Agilence Receives Strategic Growth Financing From Accel-KKR Credit Partners
​​​Agilence, Inc., the leading provider of data analytics & reporting solutions to the retail and restaurant industries, today announced a debt investment from Accel-KKR Credit Partners, a fund managed by leading, technology-focused investment firm Accel-KKR. The funding will be used to catalyze growth as the business takes advantage of its recent market momentum.

Agilence was founded on the premise of delivering "agile intelligence" to retail operators but over time has evolved into the market leader in providing focused business intelligence (BI) for multi-unit enterprises. Agilence's platform offers value to a multitude of users ranging from store manager to CFO and VP of Operations to CEO. agilence.com

Why the 2020 Criminal Justice Debate Is Completely Different
Minor Crimes Trend Part of National Election
Democratic candidates are pushing ideas that were considered radical just a few years ago. But the American public has changed its views, too.

Experts say the changing debate reflects a seismic shift in how the American public views criminal justice issues. Opinion polls have shown that there is wide support for various types of criminal justice reforms among both Democrats and Republicans. And the landscape is shifting quickly.

On Monday, for example, California's governor signed landmark legislation that limits the use of deadly force by police officers to circumstances in which it is "necessary" to defend themselves or others against the threat of imminent death or serious injury.

Also on Monday, a New York police officer was fired five years after his chokehold led to the death of Eric Garner, who at the time was being questioned for illegally selling cigarettes.

Mr. Garner's death, along with the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown Jr. in Missouri, galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and focused public attention on how the police treated people - mostly black and Latino - suspected of low-level crimes.

Since then, dozens of police departments and prosecutors' offices have announced that they will no longer make arrests for minor crimes such as possession of small amounts of marijuana. Police officials have also apologized for their aggressive strategies of the past. nytimes.com

Retailers fight returns with data and policy changes
Some retailers are tracking customers associated with a high level of returns and adopting a policy of not accepting returns over a certain amount. In effect, they're creating a "blacklist" of people who return items to physical stores or send online orders back too often.

The list is created by using artificial intelligence algorithms running in the cloud which use the same database throughout an entire company to store various types of data for different computerized functions. Among the companies that provide such services are Appriss Retail and Brightpearl.

Amazon took the blacklisting approach last year when management changed its return policy to control and thwart serial return repeaters. Germany-based Zalando is experimenting with return fees in some markets and using single-use tags to discourage wardrobing, and U.K.-based online retailer ASOS announced a change to its returns policy earlier this year to crack down on serial returners.

Brightpearl also reported that 42 percent of U.S. retailers have seen an uplift in serial returners over the last 12 months and that 61 percent are planning to ban them.

Tom Rittman, vice president of marketing for Appriss, attribute much of the increase in serial returns to the growth in ecommerce.

"The more people purchase online, the more they now take those purchases to stores to return, so stores are seeing higher returns than ever," Rittman says. "That creates a need for retailers to study their returns to separate good customers from bad."

One big contributor to serial returns is the growth in "try before you buy" policies, O'Carroll says. "Our research indicates that TBYB will result in four times more returns when implemented." stores.org

NOAA's Above-Normal Hurricane Warning is Making Waves in the News

Preparing for a Natural Disaster
Publix Grocery Stores Cross-Functional Emergency Response Team
14 natural disasters in 2018 that cost the country $91 billion
As climate change increases the frequency and severity of natural disasters, which weather experts predict will continue, organizations need to prepare now for the possibility of being impacted regardless of where they're located or the type of disaster they might face.

There were 14 natural disasters in 2018 that cost the country $91 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; 80 percent of those losses stemmed from hurricanes Florence and Michael, along with wildfires in the West.

Advance planning and communication are keys to disaster preparedness, say HR and public service professionals who have been impacted in recent years.

At grocery store chain Publix, which operates in seven Southern states, a cross-functional emergency response team prepares for hurricanes, tornadoes and winter storms, says Maria Brous, the company's director of media and community relations. If a hurricane is threatening, for example, team members track the storm's path, collaborate with suppliers to adequately stock shelves and work with employees so they're prepared for the storm.

Before hurricane season begins each June 1, the Lakeland, Fla.-based grocer e-mails its employees to remind them to stock up on essential supplies, such as cash, medications and pet food, and to create their own emergency plans, Brous says.

With more than 200,000 employees, Publix may require employees to work longer hours to prepare stores for an approaching storm, but it also gives them time off to secure their homes. Employees often help one another on tasks such as putting up hurricane shutters. "They almost instinctively set up teams in storms," Brous says. shrm.org

Editors Note: With the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announcing above-normal hurricane activity potential the media has been filled with various groups posting warnings and articles about the increased likelihood as we enter the most active time of hurricane season in the South. Certainly calling for retailers to be ready and possibly run an exercise. Just a thought.

The updated 2019 Atlantic hurricane season probability and numbers of named storms.

Game Stop Lays Off 14% or 120 Positions at HQ & Other Offices
GameStop is calling necessary to "reduce costs and better align the organization with our efforts to optimize the business to meet our future objectives and success factors."

