September - October 2020

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LOSS PREVENTION MAGAZINE THE AUTHORITY ON ALL THINGS ASSET PROTECTION

EYES WIDE OPEN KNOWING A THIEF JUST WALKED IN IS DOABLE BUT COMPLICATED

REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS IMPROVING INVENTORY RECORD ACCURACY IMPROVING THE SCIENCE OF EVIDENCE-BASED LOSS PREVENTION

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

6 EDITOR’S LETTER Retail Innovation Due to the Pandemic

By Jack Trlica

10 RETAIL SPONSORS 12 INTERVIEWING Timeline: Another Interviewing Tool

By David E. Zulawski, CFI, CFE, and Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP

15

Eyes Wide Open

28 LPM EXCELLENCE LPM Magpie Award: Applauding Excellence Featuring Millie Kresevich, Luxottica, and Adrian Beck, University of Leicester, UK

Knowing a thief just walked in is doable but complicated

By Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer

36 CERTIFICATION Do Not Procrastinate Interview with Lea Tamarack, LPC, Big Lots

29

Reflections on a Generation of Leaders

46 FUTURE OF LP What Happens When Civil Unrest Turns Violent?

By Tom Meehan, CFI 48 ASK THE EXPERT Supportive Coaching Reduces Shrink and Adds to the Bottom Line Interview with Corey Adams, Appriss Retail

Notes on the careers of recently retired LP executives

By James Lee, LPC, LPM Executive Editor

55 SUPPLY CHAIN The COVID-19 Evolution and the Global Supply Chain

By Glenn Master

39

57 EVIDENCE-BASED LP Computer Vision Can Enhance Decision-Making

By Read Hayes, PhD, CPP

Improving Inventory Record Accuracy

59 SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE - ADT Commercial - 7PSolutions - AFA - Checkpoint - Solink

Why it matters for the business and why it should be on the LP agenda

By Colin Peacock, ECR Community

66 LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM 68 CYBER SECURITY Are RFID-Blocking Wallets Necessary to Prevent Credit Card Theft?

By Garett Seivold

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69 PRODUCT SHOWCASE 70 PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

We All Know… or Do We?

72 ADVERTISERS 72 SUBSCRIPTION FORM 73 VENDOR SPONSORS

Improving the science of evidence-based loss prevention

74 PARTING WORDS Take Action in the New School of Uncertainty

By Merek Bigelow

By Cory Lowe, PhD, and Read Hayes, PhD, Loss Prevention Research Council

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Retail Innovation Due to the Pandemic T he retail industry is undergoing one of the most significant transitions in recent history thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. Consumer buying patterns have changed rapidly in the face of stay-at-home orders and fear of the spread of the virus upon the gradual reopening of the economy.

It is often true that innovation is spurred by conflict, which has been in ample supply throughout 2020. Retailers who have innovated to meet customers’ needs have seen growth and success this year at the same time when retailers who have not innovated have struggled.

because they are innovating with multichannel to provide a convenient shopping experience for consumers. A very significant proportion of sales that are attributed to the online channel are, in fact, multichannel sales that rely on both stores and online for success. On average, one third of online non-food purchases, where a customer actually transacts online, are in fact reliant on physical stores for product selection, pick up, or return.”

Apparently, this shift to multichannel shopping is not a short-term phenomenon. A majority of US shoppers (68 percent) said they were going to make use of curbside or in-store pickup in the future.

Retail executives are recognizing this shopping shift with nearly 90 percent reporting that they are planning to invest more capital in expanding their multichannel capability to enhance how their online and physical store operations can work more seamlessly in the future.

One of the more interesting quotes from Saunders, I thought, was the following: “The idea that there is a battle between online and physical retail is outdated. There is only one retail battlefield, and the fight is between all the players on it, and those that have strong multichannel options with both an established store network and online presence now have the advantage.”

This shopping shift will impact the entire retail enterprise, including loss prevention, asset protection, and supply chain, which comprise a majority of our audience. To read more about this topic and to download the report, see the article “Retailers with Multichannel Sales Options Have Advantage during Pandemic” on our digital channel, LossPreventionMedia.com.

“The idea that there is a battle between online and physical retail is outdated. There is only one retail battlefield, and the fight is between all the players on it, and those that have strong multichannel options with both an established store network and online presence now have the advantage.”

A recent research report from GlobalData titled Multichannel Retail and COVID-19 has detailed these changes. The report highlighted how shopping habits in the US and Europe dramatically shifted to adoption of buy-online, pick-up-in-store services due to the pandemic. Retailers who offered a combination of online ordering and curbside or in-store pick up have flourished. The report specifically noted Best Buy, Target, DICK’s Sporting Goods, and Walmart as examples of traditional retailers who are growing faster than online-focused retailers like Amazon.

GlobalData’s lead retail analyst Neil Saunders said, “Despite claims that the growth of online shopping is leading to a ‘retail apocalypse,’ the reality is that many retailers across all sectors are thriving

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Jack Trlica Managing Editor

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EDITORIAL BOARD

Charles Bernard Group Vice President, Asset Protection and Comprehensive Loss, Walgreens Ray Cloud Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, Ross Stores Scott Draher, LPC Vice President, Loss Prevention, Safety, and Operations, Lowe’s Scott Glenn, EDJ, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection, The Home Depot Barry Grant Chief Operating Officer, Photos Unlimited Robert Holm Director, Global Safety & Security McDonald’s Seth Hughes Director, Asset Protection, Risk & Safety, Internal Audit REI Co-op Frank Johns, LPC Chairman, The Loss Prevention Foundation Mike Lamb, LPC Management Consultant, The Kroger Co. Michael Limauro, LPC Executive Leader, Asset Protection, Whole Foods Market

David Lund, LPC Vice President, Loss Prevention, DICK’S Sporting Goods

EXECUTIVE EDITORS James Lee, LPC JimL@LPportal.com

Melissa Mitchell, CFI, LPC Director, Loss Prevention, MAPCO Express

Merek Bigelow MerekB@LPportal.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Jacque Brittain, LPC JacB@LPportal.com RETAIL TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Tom Meehan, CFI TomM@LPportal.com

Dan Moren Senior Manager, Starbucks

SENIOR WRITER Garett Seivold GarettS@LPportal.com

Richard Peck, LPC Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention The TJX Companies

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Read Hayes, PhD, CPP Walter Palmer, CFI, CFE Ben Skidmore Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP David E. Zulawski, CFI, CFE

Joe Schrauder Vice President, Asset Protection, Walmart Stores Tina Sellers, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection, Rite Aid

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL OPERATIONS John Selevitch JohnS@LPportal.com SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGERS Justin Kemp, LPQ Karen Rondeau

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Larry Preslar

Mark Stinde, MBA, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection, The Kroger Co.

ADVERTISING STRATEGIST Ben Skidmore 972-587-9064 office, 972-692-8138 fax BenS@LPportal.com SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

NEW OR CHANGE OF ADDRESS LPMsubscription.com or circulation@LPportal.com

Paul Stone, CFE, LPC VP Security, Goodwill Industries of SE Wisconsin

POSTMASTER Send change of address forms to Loss Prevention Magazine P.O. Box 92558 Long Beach, CA 90809-2558

Pamela Velose Vice President, Asset Protection, Belk

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CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Kevin McMenimen, LPC KevinM@LPportal.com

DESIGN & PRODUCTION SPARK Publications info@SPARKpublications.com

Hank Siemers, CFI Vice President, Global Retail Security, Tiffany & Co.

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

700 Matthews Mint Hill Rd, Ste C Matthews, NC 28105 704-365-5226 office, 704-365-1026 fax MANAGING EDITOR Jack Trlica JackT@LPportal.com

Randy Meadows Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, Kohl’s

Loss Prevention, LP Magazine, LP Magazine Europe, LPM, and LPM Online are service marks owned by the publishers and their use is restricted. All editorial content is copyrighted. No article may be reproduced by any means without expressed, written permission from the publisher. Reprints or PDF versions of articles are available by contacting the publisher. Statements of fact or opinion are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the publishers. Advertising in the publication does not imply endorsement by the publishers. The editor reserves the right to accept or reject any article or advertisement.

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LOSS PREVENTION MAGAZINE

Loss Prevention aka LP Magazine aka LPM (USPS 000-710) is published bimonthly

by Loss Prevention Magazine, Inc., 700 Matthews Mint Hill Rd, Ste C, Matthews, NC 28105. Print subscriptions are available free to qualified loss prevention and associated professionals in the U.S. and Canada at LPMsubscription.com.

The publisher reserves the right to determine qualification standards.

International print subscriptions are available for $99 per year payable in U.S. funds at circulation@LPportal.com. For questions about subscriptions, contact circulation@LPportal.com or call 888-881-5861. Periodicals postage paid at Matthews, NC, and additional mailing offices.

© 2020 Loss Prevention Magazine, Inc. Cover photo illustration by SPARK Publications Milles Studio/Shutterstock.com

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INTERVIEWING

by David E. Zulawski, CFI, CFE and Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP

Timeline: Another Interviewing Tool

Zulawski and Sturman are executives in the investigative and training firm of Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates (w-z.com). Zulawski is a senior partner, and Sturman is president. Sturman is also a member of ASIS International’s Retail Loss Prevention Council. They can be reached at 800-222-7789 or via email at dzulawski@w-z.com and ssturman@w-z.com.

M

ost of us have used a timeline either formally or informally to collate information obtained in an investigation. In simple cases, this can be done informally by simply mentally organizing relevant information into the correct order. For example, the deposit was placed in the safe after being counted by the manager and her assistant at 10 p.m. the previous day. The following morning, Mike and Jennifer entered together at 9 a.m. and prepared to open the store. The safe was opened at 9:15 a.m., so the registers could be prepared. The store manager arrived at 10 a.m. and discovered the deposit missing from the safe.

This simple timeline broadly organizes the details that may be relevant to the investigation. This organization of details allows the investigator to assess the available facts and begin to see where further inquiry is needed. Clearly, this sort of timeline has many gaps that need to be filled to discover even the scope of possible individuals involved. In more complex cases, the details may be plotted on a physical timeline, so they can be visually represented and added to as information becomes available. This visual representation of events often points investigators to areas that need inquiry or that contradict alibis. With complex bribery or fraud cases, being able to see the relationship between meetings, orders, or personal purchases can help you understand the fraud. The timeline can also be important when updating superiors on the case progress, so they can quickly see how the investigation is developing.

© 2020 Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, Inc.

into the context of the event that they witnessed. The witness is asked to report everything—see what they saw, hear what they heard, and feel what they felt at the time of the event. By beginning the memory retrieval shortly before the event occurred, it allows the individual to place themselves back into their memory, experiencing the observation in the same mental state in which they first observed it. This mnemonic, or memory trick, helps the individual recall more information more accurately. The subject then begins their narrative recalling details of the event that they observed.

Retrieving a memory is not a linear process. When a memory is first retrieved, it is done in zigs and zags. Pieces of the memory first reported jog other components of memory to retrieve additional details and so on until the narrative is complete. After several tellings, the “story” becomes more of a start to finish narrative.

The Timeline Interview There’s another use for a timeline that is different than simply listing when the events occurred and people who were present. Allowing a witness to use a physical timeline as they recall the event helps them organize information, actions, and descriptions. Importantly, the timeline interview is compatible with the cognitive interview.

The cognitive interview was developed by Professors Fisher and Geiselman to assist in the recovery of memories from victims and witnesses. This interview increases the accuracy and amount of details from the subject while reducing suggestibility. More recently, the cognitive interview for suspects has been validated as an investigative tool to help identify individuals involved in incidents. The research into the cognitive interview for suspects indicated investigators were able to accurately identify deceptive individuals between 85 and 100 percent of the time.

