SOLUTIONS ShOWCASE

Consider BSI—Think Green

Extending the Life of Your EAS Investments

By John Gantenbein, President, BSI

Among the more significant technology expenditures retailers make in today’s business are those for electronic article surveillance (EAS) and video systems. Once John Gantenbein the decision is made to deploy a technology such as EAS across the entire footprint of a retail chain, the real work begins.

It starts with a few necessary steps to ensure the investment will work as planned: ■ Acquiring the capital funds to purchase the systems. ■ Planning and scheduling for any potential disruption to operations during the installation process. ■ Taking into account the cost of installation—floor cuts, electrical requirements, and manpower. ■ Training the store associates in the proper processes and protocols.

So what happens several years down the line when the EAS technology retailers embraced starts to age and is no longer supported by the original equipment manufacturer? Do they need to start over and replace the worn-out systems with new? How much more do these new systems cost? How does it impact the ROI? What other unforeseen costs are missed?

There are, in-fact, viable options to extend the life of your EAS investments and contribute to environmental sustainability goals. Figuring out when or where it makes sense to revive legacy systems versus investing in new is the key. Retailers have some incredible value-added options today that provide for significant savings while protecting their original investments.

Best Security Industries (BSI) is known as a premier provider of both private-label and certified pre-owned EAS systems, as well as engineered video solutions. It is also the largest procurer of legacy EAS technology in the industry. But what some may not realize is that we also offer robust field service, maintenance, and bench repair programs that can extend the life of most legacy EAS technologies and accessories. Our organization consists of certified service, repair, and installation professionals. BSI’s technicians have on average 20 years of experience. We employ a knowledgeable sales organization as well. The combination of these experienced and accountable people are sure to meet and exceed your expectations.

BSI’s other services include on-site or remote diagnostic services to identify potential issues with EAS systems. Our technicians can remove and repair just about any existing legacy EAS system or components deployed today. A value add for a retailer is the option to simply ship any damaged unit or component to BSI and utilize our repair depot where it will be fixed and returned for re-installation. We warehouse a large inventory of legacy EAS equipment allowing for the replacement of damaged units with newly refurbished ones. This service saves considerable down time while getting systems operational again.

Our company offers an in-house “express exchange” or repair program. Equipment accessories such as detachers and deactivators can be repaired or replaced at our warehouse. It is important to note that these accessories, in many cases, have a one-day turn around.

Additional services designed to support sustainability goals, we recycle and repurpose older legacy systems for use as replacement components within a retailer’s existing footprint. As part of our depot program, we will remove EAS systems from closed locations, refurbish them to original manufacturers’ specifications, and warehouse (or depot) the inventory until it is needed in new locations. BSI will also handle most merchandise protection solutions (MPS) including tags, pins, wraps, and cables that require sorting, cleaning, quality-control inspection, and repackaging. The product is then inventoried and, if desired, put into depot for a retailer, so it can then be used for future deployment or immediate distribution to specified locations.

BSI can extend its refurbish, repair, and replacement programs to some video systems including domes, fixed cameras, switches, and digital video recorders. This service is available through our video services team and requires some initial qualifying with the retailer.

BSI prides itself on being a value-added solutions provider that retailers can turn to for help in extending their investments in legacy EAS and MPS technologies but also recognized for their private-label new EAS systems and engineered IP video solutions. When retailers are faced with the choice of holding on to their original investment or replacing the existing infrastructure with new systems, they need to understand they have options. If you have not met with a BSI sales consultant, reach out for a professional assessment of your existing equipment and get a customized demonstration of the value BSI can provide.

Serving the loss prevention industry since 1987, BSI is a choice worth considering.

Get Set to Drive Sales:

Manage Key Profit Metrics (KPMs) with Analytics

By Renee DeWolf

Renee DeWolf is the vice president of industry strategy for Sysrepublic. Prior to joining Sysrepublic, she managed LP analytics for CvS Health and Hilco Global. She has an MBA in economic crime and can be reached at renee.dewolf@sysrepublic.com.

Today’s omni-channel environment is transforming retail, and asset protection is no exception.

Following trends in self-checkout, mobile point-of-sale (POS), e-commerce, and a Renee DeWolf rise in creative supply-chain strategies, solutions like Secure 3.5 are now analyzing data from a variety of sources across the enterprise and empowering asset protection leaders to deliver well beyond the shrink line.

