Nedap Rings Opening Bell at the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange

Nedap Signs 800-Store Deal with South African Retailer Ackermans, Making Nedap the Fastest-Growing Retail RFID Platform in the World

Nedap has signed a three year contract with South African retailer Ackermans for the supply of Nedap's leading RFID software platform, to its 800 stores in Southern Africa. With this deal, Nedap has become the fastest growing RFID platform in the world. To celebrate this achievement, Rob Schuurman, Managing Director, will ring the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange Opening Bell.

Nedap is the Global Leader in RFID within Retail. Nedap helps retailers permanently prevent losses, optimize stock levels and simplify the multi-store retail management using RFID. Nedap's RFID software platform gives retailers real-time item-level insights into their stock levels and the exact location of each item. Using these real-time insights, retailers are able act much more agile, offer customers a better shopping experience and uplift sales. euronext.com


Workplace Theft Is on the Rise
As the line between work and home blurs, office supplies attract sticky fingers

Your office is a den of thieves. Don't take my word for it: When a forensic-accounting firm surveyed workers in 2013, 52 percent admitted to stealing company property. And the thievery is getting worse. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that theft of "non-cash" property - ranging from a single pencil in the supply closet to a pallet of them on the company loading dock - jumped from 10.6 percent of corporate-theft losses in 2002 to 21 percent in 2018. Managers routinely order up to 20 percent more product than is necessary, just to account for sticky-fingered employees.

What's behind this 9-to-5 crime wave? Mark R. Doyle, the president of the loss-prevention consultancy Jack L. Hayes International, points to a decrease in supervision, the ease of reselling purloined products online, and what he alleges is "a general decline in employee honesty."

The changing nature of the workplace may also bear some blame. Full-time employees now spend an average of 3.3 hours a day working from home - a fact reflected in the frequent disappearance of household items from the office. On social media, for instance, anonymous workers have confessed to stealing everything from light bulbs and toilet paper to Oreos, Windex smuggled out in a water bottle, and a fake Christmas tree. After one Reddit user expressed guilt over snatching coffee for weekend enjoyment, another poster offered a compelling rationalization: "You weren't stealing the coffee. You were planning to work from home this weekend. Obviously you need coffee if you're going to be working."

With the divide between apartment and cubicle blurring, taking stuff home isn't even thought of as theft anymore, says Brian Friedman, the asset-protection director for HD Supply. "It's [considered] an entitlement." theatlantic.com

Smaller, More Frequent Risks Steadily Erode the Bottom Line
Health and Safety Incidents Become Biggest Loss Driver for Organizations
For the year ahead, organizations are most concerned about high-impact events, including cyber-attacks, IT outages and extreme weather events, despite the fact that other incidents recurred more often and have a cumulatively higher impact. Some of the threats perceived to be low risk are being underrated when looking towards future resilience.

The clearest example of this is health and safety risks. The BCI 2019 Horizon Scan report totaled up the costs for surveyed organizations that suffered losses of more than 7 percent of annual turnover, and found that health and safety incidents cost $1.186 billion in 2018. Despite the frequency and cumulative cost of these incidents, organizations continue to perceive their impact as relatively low, ranking them twelfth on the list of top risks for 2019.

Howard Kerr, Chief Executive at BSI, says: "It is easy for leaders to be kept awake at night by high-profile risks such as cyber-attacks, technology disruptions and IT outages. But they must not ignore the smaller, more frequent risks that steadily erode the bottom line. Organizations that do not take all threats they face seriously, or develop plans to manage them, are exposing themselves to not only reputational loss but what can become quite severe financial costs. Achieving true Organizational Resilience means identifying not only the big risks but also the under-rated issues that may just seem 'business as usual' and can easily be missed." securitymagazine.com

Organized Retail Crime Investigations:
Education is the First Step Webinar

Join us for a free 1-hour webinar March 8, 2019 at 2:00 PM EST to learn about the ORC Investigations LPF-Certified Certificate Course and tools offered through Sensormatic by Johnson Controls to help fight Organized Retail Crime. This webinar qualifies for 1 Continuing Education Unit (CEU) towards your LPC Re-Certification. Register here
 

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ISCPO Executive Roundtable Interview Series: Wayne Hoover CFI

As part of our Executive Roundtable Interview Series, we sat down with industry veteran Wayne Hoover, Senior Partner, Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates. Wayne has personally conducted over a thousand interviews and interrogations on incidents ranging from arson to theft over the last 27 years. He also helped create the Certified Forensic Interviewer (CFI) designation that holds interviewers to a higher standard of obtaining the truth. In this capacity, he oversees all the divisions of CFIs, of which there are over 1800 CFIs around the world, as well as the members of the International Association of Interviewers.

An active ISCPO board member, he provides a unique perspective when it comes to setting best practices in interview and interrogation techniques. We asked him to share his take on where the industry is going in combating crime and how LP practitioners can effectively work with law enforcement to mitigate loss.

ISCPO: How has the industry evolved since you started out, especially related to how technology aids in interviewing/investigations?