The cognitive interview and the cognitive interview for suspects both begin with instructions that put the subject back

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The timeline technique is compatible with the cognitive interview using similar instructions to begin the process.

Especially effective with multiple people involved in the incident, the timeline allows the witness to create a sequence of events before the actual interview with the investigator takes place. We first learned of this technique at an interviewing conference in Norway last year with Professor Lorraine Hope, the timeline study’s author. During the two-day master class, we had several opportunities to explore its utility retrieving old and newer memories.

Retrieving a memory is not a linear process. When a memory is first retrieved, it is done in zigs and zags. Pieces of the memory first reported jog other components of memory to retrieve additional details and so on until the narrative is complete. After several tellings, the “story” becomes more of a continued on page 14 |

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not participate in prompting or asking questions. Their presence is simply to answer any questions the person might have concerning the use of the timeline. Since the investigator is just sitting with the subject and not participating in developing the timeline, they may want to bring something to work on or read while the witness works to retrieve the memory.

It is useful for the investigator to observe the witness as they work to reconstruct the details. In our limited experience using the timeline interview, people seemed focused on the task and were actively working to recall information in the sequence making detailed notes on the Post-it pads. Since truthful people provide more details about an incident, someone who does not appear to be working to recall information should give the investigator pause.

There may be instances where an individual needs help writing because of penmanship or literacy, which may require the investigator to assist in filling out the Post-it Notes. The investigator should give the same instructions and ask the person to name six things they remember about the incident.

The investigator then puts each on a separate Post-it Note and asks the witness to place it in the proper sequence on the timeline. Using the first recalled detail, the witness is asked to expand with additional information, which is written on the sticky note. This may prompt a new topic, which should be added to the timeline on another sticky note for the witness to place in the proper location.

The investigator waits quietly while the witness finishes writing on the Post-its and placing them on the timeline in their appropriate locations. Once the witness has indicated that they have gone as far as they can in the retrieval process, the investigator can take the timeline for a review. This will give an overview of the witness’s information, providing a context for each event or conversation. The investigator can now assess where additional probing will be required or identify areas that seem to have been omitted.

As the investigator reviews the timeline, they can begin to plan the organization of the following cognitive interview. It is probably useful to restate the instructions given prior to the timeline interview. Again, the investigator instructs the witness to go back into their memory seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard, and feeling what they felt at the time of each component of the memory. They are asked to report everything that they can remember, even if it might not seem useful. Now, the investigator begins to expand the memory using open-ended questions in the cognitive interview.

The timeline interview is useful in situations where there are multiple individuals, locations, or conversations that must be investigated. The most typical type of investigations where this would be used might be a sexual harassment investigation where there have been multiple instances or conversations that must be documented. This also might be useful in an organized retail crime investigation where one is debriefing an informant or cooperating suspect. Having an untainted narrative and timeline before beginning the actual interview with the subject will help the investigator in asking appropriate questions while avoiding contamination of the interview.

continued from page 12

start to finish narrative. In most people’s memory retrieval, they first focus on the “highlights” of the event and then add additional details that are associated with them. In the first research of this idea by Hope in 2013, the timeline technique elicited more accurate information than just free recall without impacting accuracy of the details.

The Technique The timeline technique has the investigator provide the witness with a physical timeline. This physical timeline is a piece of paper or cardboard about twelve by thirty-six inches with a line drawn from the midpoint on the left side to the midpoint on the right side. This line represents the time of the observation from its beginning until its end. The witness is provided two different colored Post-it Note pads, one representing individuals in the event and the other color for the details or actions that occurred.

The witness is then instructed to use the color representing individuals to write what they remember about identifying features of each person observed and place them above the timeline where they were first observed. If they are able, they may include the person’s name if they know it or just uniquely identify them if the identity is unknown, such as “subject 1” or “red shirt.” Any later memories related to descriptions of the person should be added to that Post-it Note above the timeline.

In our limited experience using the timeline interview, people seemed focused on the task and were actively working to recall information in the sequence making detailed notes on the Post-it pads. Since truthful people provide more details about an incident, someone who does not appear to be working to recall information should give the investigator pause.

The other color is used to write descriptions of any details, conversations, or actions they observed. The witness is told that these Post-it Notes should be placed below the timeline in the order they occurred during the event. Again, if additional details are recalled, they can be written on the original sticky note, or another note can be posted to it.

Once the individual has been instructed about the timeline’s use and the reinstatement of the events context has been reviewed, the person is asked to write down six or as many things as possible before beginning to retrieve their memories of the incident. The investigator should be available but does

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Milles Studio / Shutterstock.com Photo illustration by SPARK Publications

FEATURE

EYES WIDE OPEN KNOWING A THIEF JUST WALKED IN IS DOABLE BUT COMPLICATED

By Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer

EYES WIDE OPEN

F

or seven years, according to court records, Anthony Sena had been stealing from retail stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’d hit Walmart, Sportsman’s Warehouse, several grocery stores, and a bunch of Targets. But when he walked into an Albertsons in February, the store was ready. Its security surveillance system produced an alert, autonomously and instantaneously recognizing him as someone responsible for multiple past shoplifting incidents. Armed with the warning, loss prevention agents asked a police officer working on site to intercept him. When the officer approached Sena, he ran off. Police chased down the serial shoplifter, who had two misdemeanor warrants tied to other criminal cases, and charged him with resisting, evading, or obstructing an officer, according to the criminal complaint and reports from local station KRQE. Face recognition technology can do that. And despite hesitancy among retailers to admit it, it is doing that. Dara Riordan, chief revenue officer at FaceFirst, said the company boasts one US deployment with Dara Riordan hundreds of locations. Its largest customer database is in Latin America with nearly 30,000 enrolled templates.

Uses Cases Lian Jye Su, principal analyst for artificial intelligence (AI) at ABI Research, a global technology market advisory, described some real-world use cases for face recognition in retail.

■ Theft Monitoring. “Many existing supermarkets and retail stores already have surveillance cameras for theft monitoring, and facial recognition is installed as an upgrade to the existing system.”

In addition to real-time alerts of past bad actors—the frequent fraudulent returner, serial shoplifter,

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or potentially violent individual—he said tech firms are developing context-aware alert systems to detect relevant events Lian Jye Su with retailers’ CCTV streams.

■ Point of Sale (POS) and Self-Service Checkout. “This is very common in China, where Chinese are checking out using their digital wallet, such as AliPay and WeChat Pay, which has built-in biometric identification information,” he explained.

“Instead of paying with credit cards, Chinese shoppers will scan their faces at the POS terminals during checkout at various unmanned stores, such as Hema Xiansheng (by Alibaba) and Suning Biu.” ■ Enhanced Customer Service.

“When integrated with other systems, facial recognition can provide access to a wide range of data on individual customers,” he said. Facial recognition allows retailers to identify individual customers and link them to existing loyalty programs to generate personalized marketing for individual customers or provide discounts based on their loyalty.

According to Hedgie Bartol, retail segment development manager at Axis Communications, “For brick-and-mortar retailers, there are many use cases in which facial recognition can help improve safety and security. Primary use cases include identification of VIP and valued Hedgie Bartol customers, access control for employees and associates, identification of known offenders to reduce crime and retail

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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shrink, and the prevention of armed robbery.”

Deterrence has been the primary benefit from face recognition deployed at five high-risk Jacksons convenience stores in Portland and Tacoma, Washington, according to a store spokesperson. During nighttime hours, store doors remain locked until an approaching customer looks squarely into an external camera, so their image can be compared to a database of flagged individuals in real time. If no match is made, the door immediately unlocks. Images are maintained for forty-eight hours by the security provider and then deleted unless the store notifies them that a specific person’s image should be kept and flagged. To date, it has only been necessary to keep a few images on file, but Jacksons spokesperson Russ Stoddard told the Oregonian he thinks the store-entry process, combined with a sign notifying individuals that facial recognition is in use, reduces risk and limits the number of security issues that equipped stores face. “We’ve found that it precludes certain types of behavior,” he said, “because they see the camera and sign on the front door and know this is not a place to cause a ruckus.”

Facial recognition technology (FRT) also has value after a crime. “A retailer would be able to easily identify an individual that has stolen goods or otherwise caused damage to an establishment, which would allow the retailer to pursue further action against the individual,” explained attorney Adil D. Kolovic, an associate at Marshall Gerstein in Chicago.

Riordan said she sees asset protection teams using the technology successfully in just this way, such as to surface an individual running a credit card scheme wherever and whenever he’s been to a store, to alert those stores Adil D. Kolovic

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EYES WIDE OPEN

Adoption Adoption of FRT is happening all over. Grocers in the UK are working with tech companies to integrate facial recognition at self-checkout to verify ages for alcohol purchases. London’s Metropolitan Police rolled out “live” facial recognition across London earlier this year to reduce serious crime. The city of Ontario, Oregon, has done something similar during its recent surveillance camera upgrade. Catch&Go, the registerless digital store concept, added a facial recognition feature to “deliver a frictionless shopping experience” using facial recognition without other engagement, said NTT Data Corporation in an announcement earlier this year. Rather than keeping track of a physical ticket, guests at Universal Studios Singapore will be registered into its facial recognition systems for identification.

The technology is full of potential, said Lian Jye Su. He can see stores using AI and facial recognition to identify shoppers within the context of their buying history to make personalized recommendations, to free sales staff from store monitoring and POS functions and provide enhanced customer service, and as the cornerstone of the future’s unmanned retail store. “This is highly attractive for large e-commerce retailers that are looking to enhance their footprint in brick-and-mortar retail but are reluctant to emulate the existing brick-and-mortar retailers,” he told LP Magazine.

“When it comes to direct store deliveries, facial recognition could be utilized to allow secured access by the delivery drivers,” said Bartol.

“Retailers will also look to the technology to help reduce the impact of organized retail crime (ORC) by

identifying and deterring known offenders.”

Although already mature, the technology still has room to grow, especially as a multichannel solution, according to Paul Wilson, product manager for risk-based authentication Paul Wilson at AppGate.

“For example, continuous face authentication may be feasible, meaning that the user isn’t just verified when logging into an app but also as the customer uses the application or progresses through the user journey, allowing the customer to perform more sensitive tasks without interruption,” he explained. “Whilst there are obvious privacy concerns, this does suggest a future where it would be technically feasible to verify shoppers transparently as they pick up their groceries and automatically bill them as they leave.”

Maurizio Pejoves, director of P&O Global Technologies, a maker of surveillance camera systems, is a proponent of FRT in retail. “I would recommend for retailers to use facial recognition because it detects biometrics and identifies persons of interest in real time—supporting security staff, marketing departments, and operations management in one place.” He also sees value in using the technology to control access in restricted spaces, such as company buildings and warehouses.

Kolovic acknowledges the risks associated with implementing FRT but thinks they will, in time, be overcome.

“It seems that it is only a matter of time before the technology is more widespread,” he said. From unlocking a phone to event security, FRT applications are already multiplying, and the prospects of a future payday “is why some of the biggest names in tech are building patent portfolios in FRT.” LP MAGAZINE

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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

It may take some time to gain a foothold in retail, however. Despite advocates and advantages, the technology still seems to be climbing uphill. The tone of news reports suggests one reason why.

In covering the apprehension of that shoplifter in Albuquerque, KQRE’s reporting stressed the surprise

“For brick-and-mortar retailers, there are many use cases in which facial recognition can help improve safety and security. Primary use cases include identification of VIP and valued customers, access control for employees and associates, identification of known offenders to reduce crime and retail shrink, and the prevention of armed robbery.”

