New clarity from business intelligence solutions developed by retailers

Regardless of where your retail operation is located, shrink is a universal adversary. Retailers worldwide are recognizing that as their business expands so does shrink. Shrink accounts for any loss of inventory due to shoplifting, employee theft, vendor fraud or administrative error. Quantifying the financial ramifications of shrink is complicated since it affects profitability in different ways – loss resulting from in-store theft by customers and staff to poor inventory management and inefficient operations.

The complex nature of shrink was explored by Retail Systems Research (RSR), a research company run by retailers that provides insight into business and technology challenges faced by retailers today. According to their “Winning Trends in Loss Prevention Benchmark Study: 2008”, fifty-six percent of retailers believe they could reduce shrink by 10-25% with new Loss Prevention (LP) initiatives to recover gross margin losses.

Retailers consider their most significant opportunity is leveraging existing investments, specifically by adding new business intelligence solutions. RSR indicates one obvious opportunity is the possibility of finding more intelligent ways to use previously purchased video surveillance systems by linking them to enterprise exception reporting systems. The opportunity to add better and more efficient rules into returns, sales audit, and cash management systems also promise greater returns on investment (ROI).

Loss prevention technologies like Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) and CCTV have been very effective in delivering a positive ROI on retailer’s shrink reduction efforts. New enterprise exception reporting systems are now adding value to these core LP technologies by adding data visibility and intelligence across the retail enterprise.

In January 2007, Tyco International acquired Retail Expert and their industry leading store intelligence solutions. This acquisition combined the strength of Tyco's resources, ADT's marketing reach, and Sensormatic's product offerings to create a powerful solution suite that is intelligent and proactive. Since this announcement, we have continued to market Retail Expert's products and services under the Retail Expert name. As the name Retail Expert is not an available as a global trademark, we are now re-branding the solutions to Sensormatic Analyics, powered by Retail Expert. This new naming structure takes advantage of the strength and global recognition associated with the Sensormatic® brand for Loss Prevention solutions and extends its value to include intelligent solutions beyond the front of the store.

For more information, visit Sensormatic.com and click on Exception Reporting.

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