When I started in 1991, I had no interviewing experience whatsoever. WZ taught me from the ground up in all things interviewing. Luckily, we were ahead of the curve in that we video recorded every interview we conducted. I knew as soon as I got back to the office, I would be sitting down with my peers to review the interview. Once I started training others, I noticed we were unique in regard to the recording of the interviews. Many people were sent to our seminars and approved to do interviews after attending with no follow up to help them get better. This has always been a concern for us as trainers, and recently the technology has enabled us to start to provide the opportunity for interviewers to go online and practice interviewing without the legal liability that happens in real life situations. Now using Artificial Intelligence and coaching, an interviewer can practice over and over in different types of scenarios and different type of personalities to get better. The Link has been instrumental in providing feedback for interviewers to take the knowledge they learn in a seminar and then to implement with feedback, in the same manner, I learned so many years ago.

Read the full Q&A here.
 

Legislative Update
Indianapolis, IN: Senate Bill 36: Every Hoosier convicted of a felony could find themselves listed on new state website
Every person convicted of a felony in Indiana since at least 2012, and going forward, soon may find their name publicly listed on a state website and forever associated with their crime on internet search engines. The Republican-controlled Indiana Senate last week voted 40-9 to establish a statewide felony registry featuring the name, photograph, age, last known address, description of the crime and any other identifying information, other than Social Security number, that the Office of Judicial Administration wishes to post. Hoosiers with prior felony convictions would not be required to register with the state. Rather, under Senate Bill 36, the state court system simply would publish a searchable list of felons on its website that must be updated at least every 30 days. Individuals only would be removed from the publicly accessible website if they obtain a court order expunging their felony conviction. nwitimes.com

Specialized Security Firms Enter the Cannabis Market Space
The demand for security in the cannabis sector has increased substantially as more businesses are becoming operational and as a result, companies involved in fields such as cultivation, retail, and distribution are seeking security services. Primarily, security service companies dabbling in the cannabis industry offer services such as armored transportation, surveillance, alarms, sensors, and on-site guards.

According to data compiled by Mordor Intelligence, the global cannabis market was valued at USD 7.7 Billion in 2016 and is expected to reach USD 65 Billion by 2023. Furthermore, the market is forecast to accelerate at a healthy CAGR of 37% throughout the forecast period from 2019 to 2024.

"Because most major banks are regulated at a federal level, and cannabis is still prohibited federally, businesses that operate in states where cannabis is legal are still unable to put their money in banks or operate business banking accounts. Why does this matter? Well, this creates a need to move large amounts of cash safely, therefore bringing in the need for armored vehicles. Beyond cash, cannabis businesses need a secure way to move valuable products and inventory, and we're talking very valuable products," Chris Laurenzo wrote in a post on The DMS Group. prnewswire.com

Amazon: Canceled New York jobs likely to go elsewhere
Company will 'continue to evaluate' growth in Seattle
After dropping its plan for an incentive-packed expansion with 25,000 employees in New York City, Amazon also said it has no current plans for further expansion in Seattle after about 2 million square feet of buildings under construction open up in the coming years.

Amazon has no immediate plans to grow in Seattle beyond its offices under construction now, and the 25,000 jobs intended for New York will be mostly spread across its various North American tech hubs outside Seattle now that the company has canceled the Long Island City part of its HQ2 expansion, the company said Thursday. seattletimes.com

Amazon's Legal Woes Grow as Austria Probes Online Giant
Amazon.com Inc.'s twin role as dominant retailer and platform for smaller firms sparked an investigation into suspected unfair practices in Austria that closely mirrors a similar probe in Germany. The Austrian Federal Competition Authority (BWB) said it will examine whether Amazon is discriminating against stores using its platform and is favoring its own products on the Amazon marketplace. bloomberg.com

Papa John's serves up college tuition benefit to employees of pizza chain
The Louisville, Kentucky-headquartered pizza chain is offering to pay 100 percent of tuition for undergraduate and graduate online degree programs for its 20,000 employees. This added benefit could help retain workers at a company still reeling from the revelations last summer that founder John Schnatter reportedly used the N-word during a conference call. usatoday.com

Eight Retailers Make Fortune 100 'Best Companies to Work For'
This year's annual list of best companies to work for features Hilton in the top spot. But the companies on this list belong to a variety of industries, from grocery chains to tech organizations. Fortune research partner Great Place to Work evaluated everything from company perks to opportunities for innovation for this year's list. Here are the retailers who made this year's list:

ULTA Beauty - Director Loss Prevention job was taken off website

PayPal - Americas Security Operations Director job was taken off website

Deadly Weekend: 7 Retail-Related Shootings Leave 7 Dead, 4 Injured
- See today's 'Retail Crime' column for more
 

Last week's #1 article --

Walmart Spending Half a Billion on Improving Security - Gates Are 1 of Many Parts
Walmart Installs Security Gates At Thomasville Store
The company installed security gates at a store in Thomasville. Walmart says they're investing half a billion dollars over the next three years on improving security nationwide. The new gates are a part of it.

Walmart says the gates help prevent theft, but you won't see them everywhere.

Store representatives say they're rolling out the new gates in 1,300 stores this year. And Thomasville is the only known location in the Triad that's using them so far. wfmynews2.com