– Hedgie Bartol, Axis Communications

Nexusby / m.mphoto / Shutterstock.com

that he hasn’t yet hit, and to create a compelling case. “It allows you to send to police a really strong storyboard,” she said in her presentation at the Global Retail Crime Summit this summer.

of shoppers upon learning the technology was in use at the store. In late July, Reuters reported results of its “investigation” into Rite Aid “quietly” adding facial recognition technology at 200-plus locations. The story hit on multiple flashpoints: it was mainly placed in stores in nonwhite neighborhoods; its technology

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EYES WIDE OPEN provider had links to China; and early store deployments misidentified people of color.

Emeritus Professor Adrian Beck has been researching facial recognition in retail, including extensive interviews with LP executives Adrian Beck who have tested the technology, and he’s found both hope and hesitancy.

Prostock-studio / m.mphoto / Shutterstock.com

Complaints have always lurked that the technology performs less well with darker complexions, but they’ve been amplified as the nation undergoes an internal audit of its racial divisions.

“Certainly, when I spoke to a number of retailers who’d looked at this, they were very excited at the potential for this technology to help them begin to try and identify persistent thieves entering into their stores,” he said in a recent discussion of his research at an industry webinar. “It’s often seen by many as a great opportunity to try and reduce crime,” but it remains a “very controversial area,” he said.

Excitement is tempered by “an incredible amount of concern about reputational issues.”

It has proved too hot to touch for many. UCLA dropped its plan to use facial recognition technology on its

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campus. Home Depot told Reuters it tested facial recognition to reduce shoplifting but stopped its trial this year. And Reuters said Rite Aid defended its program but then told the news agency it had shut off the technology. “This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation,” the company told Reuters in a statement, adding that “other large technology companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology’s utility.”

Lowe’s never deployed facial recognition in any meaningful way, but it did test the technology several years ago. “I’ll tell you, in combatting ORC, it proved to be effective,” said Scott Draher, vice president of asset protection of safety, in a June webinar on video analytics by the ECR Retail Shrink Group. Regarding apprehending boosters, enrolling them in the system, and identifying their presence in a store, he said, “That technology does work with organized retail crime.” As is of ten the case, however, there was a “but.” In Lowe’s case, negative consumer sentiment was a significant reason why, despite the positive technology tests, they didn’t do anything further with it, said Draher.

Clearly, there are obstacles, but the powerful technology has grown and still beckons.

Technology Face recognition has followed a typical technology trajectory—from hype and inflated promises to operational viability. The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently released a study concluding that algorithms today are twenty times better at searching databases and detecting matches than in 2014, with the most accurate algorithms spotting matches with a 0.2 percent error rate thanks to deep learning neural networks. “As such, face recognition has undergone an industrial revolution, with algorithms

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increasingly tolerant of poor-quality images,” the study concluded.

Efficiency gains have kept pace with performance improvements. The latest, say experts, is the ability to process data at the “edge,” or on board a network camera, which allows for the camera to process and provide metadata to a system’s server or cloud and reduces the processing power required on the server side and lowers bandwidth requirements.

The underlying suggestion today from solutions providers is that the technology has reached maturity, and the questions that remain are on how best to use it and extract a return on investment. More impartial judges of the technology don’t specifically refute that positioning of the technology, but they warn that performance questions aren’t exactly moot.

Face matching software can typically work with images from any camera, but the quality counts. “As with anything related to surveillance or any analytic task, you can’t obtain a low resolution from 100 yards away and expect to accomplish anything,” said Bartol. “It’s all about the pixels, camera placement and angle, and slope—and a lot is dependent on what the FRT software is requiring from its standpoint.”

For its part, recognition software is impressive but not perfect. “I would say the technology is ready in general,” said Lian Jye Su. “However, retailers need to bear in mind that it is within a certain level of accuracy.

It’s identical to the facial recognition software deployed in public safety, which is suffering a lot of criticism at the moment.”

Attorney Adil Kolovic agreed: “If a retailer is considering using FRT in a security system, then the retailer should consider the possibility that flaws in the technology can lead to misidentification or even biases against certain groups.” One particular system infamously had a 31 percent error rate with dark-skinned women, he noted.

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EYES WIDE OPEN Complaints have always lurked that the technology performs less well with darker complexions, but they’ve been amplified as the nation undergoes an internal audit of its racial divisions. “Last month, major tech companies instituted moratoriums on the development of facial recognition technology in response to those accuracy and bias concerns, as well as its surveillance capabilities, against the backdrop of both public sentiment and proposed Kari Prochaska legislation,” said Kari Prochaska, a global privacy and cyber-security lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery.

Problematically, bias is often built into a system. “Most facial recognition technologies nowadays are based on

deep learning,” explained Lian Jye Su. “Depending on how the technology suppliers train their AI models, the facial recognition technology may have inherent flaws or biases. Retailers must test their solutions in a rigorous manner before deploying them in the field to avoid any potential hiccups,” he warned.

But fixing those flaws is a possibility, according to Kolovic, as are other technology enhancements.

“Despite the age and exploding prevalence of the technology, there is still opportunity to innovate in the space,” he said. “There is still room for advances in both the hardware and software being used to operate facial recognition technology,” and software and/or algorithms that remove racial bias from previous systems is a possibility, he said.

Some technology hurdles, which can help drive ROI, are still a work in progress. For example, face recognition systems can also be used

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to measure emotion through facial expressions, providing potentially valuable marketing data. But such uses may be problematic, “as a facial gesture often does not correlate with a specific feeling,” noted scientists from the Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki in their 2019 study, AI-based Facial Recognition in Emotional Detection. Researchers have also shown that it is possible to fool some mobile-payment kiosks’ facial recognition systems using realistic paper masks.

COVID-19 has thoroughly impacted retail, and it has had implications for facial recognition technology as well. Most obviously, the pandemic has revealed a core system vulnerability: when customers wear masks, facial matching systems are significantly less accurate. If mask wearing becomes normalized, that could present a performance hurdle every flu season. But the pandemic has also unearthed some of the

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It may take some time to gain a foothold in retail, however.

Despite advocates and advantages, the technology still seems to be climbing uphill. The tone of news reports suggests one reason why. In covering the apprehension of that shoplifter in Albuquerque, KQRE’s reporting stressed the surprise of shoppers upon learning the technology was in use at the store. In late July, Reuters reported results of its “investigation” into Rite Aid “quietly” adding facial recognition technology at 200-plus locations. The story hit on multiple flashpoints: it was mainly placed in stores in nonwhite neighborhoods; its technology provider had links to China; and early store deployments misidentified people of color.

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EYES WIDE OPEN technology’s benefits, including being a touchless biometric. FRT could get a boost as platform for operating kiosks or for access control and opening doors. “Retailers may look to incorporate the ability to provide touch-free access control by identifying employees or known associates from a digital image or video,” said Bartol.

“Now with facial recognition technology and the COVID-19 pandemic, facial recognition technology has new integration [possibilities],” explained Maurizio Pejoves at P&O Global Technologies.

Not surprisingly, since thermal face recognition has been around for more than a decade, the current pandemic has propelled some businesses to combine temperature reading and facial recognition (FR). By June, facial recognition system provider PopID said it had sold 600 FR-equipped thermal cameras, including to some Subway and Taco Bell locations, so stores can simultaneously clock-in and scan workers for a fever. Dara Riordan at FaceFirst said a future feature of its integrated systems will provide the ability for systems to alert if a person with a high temperature were to return to a store before a two-week quarantine period.

And mask-wearing is a two-way street. Making an identification is harder, certainly, but software can also “identify if a person is wearing a mask or not,” said Pejoves, who also noted that anonymous analysis of all face streams facilitates people counting, which can alert if the number exceeds what is necessary to maintain in-store social distancing.

Finally, the pandemic has accelerated desire for touchless technologies and highlighted the need for remote authentication to prevent fraud—and facial recognition fits into both. In a fintech world, where alternative payment methods are gaining speed, FRT authentication could provide both important support and ease the path to consumer approval of the technology.

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Acceptance, though, is still a work in progress.

Sentiment The ick factor that some people associate with recognition technologies has clearly waned. People routinely use their faces to unlock and securely sign-in to their phones or computers or use face authentication to access mobile applications.

Increasingly, customers are getting used to receiving face authentication requests on their devices, “to remotely authenticate an action, for example, or to authenticate a card payment performed in a store,” explained AppGate’s Paul Wilson.

Generally, customers appreciate the security and convenience when they use FR—and that seems to be spilling over into being more accepting of it for other interactions. Not long ago, FRT was clunky, inaccurate, and an even greater privacy concern over image capture, according to Wilson.

But things have changed dramatically, he believes, both technically and with customers becoming more accepting of the technology. “The technology is now much easier to use, able to cover more use cases, and implemented to prevent privacy issues,” he said, noting that newer technologies can employ a number of techniques in certain applications to help reduce privacy concerns, such as encryption techniques or working from data that cannot be reconstructed into images of users.

A 2019 survey by the Center for Data Innovation found little support for strict limits on facial recognition technology, especially if it meant airports would be unable to use it to screen passengers. And there was also general support for its use in a retail context. According to those surveyed, only 24 percent of Americans support strict limits on facial recognition if it were to prevent stores from using the technology to stop shoplifting, while 49 percent said they would oppose limitations if that was the result.

Another recent study, by Wirecard,

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EYES WIDE OPEN also found general support, with 68 percent of respondents willing to use biometrics-like face recognition to make in-store purchases. Globally, there is similar indications of support for facial recognition. Concerned about fraud in online transactions, for example, 93 percent of consumers in Brazil say they’d like more sophisticated security in the form of facial recognition, according to Experian’s February 2020 Global Identity and Fraud Report.

Of course, sponsored technology surveys can be worded to shape favorable responses, and examples of blowback persist. When residents of Atlantic Plaza Towers in Brooklyn learned their landlord planned to modernize the building’s security system and replace key fob entry with face recognition, they filed an objection with the state’s housing regulator. Once a month in London, a group dons camouflage makeup designed to confound camera analytics and conduct a silent public protest of the use of live facial recognition police cameras. At a grocer in Oregon, where facial recognition image captures are required for patrons to enter, a local reporter asked customers about their attitudes toward it. “I don’t know where the pictures of my face go,” said one, but he entered anyway.

Solution providers try various methods to help retailers navigate the privacy debate. For example, by using cameras and software to assign a unique tracking ID to each person that enters a store, a system can collect analytics every time someone visits—how long they shop, suspicious activity, if they visit other of their locations—but never associate the collected data with personally identifiable information. “Faceless recognition” reduces a person’s face to its mathematical components, so no actual images are stored in the system.

And it’s possible to take faces out of the recognition equation altogether, for example, by tracking a specific shopper’s journey through Bluetooth beacons that communicate with the

shopper’s smartphone via a store app or a third-party app enabled to provide location data. Such systems would recognize the shopper in a return visit but just track their interactions via an assigned number.

Interviews with some shoppers indicate a level of sympathy with retailers who are trying to fight back against persistent thieves, but other interviews have suggested skepticism, distrust, and a mistaken belief that local police were populating a store’s database of security images.

Concern over public attitudes is keeping many retailers away from the technology, according to new research from the ERC Retail Loss Group conducted by Emeritus Professor Adrian Beck. In interviews with LP and retail executives, Beck said he found significant enthusiasm for the principle of facial recognition and for using it in retail environments but that the potential for a negative hit to the business brand is holding them back.

“The reality is that many were very concerned about the negative impact of them being known to be using facial recognition in their organizations,” Beck said in a presentation at the Global Retail Crime Summit in June. One LP leader said his company is under a mandate to “not go anywhere near facial recognition because of reputational issues.” Colin Peacock, group strategy coordinator for the ECR Retail Loss Group, thinks more barriers need to come down before adoption becomes widespread. “I Colin Peacock think we are going to need to look at the public sector to break down some of these barriers before retailers put their reputations on the line,” he said in the conference presentation, “Exploring the Use of Video Analytics in Retailing: Prospects, Problems, and Practicalities.”

