Loss Prevention Solutions
Retailers have always used technology to reduce stock loss, with solutions ranging from a simple bell on a cash register through to electronic article surveillance and in-store security systems. These solutions have had some degree of success but tend to rely heavily on in-store activities. For example, addressing employee theft usually requires an expensive on-site investigation that ties up loss prevention staff at one location while criminal activities may be continuing undetected elsewhere.
But with the advent of powerful, cost-effective servers and databases, and the ability to perform exception reporting analysis, loss prevention activities have become much more effective.
The challenge
The tell-tale signs that can lead to suspicion and detection of fraudulent activities are well known - an employee with an unusually high number of voids, or a string of transactions involving a single credit card where the first transaction is swiped (the genuine sale) and the remainder are manually entered (fraudulent purchases).
The problem is that in many cases there is simply too much data to process. Detecting the credit card fraud described above might involve scanning all sales data from all stores, down to the transaction level. In a chain with 100 stores, each doing 2000 transactions daily, that would be a 200,000-line report every day! The fact is, if you could easily see all the relevant data, you could identify many more instances of employee fraud, remove dishonest employees from the organisation and recover a lot more money.
The solution
Until recently, there was no solution. A state-of-the-art retail chain would have (a) at store level, a sophisticated POS system which collected sales data down to line-item level, and (b) a mainframe or AS/400 at head-office that collected sales data and ran large retail applications, notably Sales Audit, Stock Control, and Merchandising.
The reports generated by these applications were typically so large, they often went unread, or were heavily summarised. Sales data could be accessed online, but this was usually limited to screens of text displaying a single item. Looking through the data for patterns of behaviour was very laborious - it was much easier to go to a store and talk to the manager.
Technology has moved on since then.
It has now become cost-effective to install a server at head-office, either as a replacement for the mainframe, or more often, as an addition. In fact, the low cost of modern servers has made it feasible to put a server in each store, if appropriate. A modern database management system on each server provides an efficient and flexible tool for interrogating very large quantities of data.
In parallel with the advances in servers, PCs have become far better at displaying graphical data. Images which previously required specialised and expensive workstations are now available on standard PCs, making the PC a very effective client workstation.
Aspect's LossPREVENTION
LossPREVENTION is designed to exploit the open architecture of modern servers and their databases, and to take full advantage of the graphical user interface presented by client PCs. More importantly, it incorporates an in-depth loss prevention knowledge base and will perform the important, labour-intensive, first step for you - sifting the data for suspicious activities. Once it has identified a problem, it will allow you to navigate through the data in an intuitive way, perform an investigation, and collect evidence to support your case - all from the comfort of head office or a field office.
More information
Retail news
- Sep 19
- Consumers call for smarter technology to help them shop
Melbourne, September 19, 2006 – Almost half (47 per cent) of consumers say they will spend more with a retailer, providing the retailer has invested in the latest smart technology
- Sep 19
- Fujitsu and Reflexis Systems partner to deliver Retail Task Management solutions
Melbourne, September 19, 2006 – Fujitsu Australia Limited and Reflexis Systems Inc., the leader in retail task management software, have formed a strategic partnership to deliver advanced retail management solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Fujitsu will be the exclusive distributor for Reflexis Systems in Australia and New Zealand, while integrating the Reflexis enterprise applications with its own software, services and hardware offerings.
- Sep 19
- Fujitsu launches Pervasive Retailing
Melbourne, September 19, 2006 – Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand today launched Pervasive Retailing, its unified framework of software, hardware, tools and services to enable anywhere, any time, every time retailing.
- Jun 22
- Fujitsu appoints industry experts to drive retail strategy
Sydney, June 22, 2006 – Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand today announced the appointment of Vaughn Clair and Conway Kosi to drive Fujitsu’s retail strategy and grow its retail business in Australia and New Zealand.
- Apr 11
- 1st Choice Liquor Superstore partners with Fujitsu to deliver digital media
Melbourne, April 11, 2006 – Fujitsu Australia has today been named the primary contractor for the continued rollout of a digital media network for Coles Myer’s 1st Choice Liquor Superstores across Australia. Fujitsu will manage a consortium of vendors to provide a full end-to-end digital media managed service across 45 1st Choice Liquor Superstores over the next three years.