"As part of the previously announced GameStop Reboot initiative to transform our business for the future and improve our financial performance, we can confirm a workforce reduction was implemented impacting more than 120 corporate staff positions, representing approximately 14% of our total associate base at our company headquarters as well as at some other offices. forbes.com

Atlanta - Chicago - Washington DC - San Francisco
In Top 50 Most-Surveilled Cities in the World
● Eight out of the top 10 most-surveilled cities are in China
● London and Atlanta were the only cities outside of China to make the top 10
● By 2022, China is projected to have one public CCTV camera for every two people
● We found little correlation between the number of public CCTV cameras and crime or safety

CCTV, crime, and safety
A primary argument in favor of CCTV surveillance is improved law enforcement and crime prevention. We compared the number of public CCTV cameras with the crime and safety indices reported by Numbeo, which are based on surveys of that site's visitors.

For both indices, the correlation was weak (r = 0.168, r = -0.168, n = 120). A higher number of cameras just barely correlates with a higher safety index and lower crime index.

Broadly speaking, more cameras doesn't necessarily result in people feeling safer. comparitech.com

Editor's Note: This study was conducted by a 'privacy advocate.'

The Time for 3D Location in Enterprise Security Has Arrived
Research firm IDC forecasts global spending on security-related hardware, software, and services to reach $103.1 billion this year, with the US leading the world in spending.

Despite the nearly two decades of intense focus and heightened spending on enterprise security, opportunities still exist to enhance the ways in which we protect personnel and monitor business assets including critical infrastructure, office buildings, and inventory. Leveraging high-accuracy location technology, which can pinpoint workers and assets in real-time, including indoors and to the floor-level in high-rise offices, offers a new dimension in enterprise security, helping to drive efficiencies and lower costs.

Improving enterprise security with 3D location

An enterprise can benefit from high-accuracy 3D location in several ways, ranging from day-to-day worker safety, to office security, to tracking important corporate assets, as the following use cases illustrate:

Employee safety is a key driver for the adoption of new security technologies in the enterprise. Employee health and safety (EHS) spending, as tracked by research firm Verdantix, is expected to increase 4 percent in 2019, with 44 percent of decision makers planning to deploy digital sensors and 43 percent location-tracking wearables, all with the goal of improving employee security. securitymagazine.com

Are mobile payments on the verge of a breakthrough?
A series of developments in recent months has resulted in a ray of light in the not too distant future that could finally result in a consumer surge that will lead to a boom in a digital transformation. 

In a report on mobile wallet adoption released earlier this month, Juniper Research estimated that consumer spending through digital wallets would rise 40% this year in North America and Europe to $790 billion in 2019. 

Juniper analysts said the increase is due to a continued migration from consumers using cash, the transition by major banks to contactless cards as well as a surge from millennials and younger consumers who are increasingly using the iPhone, where the firm estimates that one third of the devices are being used to make contactless purchases.

Maynard said that Juniper is predicting that mobile wallet use for in-store purchases in the U.S. will exceed 100 million for the first time.

He cautioned, however, that a remaining obstacle in the U.S. is the relatively low penetration of contactless point-of-sale terminals, despite efforts by major U.S. banks to expand the use of contactless. 

Juniper estimated that only about half of POS terminals here support contactless, which Maynard called a major hindrance to the use of contactless. The terminal challenge is not a threat to QR-code use, however, and that form of payment is mainly used by the Chinese mobile systems that are increasingly being deployed in the U.S. and Canada to deal with millions of tourists and business travelers that visit every year. retailcustomerexperience.com

Use of Facial Recognition Stirs Controversy
The Technology Sparks Privacy Concerns in the UK and Beyond
A developer's use of facial recognition technology to scan the faces of pedestrians in one London neighborhood that's home to a large train station has drawn protests from residents and the city's mayor and sparked an investigation by the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office.

Meanwhile, the use of this technology by law enforcement and private firms is raising privacy concerns worldwide and is even becoming an issue in the U.S. presidential race.

The debate over facial recognition technology has also been addressed by several U.S. presidential candidates.

On Monday, Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders became the first presidential candidate to call for a ban on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement. This is one part of a larger criminal justice reform package that the Vermont senator's campaign calls "Justice and Safety for All."

Another Democratic candidate, Julian Castro, the former mayor of the Texas city of San Antonio, previously announced as part of his "People First Policing" policy that he would call for establishing guidelines for next-generation surveillance technologies, such as facial recognition.  govinfosecurity.com

Walmart sues Tesla over 7 solar-panel rooftop fires
'Gross negligence' on Tesla's part led to spate of rooftop fires, Walmart says

Breach of contract and alleges "gross negligence" on Tesla's part for the fires, which it says all started on the rooftops of several stores in California, Maryland and Ohio that had Tesla solar panels.

"To state the obvious, properly designed, installed, inspected, and maintained solar systems do not spontaneously combust, and the occurrence of multiple fires involving Tesla's solar systems is but one unmistakable sign of negligence by Tesla," according to the complaint filed on Tuesday.

According to the complaint, the stores affected were among the more than 240 Walmart stores that had leased or licensed roof space to Tesla for the installation of solar panels.

In total, seven stores have experienced fires that Walmart alleges were due to faulty solar panels, according to the complaint, which lists thousands of dollars in expenses with repairs, damage to merchandise and other costs. marketwatch.com

Inspector orders South Florida Family Dollar to eradicate rodent issue


Quarterly Results
Target Q2 comp's up 3.4%, digital sales up 34%, sales up 3.6%
Lowe's Q2 U.S. comp's up 3.2%, consolidated comp's up 2.3%, sales up 1%
Urban Outfitters Q2 comp's down 3%