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Axis Communication’s Hedgie Bartol sees privacy concerns as the technology’s chief obstacle. “There are a lot of potential applications and interest. The hurdles, primarily, are from a privacy standpoint. The general public wants to know what you are doing with facial recognition,” he said. “More than technology, the political and sociological aspects behind is likely to be the bigger drag.

‘Is it going to be an intrusion?’”

Some good press would help, added longtime industry expert Walter Palmer.

Actions by some tech firms, which have Walter Palmer included scraping of millions of images from social media for use in FR, has contributed to confusion and distrust over the technology generally, making it harder for retailers to make the case for using it for their limited purposes.

There are lingering concerns that a retailer using biometrics might later sell that information to a broker, where it could end up being used by any number of organizations.

“But public opinion can be fickle,” observed Palmer, suggesting a viral story of face recognition foiling a child abduction or neutralizing a terrorist threat could help swing the debate.

The Security Industry Association (SIA) is trying to do just that, promoting examples of how FRT is enhancing safety and security in society. In opposition to legislation to ban federal agency use of facial recognition, SIA described how the nonprofit group Thorn has used facial recognition as part of a tool to help rescue children and identify human traffickers. “For example, after seeing an online post about a missing child from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a law enforcement officer used Spotlight to return a list of sex ads featuring the girl,” which resulted in her being

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EYES WIDE OPEN rescued. SIA cited numerous other examples of how the technology is benefitting society.

Normalization, through regular, positive interaction with facial recognition also would likely help to erase negative public sentiment as consumers have repeatedly shown themselves willing to exchange personal information for a better customer experience. “We will download a Waze app that says where you’re going, how fast you’re driving, and where you live and work, and we

– Lian Jye Su, ABI Research opt into it because of the benefits,” explained Peter Trepp, CEO of FaceFirst and author of Breaking Through the Privacy Barrier. Peter Trepp “At the moment, the concern of retailers over how it will be perceived by the public is certainly dogging the technology at the moment,” according to Beck. But he and other industry leaders we heard from believe it is

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Regulation

Martial Red / Shutterstock.com

“If the industry can come together and develop a framework—to address the issues of privacy, cyber security, and data storage that can be adopted across the industry—it will at least reduce some of the anxiety.”

inching closer to becoming palatable.

“I often talk about the frontier of acceptability with technology,” Beck said. “We’ve seen it in the past with CCTV in public places and with RFID in the 2000s.” Each time, he said, the public eventually came around, and that’s where we are with facial recognition. “We’re on the boundary of acceptability at the moment.”

Though complicated, the progression of the technology and public attitudes have been straightforward compared to the legal environment. Technology typically outpaces regulation, and that is certainly the case with facial recognition. Only now are lawmakers and courts coming to terms with what the technology can do. “Technology tends to find its own path, and in almost all cases it is ahead of legislation, and so it becomes important to educate on the potential uses of the technology,” Trepp told attendees at the Global Retail Crime Summit.

Behind in the race, legislators now seem to be scrambling.

“The current protest movement and climate over the past few months has raised awareness of facial recognition technology and, in particular, the power of its identification capabilities,” said Attorney Kari Prochaska. Fueled in part over the protests and rising privacy concerns, legislators at every level are examining the technology and, often, crafting and passing legislation to restrict or regulate it, she told LP Magazine.

It’s not likely to be settled anytime soon. Courtroom battles are likely to be commonplace for some time to come. “There are certainly legal headwinds to adoption of facial recognition, and we’re really not going to know for a couple of years how it all turns out as things wind through the courts,” said Palmer.

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Nowhere is the legal battle more fully engaged than in Illinois. The state’s strict biometric privacy law has sparked fierce debate and multiple legal challenges. To date, most Illinois cases involving retailers have centered around employees, who have bristled at the collection of biometric data and argue that potential data breaches of unique personal identifiers expose them to irreversible privacy risks, unlike a lost or stolen key fob or ID badge.

Plaintiffs filed suit against the Wendy’s restaurant chain, for example, alleging the company violated state law for not informing employees in writing of the specific purpose and length of time that fingerprint data—collected as part of clocking in and out—would be stored and used. Walmart, too, has been dragged into the fray, over employee handprint scans for taking out and returning cash register drawers, which it argued wasn’t a violation because they weren’t reduced to images that were stored or retained. An Albertsons pharmacy employee sued over that company’s collection of fingerprints, while the company argued that the case should be tossed because there is no difference between it and the types of companies excluded from liability under the law. After failing to convince a lower court, Albertsons has been trying to get the Illinois Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

BIPA initially passed in 2008 but remained relatively benign for more than a decade until a state Supreme Court ruling shifted the notion of harm and loss under the act, according to Brian Weinthal, an attorney with Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella.

Previously, a plaintiff needed to Brian Weinthal

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EYES WIDE OPEN demonstrate some sort of loss associated with the taking of biometric data, like an identity theft, but that changed in 2019. “The Illinois State Supreme Court said the taking of the information without complying is the damage, and immediately there were dozens of new class actions claiming injury by people because their biometric information was collected without the necessary approvals,” explained Weinthal.

“Under the statute, you can allege a violation when a biometric has been taken.”

Uniquely, BIPA allows private individuals to bring suit and recover damages of $1,000 or the amount of actual losses. While seemingly modest, the penalty could potentially be applied to each time biometric data is collected in violation of the law. Applied to employees clocking in and out every day or store patrons coming in and out, the accumulated amount could be eye-popping. “Once

you have my face in a database in violation, then every time my face is scanned is a separate violation. Then multiply that by every time I come in and out of a branch for years,” said Weinthal. “You can only imagine the number of people who walk into a retail store and the potential exposure.”

The prospects of a big payday have been the driving force in Illinois, said Weinthal. “It seems there are new lawsuits daily, and aggressive plaintiff’s funds are set up to look for cases. Retailers have been sued, security companies have been sued, and anyone else you can think of is being sued.”

In the Wendy’s BIPA lawsuit, for example, the restaurant chain was named, as well as Discovery NCR Corporation, which supplies Wendy’s with its biometric clocks and cash register access systems and plaintiffs allege may hold fingerprint information on employees.

Loop

“Illinois is a dangerous pothole,” said Weinthal. “What I see most often is companies buying an expensive security system with facial recognition at the corporate level and then pushing it out and then running across the Illinois law. I get the sense many businesses aren’t aware of it.”

The fine points of “violation” remain squishy because class action suits seeking millions in damages are being settled out of court, and no case has gone the distance to provide greater clarity. However, a retailer that without notification conducts face scans of individuals as they come into a store or make a return is absolutely in violation of Illinois law, said Weinthal. “In terms of who is winning the fight, it has been plaintiff attorneys,” he said. “Defendants have been settling, and the cost of litigating is enormous,” adding that he sees no end in sight for class action filings.

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EYES WIDE OPEN In terms of where the law is going, there isn’t much momentum behind legislative initiatives to reign in Illinois law. There is certainly no rush to do so, said Weinthal. He thinks the key will be whether businesses can be successful in creatively securing the necessary consent required under the law, which includes getting written permission for face scans, notice regarding use and retention of images, and strict restriction on transferring data. Defendants have argued that the law’s various consent requirements should be met by other means, scrolling through electronic permissions on a store app, website notification, or perhaps signage in stores. “So far, though, no court has found that,” said Weinthal.

With no immediate changes on the horizon, Weinthal doesn’t see great utility in “waiting out” the controversy over Illinois’s strict biometric law, suggesting instead that operational executives working in concert with general counsels to ensure they stay within the confines of the law may be the best current option.

For the moment, Illinois is an outlier, especially in its classification of what constitutes harm under the law. The legal environment is subject to change, however, and other states, including Texas, are picking up the issue, with several currently considering laws specifically regulating biometric data usage.

Washington state has passed a law to regulate the use of facial recognition software, and Europe presents an altogether different challenge. It all adds up to a buyer-beware legal landscape, experts suggested. “My main concern for retailers looking at adoption [of face recognition technology] is that they go into it with their eyes wide open,” advised Walter Palmer.

Attorney Brian Weinthal has similar advice for retailers. “If you’re looking to get into it, you need to be aware of the law and what’s

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happening,” he said. “Some companies have been settling for big amounts of money.” The Illinois Supreme Court ruled recently that Six Flags must pay Ryan Phelan money damages to a boy for collecting his thumbprint without proper consent, according to Ryan Phelan, an attorney with IP law firm Marshall Gerstein.

Additionally, a state need not have restrictive biometric and privacy laws for facial recognition to have its day in court. Harm resulting from misidentification can land the technology and its owner it in front of a judge or jury.

In April, an eighteen-year-old New York student filed a $1 billion suit against Apple, alleging that its use of facial recognition technology falsely linked him to several theft incidents at the tech company’s retail stores. Ousmane Bah’s suit claims he received a summons from a court in Boston for stealing $1,200 worth of Apple products in 2018 at a time when he was at his senior prom in New York. He was also traumatized by the need to respond to false allegations of store robberies in three states, the suit claims. What happened, the student surmised, is that he lost his identification and that whoever found it must have presented it upon being apprehending for stealing at an Apple retail store. The thief’s face was then enrolled in Apple’s facial recognition security system under Bah’s name, resulting in a series of false criminal allegations against him.

Seeking to get the lawsuit tossed, Apple said the suit fails to show any misidentification on its part was intentional, according to reports.

The actions of police—and the tools and money at its disposal—have been under intense scrutiny since the killing of George Floyd, and facial

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recognition was already being targeted by critics for supposed inherent bias in the technology. So as calls ramp up for reining in police departments, facial recognition technology is being scrutinized by municipalities.

The SIA makes the case that responsible law enforcement use of facial recognition “can actually limit the effects of inherent human bias” when used as a secondary tool in investigations. But it seems some political leaders are tilting toward a perspective that police can’t be trusted with it. In May, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned the use of facial recognition software by police and other local government agencies. Boston followed suit. Oakland and Berkeley, California, are on board. Oregon has banned police from using body cameras with facial recognition.

Responding to public pressure, Amazon announced this summer that it would temporarily restrict police departments from using its FRT, Rekognition, for one year.

National lawmakers are also taking up the issue. Proposed legislation, the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act of 2020, would place a prohibition on the use of facial recognition technology by federal entities. More importantly, it tries to compel others to follow suit by conditioning federal grant funding to state and local entities, including law enforcement, on those entities enacting their own moratoria on the use of facial recognition and biometric technology. In late June, SIA announced its strong opposition to the recently introduced legislation, which is “not a workable solution to address reasonable concerns about the use of facial recognition,” according to SIA CEO Don Erickson. While the legislation targets governmental use of image analytics technology, passage of the legislation would be an important

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EYES WIDE OPEN resolved by the time city officials take action. Others argued that banning technology sends the wrong message for a city trying to attract tech businesses and that its focus on facial recognition ignores the potential for bias in the multitudes of personally identifiable information that can be collected. To supporters of FRT, a ban on private business use would certainly strike a significant blow and set a dangerous precedent, but it is in a holding pattern for now.

In June, the Portland City Council punted a vote on a more limited ban specific to city agency use of facial recognition.

Amidst the regulatory churn, there is a burgeoning industry effort to self-regulate. Some question whether it will be broad enough to make much of a difference, but it could help, according to Lian Jye Su at ABI Research. “If the industry can come together and develop a framework—to address the issues of privacy, cyber security, and data storage that can be adopted across the industry—it will at least reduce some of the anxiety.” The broader this effort becomes, and the more stakeholders that get involved, the more likely it will be to help carve a path to using the technology in stores, suggested several LP executives we interviewed.