Secure 3.5, newly released in the fall of 2015, is the industry’s most advanced all-in-one asset protection global data command center. The platform now has a fully integrated suite of information capture add-ins for case management and audits alongside a host of features including, but not limited to, multi-lingual/ multi-currency conversions, real-time data capture and processing, robust querying, exception learning statistics, configurable dashboards, and any-device operability.

Sysrepublic has a long history of partnering with retail leaders to innovate new ways to create value from data, and the key profit metrics (KPM) analysis features in Secure 3.5 represent one of the latest examples of that commitment.

Analyzing Key Profit Metrics

KPM analysis focuses on identifying and analyzing a client’s key profit metrics. Key profit metrics are the indicator flags in any given retail data set that correlate strongly to reductions in margin and revenue.

KPMs can come from a variety of sources, such as: traditional POS transactions like refunds or discounts, supply chain data, case management feeds, cashier coaching events, and more.

Secure 3.5 KPM analysis examines these indicators for frequency at every organizational level to identify a client’s personalized standard and best-in-class performance levels. By combining percentage-to-sales measures with financial-analysis-style frequency ratios, a clear and concise view is provided of how often a profit-impacting event is occurring and where the greatest opportunities lie to reduce related risk.

Secure 3.5 KPM measurements work together to support strategic benchmarks and flags relative to associates, locations, or geographic areas as they improve—or move in the wrong direction.

Flexibility in Design

With a client’s personalized KPM identified, dynamic dashboards are configured in Secure and specifically targeted to each user’s area of responsibility. This enables emerging risks to be rapidly communicated directly to the people who need them most.

Flags can be customized, and with an item flagged the user has a variety of drill-down options beginning with a view down to the next level of the organization for primary risk contributors.

System drill downs go from there through every level of the company all the way to day-of-the-week trends and the secure store detail transaction viewer. At any level, alternate views provide detailed breakouts of each KPM, store-level risk reporting, and associate-level risk reporting.

By combining a high-level overview with the flexible drill down and suggested link features in Secure, profit leaks can be focused on the areas of greatest risk, escalated quickly, and researched with ease.

Uncovering hidden Insights

One of the benefits of the Secure KPM Analytics package is the ability to bring otherwise hidden insights to the forefront. For one retailer, examining a variety of discounts revealed a surprising trend—nearly every customer was receiving one or more price reductions. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the wide variety of discount types available at the retailer, combined with their customer satisfaction initiatives, had cultivated an environment where employees were working to ensure that almost no customer would pay full retail.

For a retailer that did not consider themselves to be in the discount vertical, this empowered the loss prevention team to escalate their findings to the highest levels of the organization and thoughtfully promote changes to processes, systems, and culture that would improve margin.

Back

ENTERPRISE

TOTAL KSI AS A PERCENT TO SALES

10.57%

LAST PERIOD

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PERIODS 9.37%

12.8%

EMERGING RISKS

LINE VOIDS AREA 1

REFUNDS AREA 1 UP 10.43%

UP 9.34%

TRANSACTION CANCELS AREA 2 UP 8.26% SELECT A CATEGORY SELECT A CATEGORY

9.67% 5.43% 5 MORE 5 MORE

3.37% 8.41%

ITEM DISCOUNTS DISCOUNTS LINE VOIDS LINE VOIDS TRANSACTION TRANSACTION CANCELS CANCELS RETURNS RETURNS

FY 2014-6 FY 2013-6

THIS MONTH

LAST MONTH

PEERS

KEY

LONG TERM RISKS

LINE VOIDS AREA 1 UP 4 CONSECUTIVE PERIODS

TRANSACTION CANCELS TRANSACTION CANCELS AREA 2 AREA 2 UP 4 CONSECUTIVE PERIODS UP 4 CONSECUTIVE PERIODS

REFUNDS AREA 3 UP 3 CONSECUTIVE PERIODS IMPROVING RISKS

REFUNDS AREA 2

TRANSACTION CANCELS AREA 3

ITEM DISCOUNTS AREA 3 DOWN 4.56%

DOWN 4.19%

DOWN 3.98%

Directing Change

Asset protection departments can also use KPM data to proactively drive change in a way that benefits the traditional investigation processes. One team used the POS benchmarking data to substantiate recommendations for management intervention thresholds.

The frequency measurements allowed them to identify how often certain types of activities were occurring at POS and mitigate push-back based on concerns related to slowing the speed of checkout.

By strategically adjusting controls at POS, the existing exceptions the team had in place became more productive, and case closure rates improved without a negative impact to customer experience.

For questions or to see a demo of Secure, contact me at renee.dewolf@sysrepublic.com or 310-802-3044.