forcing retailers to innovate and take risks
"Retail Needs a Hero" & One SVP Believes LP Can Be Retail's Hero

Big day for technology evolution and justification in the D&D Daily today.

From Facial Recognition to RFID, Robots, Scan & Go, and BOPUS with all of them now considered future must haves in order to compete with the Big Bad Wolf Amazon.

But maybe Amazon isn't the Big Bad Wolf. Maybe he's just the messenger that woke retail up and said get with it or die.

And look at how Loss Prevention & Asset Protection has been leading some of those efforts and introduced a number of them via our surveillance, inventory, and shrink reduction efforts and deliverables.

As one speaker said in a 2018 NRF PROTECT loss prevention conference presentation by James Mullan, senior vice president of GDR USA, called “Retail’s Secret Innovation Lab: How LP can be the modern-day heroes that future-proof your business.”

Where he basically said retail needs a new hero — someone to take the lead in innovation. Which raises a question: If the marketing/innovation or IT teams can’t get it done, who can make innovation happen? Mullan’s candidate is loss prevention. 

This sounds a little improbable, but he makes a good case for it. Why LP? Because technologies known to reduce shrinkage can also be used to provide a better customer experience. The way to sell them to management is not based on innovativeness and glitz, but on the same basis as any loss prevention initiative.

“LP business cases are easy to quantify and easy to understand,” Mullan said. “And you are a trusted source. Your work, done well, typically provides a clear return on investment that keeps CEOs, CFOs and shareholders happy.”

One such technology Mullan cited is RFID. Macy’s is running a pilot program with women’s shoes that allows it to track every individual piece of stock in the store. This has improved display compliance by 6 percent and improved omnichannel fulfillment. The same technology, Mullan noted, also prevents people from stealing things.

Another double-threat technology is the combination of high-definition cameras and real-time analytics. The cameras, like the RFID tags, are a classic LP tool with an easily demonstrable ROI. They can spot somebody trying to sneak out with merchandise under their coat.

The last technology example Mullan used, also involving cameras, is facial recognition and contactless payment, where loss prevention and customer service essentially merge. In China, this is becoming standard; the system knows customers’ faces and their credit card account numbers. It sees them come into the store, watches what they pick up and charges them for it as they leave.

There are Orwellian overtones to some of this technology, Mullan said. “Along with loss prevention and customer service, I’d like to introduce a third category: privacy. Maybe we can make the store more secure and simultaneously improve the customer experience — but not at the detriment of the customer’s privacy.”

That ship may have sailed as far as the Chinese are concerned. In the West, partly due to the efforts of the European Union, privacy and the right to be left alone are still widely debated issues.

Returning to his main point, Mullan closed his presentation with a call for loss prevention specialists to collaborate with their colleagues in other areas to help drive badly needed retail innovation efforts. “All the lines across everything are blur-ring,” he said, “and I think that means you guys — LP — need to start bringing your expertise and experience to bear with other teams. They will value you for it.” stores.org

CCTV's - Facial Recognition-Contactless Payments - EAS - RFID - Real-Time Analytics - Robots

All of which LP and AP led the efforts to incorporate into the retail industry. And quite frankly now everybody wants a part of the cameras.

Getting back to the story, today's Daily is just all about how the technologies the LP and AP industry has been pushing for years if not decades to reduce risk and create safer stores. And now some of them as proven in today's articles are being considered must-haves for the future in order to not just compete but to survive against the Big Bad Wolf Amazon. The article from the September stores magazine, which we repurposed here just fit like a glove and furthered our point. Enjoy today's read.

- Gus Downing