Deployment “Retailers need to think about how they will actually use it,” advised Emeritus Professor Adrian Beck. He said several LP executives he’s spoken with have raised questions about how, exactly, you can effectively operationalize facial recognition “to actually utilize it within a store and what you want people to do with that technology.”

Especially as a tool to identify potentially troublesome individuals, identifying who they are and that they are in the store isn’t the whole of it.

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time beginning to try to ID people who might cause issues in your store,” Beck said. “You’re suddenly saying to staff, ‘We have now found someone we know could be a potentially dangerous person, here is the information we know, and now I want you to do something with that.’ So there is this potential conflict between, on the one hand, retailers wanting to protect their

Overall, the most common advice provided during interviews with LP executives and industry experts is for retailers to continue to examine facial recognition—but to do so with eyes wide open. A business policy and clarity of purpose must accompany any plan to implement this technology.

Intentionality is the watchword.

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marker of how the privacy versus security battle is tilting.

In one city, at least, opponents of facial recognition are making headway Don Erickson in widening the battleground. City officials in Portland are considering a strict ban on the technology for private businesses, not just government agencies, and would prevent them from collecting, using, or storing people’s facial or biometric information. “My problem is that you should not have your image stored if you are not involved in criminal behavior,” Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty told the Oregonian.

The push is finding an audience because of alleged bias in the technology, as cited by Hector Dominguez, in Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. “We felt a moral obligation to develop a broader approach, recognizing that any use of a surveillance technology that is biased against people of color, lacks consent, lacks due process, and can be used on minors is unacceptable.”

Accuracy issues sparked regulation in Washington state, according to Attorney Kari Prochaska. “To address the argument of the risk of bias in the technology, earlier this year Washington state passed significant legislation mandating human review of the technology, accountability reports, and training requirements,” she explained. “The primary concern and argument against using the technology are accuracy issues in identifying people of color.”

Some embroiled in the Portland debate—the city has held several work sessions on the matter—have complained that the speed of the technology’s advancement suggests that any discrepancy in technology performance is likely to be long

staff and make sure they’re not putting them in dangerous situations and a technology that potentially puts them into conflict.

So that is a really interesting conundrum, one that I think retailers are going to have to try and face if they are going to use this technology.”

LP Magazine interviews elicited other advice for LP teams looking to capitalize on the substantial promise

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EYES WIDE OPEN of face recognition while avoiding pitfalls.

Evaluate your use cases. What are the purposes for the technology?

What kinds of events require you to authenticate a user? If you’re just trying to prevent a crime, do you need to know who it is? Do you need face recognition to identify people, requiring data storage, or is face detection, which does not capture images or store data, enough for your purposes? Are you looking for a multichannel solution that needs to work for a customer both in store and online? With clarity on these and other questions, you can identify what solution might help meet your needs or if alternative solutions that don’t involve face capture might meet them.

Make it part of the picture.

Included as an element within enhancing video analytics capabilities more broadly, the business case improves for face recognition.

Maurizio Pejoves said FR is just a small part of a larger need for LP teams to gain location-based insights and to detect anomalies: loitering or excessive dwell times; objects left behind; a gathering of large groups for an early warning of public unrest and disorder; people or vehicles entering a restricted area; individuals running; and objects moving in the wrong direction. “Also, owners can use the data collected from facial recognition, when enhanced with artificial intelligence, to detect which aisles and discounts are receiving the most foot traffic,” he said, as well as other valuable operational and sales data, including demographic information and tracking how people move in time and space.

Assess your infrastructure. “It is a rarity that you’ll be able to just load on the software and leverage system infrastructure as is,” said Bartol. Retailers need to consider whether to deploy the entire system on premise or leverage cloud computing, added Lian Jye Su. “Leveraging cloud computing will

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result in better flexibility and scalability in terms of cost,” he said.

Cost it out. “Some love it, and others have looked at it and said, ‘No way, I can’t afford it,’” said one longtime LP executive. Lian Jye Su noted that deploying AI technology requires a lot of spending on AI hardware, which may not be ideal for retailers that are on tight budget.

A potential option is an “as-a-service” model, where a retailer is charged a subscription fee associated with continuing usage of the system, he said.

Make an honest business case.

“If you’re considering FRT, make sure to document the benefits for the company but also identify how it might go wrong. Worst-case scenarios are worth thinking about, so you’re prepared,” said one industry executive. Another added, “You can have clarity on how much it’s going to cost you, but you have to have just as detailed an answer for, ‘What does it get me?’” As with any analytics, Hedgie Bartol advised LP executives to be sure to clearly identify the intended use cases and engage with the appropriate internal stakeholders. “Set the metrics that will define success and determine how the technology can be used beyond security for enhancing operations and sales,” he said.

Know the law. So that a retailer doesn’t run afoul in obtaining or using sensitive data, “It is absolutely critical to understand data privacy laws and regulations of the jurisdiction that the retailer operates in or plans to operate in,” advised Attorney Ryan Phelan. California, Washington, New York, Arkansas, and Texas have also enacted laws, or expanded existing laws, to regulate collection of biometric data, he noted.

Minimize risk. “Retailers need to ensure that data capturing and storage are done locally, with very minimal information shared between different stores and branches. This is to prevent data being stolen during

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transfer and potential data abuse by malicious actors,” according to Lian Jye Su. He said retailers must minimize the storage of a customer’s original face data and delete customer face data and redundant and residual information in a timely manner after data analysis and processing, ideally not more than seventy-two hours. “Retailers must also set up appropriate standard operating procedures for data security and data management,” he advised. “A third-party privacy and cyber-security audit is a must to build public trust and integrity and prevent any lapse.”

Be sensitive to privacy concerns. “Be abundantly clear about the purpose of facial recognition technology, whether it is for theft monitoring, payment, service personalization, operation optimization, or [other reasons],” said Lian Jye Su, adding that best practice is to set up appropriate customer opt-in/opt-out procedures and a feedback mechanism to allow customers to enquire, change, and delete any personal information, and to be transparent about procedures to the public.

Transparency requirements should then be assessed against a loss prevention use case as certain permission requirements “could restrict facial recognition’s effectiveness as an investigation tool,” said Attorney Brian Weinthal.

FaceFirst’s Peter Trepp acknowledged the tough spot LP is in: “You don’t want to give away trade secrets, but first and foremost you want to be compliant with the law.”

Establish a robust policy framework. To ensure universal alignment around FRT, it’s critical to clearly define how staff will engage with consumers and to provide in-depth training on the software and company protocols before implementing facial recognition technology, said several industry leaders. Choosing a vendor

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

EYES WIDE OPEN

RESECURE.

partner that is committed to training system integrators on how to use facial recognition technology in the proper way it also important, one leader added.

Eyes on the Future As a controversial tool in a particularly controversial time in society, facial recognition seems to have hit a pause in retail loss prevention. But even for asset protection professionals who don’t think now is the right time, there is ample reason to stay engaged.

Stores must continue to search for the best ways to prevent shrink and violent crime in stores and to balance that against the rights of individuals walking into the stores and in preservation of relationships stores have with their customers. And those are all points that are subject to shift as new crimes emerge, technology changes, and attitudes and laws evolve.

“It’s an ongoing conversation that we will continue to have for years,” said Trepp, “as we ensure we are putting in the right technology to attack the right problems.” He advises retailers to lean into the discussion and to participate in strategic conversations about striking a palatable balance between competing forces.

Overall, the most common advice provided during interviews with LP executives and industry experts is for retailers to continue to examine facial recognition—but to do so with eyes wide open. A business policy and clarity of purpose must accompany any plan to implement this technology. Intentionality is the watchword.

Face recognition may not be the right technology right now for many retailers, but there is no retreating from it as the force behind it is stronger than ever.

Recently, Interface Security Systems hosted a webinar on how to maximize ROI on security. In it, Lyle Forcum, executive director of Lyle Forcum asset protection at Panda Restaurant Group, indicated that his company is not in the market for FRT currently, but he put it this way in recommending an approach to the technology it represents: “If you’re not comfortable with change in the automated environment, you really shouldn’t be in this business. And the future of this business is video analytics and artificial intelligence.”

GARETT SEIVOLD is senior writer for LP Magazine. A trained journalist, he has spent the majority of his career writing about security, risk management, supply chain, and loss prevention topics. He can be reached at GarettS@LPportal.com.

LP MAGAZINE

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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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LPM EXCELLENCE

LPM Magpie Awards: Applauding Excellence

The LPM “Magpie” Awards offer a means to celebrate industry accomplishments on an ongoing basis, recognizing the loss prevention professionals, teams, solution providers, law enforcement partners, and others that demonstrate a stellar contribution to the profession.

The ability to influence change is a product of drive, creativity, and determination, but it also requires a unique ability to create a shared vision that others will understand, respect, support, and pursue.

Each of the following recipients reflects that standard of excellence, representing the quality and spirit of leadership that makes a difference in our lives, our people, and our programs. Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of our latest honorees.

Excellence in Leadership

Excellence in Partnerships

“To be a true leader in loss prevention, you must stay true to your core values, be flexible, be adaptable, have compassion, and always strive to make things better,” said Kresevich.

“People will follow you if they believe in you and the cause—whatever the cause may be. Building strong, trusting relationships is at the root of any success.”

Beyond her responsibilities as director of asset protection with Luxottica, Kresevich also serves on the LP council for the National Retail Federation (NRF), the advisory board for the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail (CLEAR), and works closely with the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) on various initiatives. She contributed to the development of the Loss Prevention Foundation certification programs and has been a speaker on loss prevention topics both nationally and internationally.

“I must say I’m most proud of my involvement with the Content Writing Committee for the Loss Prevention Foundation and serving on the Legislative Committee/LP Council for the National Retail Federation,” she said. “Both affect positive change in the AP industry, and I’m very honored to be part of that.”

For those working their way up the career ladder, Kresevich feels that it’s important to find positive role models. “I attribute much of my success to great role models and leaders I was fortunate enough to work for and emulate.”

She also shared this advice: ■ In business, not everything is black and while. Being able to see the grey will always be a tremendous help.

■ Read the tea leaves. Timing is everything, and you must align your initiatives with the goals and objectives of the organization.

■ Being self-motivated goes a long way. Keep the fire burning and always feel like you can change the world.

■ Get involved and affect positive change. The industry needs leaders who want to make a difference.

“Carrying out research on retail loss prevention is not easy,” said Beck.

“Information is often hard to come by.

Organizations are frequently wary about sharing data, and the topics under consideration are often sensitive. It’s therefore critical to build relationships based upon trust. Retailers must be confident that any information they share will be held securely and, where appropriate, fully anonymized and only presented in aggregate form. Over the past thirty years, I’ve completed countless research projects with retailers and always endeavored to be viewed as someone who can be trusted with potentially sensitive business information, using it in a way that informs the broader retail community while protecting organizational confidences.”

Upon graduation from the University of Leicester in the UK, Beck played a pivotal role in establishing what is now the School of Criminology, where he began researching issues related to retail loss prevention. In 2017, he was awarded the title of emeritus professor. For the last twenty-one years, he has been the academic advisor to the ECR Community Retail Risk Group, a body that’s championed the commissioning of new research ideas in retail loss prevention. He has also completed work for the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), including studies establishing the Total Retail Loss framework.

“More than ever, the retail industry is experiencing seismic change,” he said. “The sector has seen profound changes generated by a swathe of new technologies and rapidly changing consumer expectations. Those seeking a successful career in LP need to recognize and embrace these changes, understand the broader business environment, and adopt an approach focused on understanding the overall impact of any given busines choice. A large proportion of retail losses are primarily a function of those choices, and future leaders need to focus on being both a critical business consultant and adroit at managing loss.”

Millie Kresevich, Director of Asset Protection, Luxottica

Adrian Beck, Emeritus Professor, University of Leicester, UK

Nominate Your Peers at Excellence@LPportal.com 28

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LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

INTERVIEW

REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS

By James Lee, LPC, LPM Executive Editor

REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS

T

his space of the magazine is usually occupied by an interview with one of the premier executives in loss prevention and asset protection. I thought we might step back and ask what has happened to many of these executives? In the past couple of years, many have begun retiring.

This is a generation of executives who reached vice president status in their companies and VIP status in the industry. Most started at the lowest level in what was then called “security” or retail audit or finance. Each had a hand in moving security positions to LP or AP status—from the basement to a seat at the table and from director level to senior vice president.

many internal investigations. He was a good interviewer. But he was a far better golfer. Over the years I never played golf with an LP person better than Fritz. He was equally adept at loss prevention. He kept a low profile in the industry; therefore, many did not have the opportunity to get to know him. Too bad as people would have found him to be confident, direct, and an expert in the business.

He was very loyal to his people, and they were loyal to him, resulting in low turnover and the development of a very mature and strong team. I think this Michigan State alum is retired in the Virginia Beach area and playing golf four times a week. Envious?

[See “Managing a Truly Worldwide

FRITZ HIRCHERT

BOB VRANEK

I have the privilege of knowing each of these executives personally.

These are some of my recollections of each of them. Our industry owes this group a big “thank you.” Let’s begin and in no particular order.

Fritz Hirchert

Fritz recently retired from the Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM). These are essentially retail stores provided worldwide for Navy personnel. I first met Fritz many years ago at Montgomery Ward. We worked together and partnered on

30

LP Organization” July–August 2002 page 22.]

Bob Vranek

Bob retired a couple of years ago as vice president of Belk stores based in Charlotte. I had the pleasure of having lunch with him every other month. Our conversations were about what he was doing at Belk and what was going on in retail. I learned a lot from those lunches. Over his twenty-something years at Belk, others chased him to accept another retail position, but he remained solid

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for Belk. Bob had a real knack for evaluating solution providers. He could tell who was going to make it in retail LP. If asked to describe Bob in a few words, I would say this: straight shooter and smart guy.

Bob is retired in Fort Mill, South Carolina, and has become an avid walker and a better golfer. [See “The Need to Reinvent Loss Prevention” September–October 2012 page 29.]

Joe Hardman

Joe finally retired from Cracker Barrel. For three or four years, Joe was always telling me he was going to retire. He had a distinguished career in retail that included stops at Books-A-Million and Parisians. He

JOE HARDMAN actually started as a security manager at Rich’s and worked with the woman who later became my wife.

In fact, when she was dating me, she called Joe for a reference. He mostly gave me a good one, and my wife and I were subsequently married.

I attended a couple of his team meetings, and you could tell that Joe was in charge. His people were very comfortable with his low-key leadership style and respected him immensely. After his retirement I would see him pop up at National Retail Federation conferences with

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS his buddies Mike Smith, Johnny Turner, and Bob Vranek. A lot of stories and bragging between those four. [See “Made from Scratch” January–February 2005 page 52.]

Mike Smith

Speaking of Mike, what a quality person he is. He began his career at Montgomery Ward and later worked under the leadership of Bob Vranek at Maison Blanche. He completed his career as a senior vice president at Finish Line and was part of the “shoe dogs” who often got together to recreate the world. Mike has done some consulting since his retirement, and his expertise is really valued by the retail C-suite, including his

MIKE SMITH advice on managing key people in the industry. He’s one of those guys whom everyone likes and can only say good things about. Whenever I would see him walking toward me, he always had a big smile—just a very positive person who always makes you feel good. He’s also an avid jogger, including marathons. I wouldn’t drive as far as he’s jogged.

Johnny Turner

Johnny is the last of the shoe dogs I will speak about. I mentioned earlier that he and Mike

This is a generation of executives who reached vice president status in their company and VIP status in the industry. Most started at the lowest level in what was then called “security” or retail audit or finance.

Each had a hand in moving security positions to LP or AP status—from the basement to a seat at the table and from director level to senior vice president. Our industry owes this group a big “thank you.”

JOHNNY TURNER and Joe would visit NRF after their retirements and walk around with a look on their faces that said, “If you pay your dues and work hard, you too could retire someday.”

I would often see Johnny at the Greensboro airport. While both of us were based out of Charlotte, we could save money by flying out of Greensboro. He always had time to talk. And he almost always had a new pair of loafers and either some wild socks or no socks. If you asked the vendors who called on him or knew him, they would

LP MAGAZINE

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DENNIS WAMSLEY all say, “Tough guy,” and that he was. With Johnny, it was his way or the highway. And his way was almost surely the right way. A man with new loafers, a corvette, and a home on the beach—that is my recollection of Johnny.

Dennis Wamsley, LPC

Dennis is one of those guys who came out of the finance/audit area of retail. He spent a lot of years at Kmart before heading south to Publix as the vice president of asset protection. A low-key and quiet

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REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS person, he was a strong advocate of the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) and a member of the board of directors of the Loss Prevention Foundation. I am told he lives half the time in Montana somewhere and back in Florida the other half. I visited him a couple of times, and he always had his team as a part of the discussion.

My impression of Dennis is that he was a very inclusive leader—really a good guy and asset to this profession. [See “Managing LP and Safety in a Customer-Service Culture” January–February 2013 page 29.]

DAN PROVOST Dan Provost, LPC

Since we are speaking about finance people who made the transition to loss prevention, try this one—Dan Provost of Staples.

He brought real stability to Staples when it needed it and developed a strong team of LP leaders, as strong a team as existed in the business. Dan always had time for others—at least he did for me. He was a strong counsel to others, and others in retail management called on him for advice. Not many know that he turned down several big opportunities and stayed at Staples.

He was also a member of the Loss

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Prevention Foundation board of directors. In fact, he was the first to set up a company-paid LPF certification tuition program—a real gentleman. [See “Reorganizing the LP and AP Teams At Staples” July–August 2013 page 27.]

Chad McIntosh

Here’s another guy on this list who lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina. He moved to the Charlotte metro area from his job in New York City at Bloomingdales to be near his family (mostly the grand kids). He enjoyed a long and distinguished career in companies such as Polo, Neiman’s, The

Home Depot, Macy’s, and Bloomies.

Chad always seemed so serious about things. He was a leader for many years with the LPRC. He knew the business and was always willing to share his knowledge with others. I wonder if Vranek and McIntosh live in Fort Mill because there is a world class hamburger joint right downtown, and they can sit there and tell stories. [See “A Lifetime of Learning” September–October 2018 page 27.]

Kevin Valentine, CFI, LPC

Kevin had a very distinguished and long career with Signet Jewelers. He was the senior executive for LP, audit,

CHAD MCINTOSH

KEVIN VALENTINE

Kevin Valentine had a very distinguished and long career with Signet Jewelers. He was the senior executive for LP, audit, and risk. He always put his family first and then the company. He never wanted any fanfare for himself, but he had a lot to be proud of for his accomplishments within Signet. He is still a member of the Loss Prevention Foundation and headed up the very important position as lead on the audit committee.

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LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS

BILL TURNER

STEVE MAY and risk. He always put his family first and then the company. He never wanted any fanfare for himself, but he had a lot to be proud of for his accomplishments within Signet. He is still a member of the Loss Prevention Foundation and headed up the very important position as lead on the

audit committee. No one is better to oversee the audit processes of the not-for-profit foundation. He may still do some consulting under the banner of Valentine Solutions and also owns a cigar store near his home in Ohio. I visited the store, but he was out fishing. [See “From LP to

MIKE GRADY Internal Audit to Enterprise Risk Management” January–February 2018 page 23.]

Steven May, CFI

Steve is one of those few people who had success as a retail LP executive and then also as a solution provider.

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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS

Claude Verville had a great career at Lowe’s and built a first-class organization that overachieved on goals for LP and safety. For many years, most regarded Lowe’s as the premier retail LP department. I agree with that, and if you want to know why—discipline. No one had a more disciplined approach than Claude. I bet all those who worked for him would agree.

GENE SMITH

Mike Grady, LPC

Mike recently retired from Vector Security as the top executive in the company. I first met Mike in the offices of Marshall’s. He was chasing burglar and fire systems with them and trying to put

CLAUDE VERVILLE

He worked for J Baker, Inc. and then founded LP Innovations. LPI was the first real LP outsourcing option for retail. They provide LP, audit, and risk services. He is a first-class gentleman who is retired in Florida and Boston—good choices. Like any entrepreneur would tell you, it is a hard road to make things work and achieve your objectives and stay in business. Steve did that and was fortunate to sell his interests to another company. For years, I had only heard of Steve and never really had much of a relationship. I had heard he did not care for me, and he had heard I disliked him.

This went on and on until Steve reached out to me and asked to have dinner for two. It was a long dinner, and we shared our stories. Wow, instant respect for the

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Prevention Foundation board from the beginning and still serves as the treasurer.

He always says you can tell the makeup of a person if they shine their shoes and keep a clean car. Bill is spot on with both.

[See “Retail First, LP Second, Cops and Robbers Never” November–December 2007 page 34.]

man, and we have maintained an open and friendly relationship ever since.

Taught me a good lesson.

Bill Turner, LPC

I first met Bill in Cincinnati at one of those LP/security meetings of division heads. He walked into the board room with a great tan and an expensive suit. California boy you know. I didn’t know if I could handle the arrogance I perceived, but I listened to him and valued his expertise. We have remained friends all these years. Bill had a career with Bullocks, Disney World (where he ran operations and LP), Nike, and Cole Hahn. He was always more than just LP. He was a businessman first and foremost.

He has been a member of the Loss

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MIKE LAMB Vector on the minds of other retailers. He achieved that over the years. You cannot find anyone who doesn’t have the highest level of respect and praise for Mike.

What a gentleman. He was member of the original Loss Prevention Foundation board of directors. He was always reaching out trying to better understand the mindset of the retail LP executive.

When you think of Vector, you think of Mike Grady. [See “From Burglar Alarm Salesmen to Executive Vice President” July–August 2020 page 29.]

Gene Smith, LPC

Gene retired a couple of years ago as the president of the Loss Prevention Foundation. Gene is responsible for putting the foundation on the retail

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

REFLECTIONS ON A GENERATION OF LEADERS LP map. He started a career in LP at Montgomery Ward, then went on to Lazarus (Macy’s), consumers and executive recruiting, before landing at the foundation. Perhaps Gene’s greatest achievement was and is the counseling and mentoring he gave to others.

He never violated the privacy of any discussion. That’s why others valued his counsel. He is a Ring of Excellence recipient from the National Retail Federation, and no one deserves it more.

He is a family man first and foremost.

[See “Constructing a Foundation for the LP Profession” July–August 2009 page 30.]

Claude Verville, LPC

Speaking of family men, here is the jewel of the Nile. And I bet you didn’t know that or would not have guessed it. Claude is a sports guy, and his son and daughter were premier high school players in baseball and basketball. Claude put in a half-court basketball gym in his house, and his daughter became an ace

shooter. He had a great career at Lowe’s and built a first-class organization that overachieved on goals for LP and safety.

He is an original member of the Loss Prevention Foundation. For many years, most regarded Lowe’s as the premier retail LP department. I agree with that, and if you want to know why— discipline. No one had a more disciplined approach than Claude. I bet all those who worked for him would agree. [See “Aligning Loss Prevention with the Customer Experience” March–April 2014 p. 27.]

Mike Lamb, LPC

Mike just recently announced his retirement as senior vice president of AP at Kroger. He will remain as an operations consultant for a few months, and Kroger is the winner for that. If you want to go out on top of the world and be viewed as the best, put together this resume: Federated Stores, The Home Depot, Walmart, and then Kroger. You get those positions because you are smart,

professional, and a results achiever. He is a Loss Prevention Foundation board member and an advisor to this magazine, the LPRC, and the National Association of Safety Professionals. When you speak with Mike, you might think you are speaking to the CEO of Kroger—that is his demeanor. [See “The Importance of Managing Shrink and Waste” March– April 2020 page 29.]

Well, there you have it. I know I missed some of the recent retirements, but I have personally known each of these featured and have been blessed for that. Many of them have been featured in this space with one-on-one, in-depth interviews. I’ve noted the articles that appeared in print. Many are also available on our website at LossPreventionMedia.com.

If you made a list of the most-mentioned qualities for these recent retirees, I think these words would appear—family, low key, big heart, leader, and expert. Put those qualities in your character bag, and you become special.

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CERTIFICATION Interview with Lea Tamarack, LPC Tamarack is a market AP leader for Big Lots. She began her career apprehending shoplifters at Parisian Department Store in Savannah, Georgia, while studying for a degree in criminal justice. She moved with Parisian to Columbia, South Carolina, while working toward her master’s in criminal justice from the University of South Carolina. While obtaining her degree, she found she was hooked on LP. She made LP her career and gained a variety of experience, including department store retail, grocery, dollar, and specialty.

Do Not Procrastinate Why did you decide to pursue your LPC certification?

I heard that the Loss Prevention Foundation was working on new LPC material around grocery and volunteered to help develop it. While working with the LPF, they granted me an LPC scholarship.

What benefits have you seen from taking the course?

A feeling of confidence of learning more about the LP industry and of successfully completing the course.

If you could offer one key takeaway to someone currently considering getting certified, what would it be?

The LPC is a great all-around course to learn the different components of LP all the way up to running a department.

Was the coursework what you expected?

Having previously completed the CFE and CFI programs, which are vastly different, I was not sure what to expect from the LPC. When I started it, I was impressed that it covered the “lifecycle” of loss prevention, from the basics to building a successful LP program and leadership.

This is a great course to show that you have studied the entire LP process, from how to handle instances of theft to how to make a budget.

Talk about the process of going through the coursework and taking the exam.

Even after reading this column in previous issues of LP Magazine and knowing not to procrastinate, I still procrastinated. I was talking with a friend who was also going through it, and he mentioned that he had set a date to take the test, to get the motivation to complete the course. I took his method and set a test date, which was the final encouragement I needed to finish the course.

How would you compare the foundation certifications to other educational courses that you’ve taken?

The LPC material is all online and mostly reading. The CFE was a combination of online and printed materials, and the CFI was all online. The LPC has a lot of material and covers more broad topics than the CFE and CFI, so it takes longer to read through all the materials.

Looking at your own personal background and knowledge, what information in the course helped you the most?

Having worked in a variety of retail LP settings, I have experienced different programs, policies, and procedures around LP, which helped form my own opinions of what were best practices. The leadership content of the LPC course validated those opinions. It was a great feeling to see that my beliefs of what makes a great LP department were the same as what was being taught to hundreds of other LP professionals in this course.

How has certification changed your expectations of loss prevention as a career, for yourself and others?

Completing the certification reinforced my desire to continue my career in the LP industry. I found it fascinating to learn about components of the industry that I hadn’t had personal experience with before.

Would you recommend certification to others?

This is a great course to show that you have studied the entire LP process, from how to handle instances of theft to how to make a budget. Having the LPC certification shows that you bring this knowledge to the table.

What was the most eye-opening information that was part of the curriculum?

That the curriculum was so all-inclusive of the LP industry, from retailers to vendors, stores to distribution centers, investigations to leading a department.

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LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

Newly Certified

Following are individuals who recently earned their certifications.

Recent LPC Recipients

Orlando Apodaca, LPC, CVS Health Brittany Basler, LPC, Amazon Tiffany Bonitatibus, LPC, Fanatics Helen Dalton, LPC, Albertsons Misty Davis, LPC, Ulta Beauty Gerald DeClemente, LPC, Five Below Joseph DesFosses, LPC, Albertsons Jonathan Devlin, LPC, DICK’S Sporting Goods Brandon Duggins, LPC, TJX Donald Gaines, LPC, TJX Fred Helmes, LPC, TJ Maxx Ryan Hussey, LPC, TJX Claudia Joya, LPC, HomeGoods Jeff Kinder, LPC, DICK’S Sporting Goods Jaime Knapp, LPC, Helzberg Diamonds Kelly Laurance, LPC, John Lewis Danielle Lee, LPC, ULTA Beauty Scott Lox, LPC, Living Spaces Amanda Lucken, LPC, Home Depot Carl Marceaux, LPC, Walmart Anthony Mclean, LPC, Office Depot Michael Murphy, LPC, Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio Anthony O’Barto, LPC, Albertsons Troy Oquin, LPC, Kroger John Pearce, LPC, TJX Jon Penman, LPC, Kohl’s Mackenzie Phillips, LPC, Amazon Bryan Ramirez, LPC, Goodwill Industries of Seattle Brad Reeves, LPC, A&P Jill Rossi, LPC, TJX Michael Safar, LPC, Walmart Amber Santiago, LPC, Kohl’s James Singhaus, LPC, Goodwill Industries of Greater Cleveland and East Central Ohio Gregg Smith, LPC, Five Below James Webb, LPC, TJX Bryan Ziegler, LPC, Walgreens

Recent LPQ Recipients

Sherell Burns, LPQ, TJX Keith Cohen, LPQ Mike Cuzzetto, Jr, LPQ, Loblaw Justin DeLaMare, LPQ, TJ Maxx Jacob LaMotte, LPQ, Meijer Carl Millegan, LPQ, TDCJ Xandar Miller, LPQ Alexander Mszanecky, III, LPQ, Giant Food Stores Andres Oliveri, LPQ, TJX Dmarcus Ottey, LPQ, Home Depot Ivan Pacheco, LPQ, Home Depot Amanda Peterson, LPQ, Whole Foods Market Nicholas Rocco, LPQ, TJX Mark Stewart, LPQ, Giant Food Stores Isaac Valentin, LPQ, Weis Markets Donald Weber, LPQ, Home Depot LP MAGAZINE

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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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FEATURE

IMPROVING INVENTORY RECORD ACCURACY WHY IT MATTERS FOR THE BUSINESS AND WHY IT SHOULD BE ON THE LP AGENDA

Chaay_Tee/Shutterstock.com Photo illustration by SPARK Publications

By Colin Peacock

IMPROVING INVENTORY RECORD ACCURACY

M

ost, if not all, of us have heard leaders use the rallying cry, “If not now, then when?

And if not us, then who?” I suggest, given the sales increase opportunity offered by improving inventory record accuracy (IRA), that now is the time and the “us” should be you, the loss prevention team.

A Wake-Up Call

Picture the scene: an ECR retail loss meeting held in May 2016 in the Prague offices of Unilever with over sixty retail executives present.

It is time for a benchmarking presentation on physical inventory counts conducted in forty stores of a multiple-grocery retailer.

By way of background, all retailers are required to conduct regular physical counts, to ensure that their financial records match what is physically in the stores and to record any discrepancies (often referred to as shrinkage). The data from these counts is then used by finance and audit teams to ensure they are compliant with accounting standards, while for store managers and LP, it provides one of their key performance metrics. These audits can also provide a measure of the level of accuracy between expected and actual stock records. If a store has 10,000 stock keeping units (SKU) and of those 8,000 have an exact match, then the IRA rate would be declared as 80 percent. From this perspective, the focus would be on the 2,000 SKUs without an exact match. They could be higher or lower, but both represent a failure in process and can lead to negative consequences for sales and managing costs.

This view of the physical count data was presented at the ECR meeting in 2016. The data showed that 53 percent of the 800,000

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records were exact matches. For the remaining 47 percent, some 59 percent had a physical quantity less than expected, and 41 percent had more than the book record suggested.

When I first saw this benchmark data, and knowing how many millions of euros are spent by retailers on ever increasingly sophisticated forecasting and replenishment systems that are reliant on accurate data, I was shocked. But more to the point, how did the retailers present in Prague react?

The second area that was considered capable of driving a call to action was the emergence of new data that could help support a business case for investing in IRA. The key question was whether improving IRA would lead to an increase in sales.

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Firstly, many just nodded and said that this was broadly in line with what they saw in their businesses. Secondly, some shared that they measured IRA in a different way, and rather than the exact match definition, their organizations declared an inventory record accurate if it was within a predefined zone or tolerance level, for example, +/- 5 percent or 2 units.

Using this definition of accuracy, their IRA rate was significantly higher, sometimes greater than 90 percent.

Finally, some in the audience simply did not know how this compared as they had never seen this measure used in their businesses. Instead they only looked at and focused on the value of inventory variance, typically a negative value or loss, by store and department, but rarely at item level.

I then asked for a show of hands as to which retail organizations currently had an active project in place to improve IRA. No hands went up, other than from an apparel retailer who had just started an RFID project, where improving IRA was one of the major value drivers. I then asked why virtually no retailer present was working on what seemed, to me at least, to be a big problem. Here are some of the explanations: ■ Precision not needed—many stated that inventory records did not have to

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This article first appeared in the LP Magazine Europe summer 2020 edition. Spellings have been changed to reflect US spelling and style preferences.

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IMPROVING INVENTORY RECORD ACCURACY

be exactly right. If the inventory record is stating that (for example) ninety items are in the system and the audit count finds eighty-nine or ninety-one, what would be the benefit of allocating and investing resources to make sure it always shows ninety? For many, it would seem to be a waste of time.

■ No one talking about it—the issue of IRA was not discussed with the board, in company meetings, at regular strategy reviews, or even store visits. They shared that no function—sales, supply chain, or stores—had IRA as a key performance indicator (KPI).

■ No sense of urgency—respondents regarded the data as not new. Company records have been wrong consistently for ages, so why would they want to act now on an initiative that would inevitably consume a lot of resources and require investments in technologies, training, and people? What would be the call to action?

Call to Action

Further discussion focused upon two areas that could drive a call to action. The first was on the shopper.

For most, if not all, brick-and-mortar retailers, an increasing number of shoppers are either taking all their shopping online or checking prices and availability on a company’s website prior to visiting a physical

When the inventory records in the test stores were corrected midway through the experiment, they found a sales increase of between 4 percent and 8 percent.

For those SKUs where the inventory records showed a negative variance, sales increased 10 percent. store. To avoid disappointing this type of shopper, retailers need to have full confidence in the accuracy of their inventory systems. For reasons that should now be clear, however, many retailers simply do not have this level of confidence and “solve” the problem by adding extra inventory into the system and declaring items unavailable whenever there is a presumed quantity below an agreed number. This is sometimes referred LP MAGAZINE

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to as “safety stock,” and while it helps resolve this problem, it requires additional investment in inventory and, inevitably, can lead to lost sales when stock that is available is listed as not.

The second area that was considered capable of driving a call to action was the emergence of new data that could help support a business case for investing in IRA. The key question was whether improving IRA would lead to an increase in sales. At the time of the ECR 2016 meeting, no academic papers were available that could answer this question.

Given this, the ECR Group decided to commission research to try and shed some new light on this issue.

Building the Business Case for Improving IRA

Three academics from the University of Cardiff (UK), the Emlyon Business School (France), and the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) were appointed. Between them, they had a deep knowledge of the problem of IRA, online and offline retailing, the manufacturing sector (automotive parts), and experience using technologies such as RFID to improve IRA. They were tasked with designing and delivering a field-based experiment to prove (or not) that sales increased when IRA was improved. To support this aim, they designed an experiment consisting of matching test and control stores where initial stock counts would be completed, after which all book stock inventory records would be corrected to what was physically found in the audits. After twelve weeks, there would be another stock count in only the test stores, and the inventory records would again be corrected.

At the end of the next twelve-week period, both the test and control stores would again be audited, and the rate of sales in the test stores compared with those in the control stores. Seven large European retail chains from the food and clothing sector agreed to provide data, and in total, the study

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collated twenty-four weeks of data from over 1 million SKU records in over ninety retail stores.

The first set of data revealed that 60 percent of inventory records counted were inaccurate—an IRA rate of 40 percent. Of those SKUs that were inaccurate, 53 percent had physically less stock than expected according to book stock records, possibly due to factors such as theft, scanning errors (especially at self-checkouts), and unrecorded writeoffs. For the remaining 47 percent of SKUs, more stock was found than expected, possibly due to scanning errors, undercounting from previous audits, and/or overshipment from distribution centers (DCs).

More importantly, the academics were able to prove that when the inventory records in the test stores were corrected midway through the experiment, they found a sales increase of between 4 percent and 8 percent.

For those SKUs where the inventory records showed a negative variance, sales increased 10 percent. Perhaps not surprisingly, for the 40 percent of items with an exact match, there was no sales increase. However, for those SKUs with a positive variance, there was a sales increase of 8 percent.

In many respects, this seems like a confounding finding. Why would having more inventory than you

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First, loss prevention teams were noted as infrequent visitors to the buyer’s office, with only 25 percent of buyers recalling a meeting with them in the last twelve months.

When they did meet, buyers viewed the data presented by loss prevention as simplistic, often just a list of the top loss items for their category as a percent of sales, with no root-cause analysis. thought and correcting it result in a sales increase?

In discussions with the participating retailers, the academics learned that SKUs found to have a surplus compared with expected book stock records often had stock located in

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various locations away from the shelf, which was invariably empty. In this respect, these SKUs were suffering from a phantom out of stock—it was within the store but located in a place where it was not available for sale.

The audit process identified this stock and reset the system and associated shelf replenishment, kickstarting the selling process. Hence, awareness of positive variance led to an increase in sales.

With the business case for IRA improvement showing a 4 to 8 percent sales increase, and with insights on other potential benefits of improving IRA such as reduced inventory holding and productivity, the findings were published and presented to the industry in February 2019. Since publication, the results have been reproduced in multiple supply chain articles and presented at numerous conferences, and the report has been downloaded hundreds of times from the ECR website, mainly by those in supply chain and audit roles.

Inventory Record Accuracy: A Loss Prevention Responsibility?

You may be wondering what this has to do with loss prevention. Well, to answer this question, it is instructive to look at some important research that focused on understanding how loss prevention could better engage with other parts of a retail organization, especially the buying function.

Led by Nicole DeHoratius and based upon interviews with thirty-one USA retailers and over 300 buyers, the research found the following.

First, loss prevention teams were noted as infrequent visitors to the buyer’s office, with only 25 percent of buyers recalling a meeting with them in the last twelve months. When they did meet, buyers viewed the data presented by loss prevention as simplistic, often just a list of the top loss items for their category as a percent of sales, with no root-cause analysis. Further, the proposed interventions all seemed intent on

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

IMPROVING INVENTORY RECORD ACCURACY tackling one root cause—theft—often with a very negative impact on sales and shopper satisfaction. As such, the loss prevention team is often seen as an adversary, fighting against the buyer’s goal to grow sales, and so were

problem. If this context is familiar to you, then here are five valuable contributions you can make to help lead the company’s response to the business opportunity of improved inventory records.

Inventory Record Accuracy: A FiveStep Action Plan for the Loss Prevention Team

To read more about the research by Nicole DeHoratius about the role of loss prevention in inventory accuracy and engaging with merchants to protect assets, see “Engaging Merchants in the Protection of Assets” in the September–October 2015 edition or read it on the magazine website at LossPreventionMedia.com.

By adopting the IRA metric, a more intuitive and compelling metric than just unknown loss most commonly associated with shop theft, more parts of a retail organization are likely to be engaged to address the retail loss problem.

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best avoided.

One of her principal recommendations was that LP should adopt IRA as a measure. In her view, this would help move the perception of the problem from being viewed as only about theft to a problem that transcends the organization, especially when the data showed that there were as many positive variances as there were negative ones.

By adopting IRA, the LP function can begin to make better and more influential links with buyers, supply chain leaders, and others, showing the value they can bring to improving on-shelf availability and promoting sales. This in turn can make broadranging dialogue about other issues relevant to LP more likely with these functions as they have built credibility and perceived value, which in turn may encourage the greater reciprocal support and assistance.

Returning to the question: what does IRA have to do with LP? The answer in short is that by adopting the IRA metric, a more intuitive and compelling metric than just unknown loss most commonly associated with shop theft, more parts of a retail organization are likely to be engaged to address the retail loss

Step 1: Display the metric in your scorecard. Include IRA, as defined in this research, as another core metric for your team and display it on your scorecard. Also consider adding an

improvement target. For example, declare that in this financial year, your team will increase the percentage of stores where IRA is improving versus last year, from (say) 35 percent to 45 percent.

This step may be more obvious and access to the data easier if your team is already conducting the counts or owns the relationship with the third-party audit provider. However, if your team is not the owner, plan a meeting with that team, share your intentions to track this metric, and request access to the data. A clear advantage of this approach is that when the IRA data is displayed alongside the shrink data, the relationship between the two can become clearer for all those managing inventory loss and variance.

Step 2: Dive deeply into the data.

Invest time as a team or a dedicated resource to deeply interrogate all your existing inventory count data through the lens of IRA. Here could be two basic lines of enquiry: What are the items with the most positive gains?

Are there similar looking items on the negative variance? Do these items also appear as positive gains on the audits of other stores?

For the items with the highest negative variances, to what extent would your judgment suggest that the primary reason they are

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PREPARING FOR IMPROVING INVENTORY AN ORC RECORD EPIDEMIC ACCURACY POST COVID-19 Secondly, focus the discussion on item-level analysis, perhaps creating a company top 100 gains and losses list, displaying the highest item-level variances, both positive and negative.

This view might be refreshing to others and a contrast to what is normally shared by the LP team, which is a view (often at category level) of the value of negative variances found in the audits.

It will also help debunk the myth that unknown loss (shrink) is simply just a theft problem best solved by those in security roles.

Finally, invite questions and debate on possible explanations for the variances. For example, why is there variance between stores? Why do stores served from different DCs have different rates of IRA? Why are some categories and items within categories more accurate than others? These conversations will naturally invite

As an LP team, take time to regularly talk IRA (and the causes of inaccuracy) with all parts of the business.

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showing such a negative variance is malicious versus nonmalicious causes? For nonmalicious items, does the data show that these losses are location-specific or a problem experienced across all stores, suggesting the items were set up incorrectly by the buyer?

One retailer, who has been undertaking this type of deep investigation work on store count data for over fifteen years, annually discovers causes of losses and gains that when resolved reduce their unknown loss number by circa 15 percent. By removing these systemic issues—such as DC shorts or overshipments, errors in prefilled display quantities, promotional offers set up incorrectly, incorrect recipe quantities for production items, vendors undershipping or overshipping, and system issues such as crashes that eliminate or duplicate data—it can secure greater accountability in stores and help to remove excuses.

Step 3: Talk IRA. As an LP team, take time to regularly talk IRA (and the causes of inaccuracy) with all parts of the business. In the first instance, ensure that other parts of the business, especially the buyers, understand that the IRA metric and the more familiar unknown loss (shrink) number are two different metrics originating from the same audit data.

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further analysis. For example, is there a correlation between IRA and rates of store shrinkage?

Step 4: Analyze the size of the prize. Plan to create a case for a “step change” in managing the inventory record inaccuracy (IRI) problem in your organization by repeating the ECR research experiment to confirm your size of the prize and the potential sales gains from greater inventory accuracy.

To assist your team, seek help from others, for example, the market research team to design the experiment and a business data analyst to analyze the data.

Alternatively, consider external resources such as your third-party count vendors or academia. By working collaboratively with other parts of the business and/or with experts outside of the company, you will not only ensure that you have the right expertise, but also have greater credibility when presenting the results, which will help to secure the necessary support you need to get started.

Step 5: Start a fire. Under the leadership of LP and with the endorsement of the board and C suite, establish a crossfunctional team to align on the drivers of IRA, and start to set up efforts to drive the relevant improvement opportunities: ■ Company-wide awareness program—increase awareness of the metric, its relevance and financial significance, and the role you play in improving IRA. ■ Incentive and bonus design—introduce IRA as a measure for all functions and/or as a discrete element in the incentive plan.

■ Master file management accuracy—undertake audits of the master file by buyer and by vendor; seek to understand their respective compliance rates and encourage progress and improvement.

■ Logistics and distribution center pick accuracy—adopt new incentives, procedures, and technologies to improve accuracy rates and reduce the quantity of mispicks and wrong quantity

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IMPROVING INVENTORY RECORD ACCURACY shipments to stores that deteriorate the IRA of stores.

■ Inventory count frequency—consider the business case for increasing the frequency of inventory counts for stores and for certain categories to restore accuracy and to recover lost sales.

■ RFID—consider or reconsider a project to investigate whether there can be a business case for the use of a mobile reader and the application of RFID tags on cases or items to improve IRA (where this technology is suitable).

The cross-functional team should meet regularly, and findings and actions reported up to sponsors on a quarterly basis, together with recommendations on the business case for investing in new initiatives such as data analysis or technology.

Your Turn

This article set out to make the case that improving IRA should be

a business priority, and with the research confirming a 6 percent growth in sales, the time to act is now. The article then made the case that if the loss prevention team adopted IRA as a metric, it would help them increase the engagement of others in managing unknown loss, especially the buyer function. Finally, we have presented five valuable contributions that could help position the loss prevention team at the forefront of managing the problem and the opportunity.

It is, of course, impossible for ECR to know whether any of these recommendations are relevant or not to your organization and your team, but we think they can be. We also believe that IRA will grow in relevance for all retail businesses as their operations become more complex, with inventory in many more locations and with greater volumes now heading backwards as rates of returns increase.

As with all previous articles, we would welcome your feedback and any examples of how you have been able to use this article to generate internal debate, discussion, and possible new actions. This research, and other research on retail loss management, is freely available to download from the ECR website. In addition, there is no cost to participating in future ECR meetings or research studies. To learn more about ECR, visit the website at ecrshrinkgroup.com or email info@ecrshrinkgroup.com.

COLIN PEACOCK is a visiting fellow at the University of Leicester and the strategic coordinator for the ECR Community’s Shrinkage & OSA Group. Prior to these appointments, he had a thirtyyear career at Gillette and Procter & Gamble. Peacock can be reached at colinmpeacock@ecr-shrink-group.com.

Connect With Your Crew Let your audience choose their preferred platform to increase awareness and participation. At LPM Media Group, our mobile and digital solutions move meaningful connections from possibility to reality.

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FUTURE OF LP

What Happens When Civil Unrest Turns Violent?

By Tom Meehan, CFI Meehan is retail technology editor for LP Magazine as well as chief strategy officer and chief information security officer for CONTROLTEK. Previously, Meehan was director of technology and investigations with Bloomingdale’s, where he was responsible for physical security, internal investigations, systems and data analytics. He currently serves as the chair of the Loss Prevention Research Council’s (LPRC) innovations working group. Meehan recently published is first book titled Evolution of Retail Asset Protection: Protecting Your Profit in a Digital Age. He can be reached at TomM@LPportal.com.

How Elections and Retailers Can Be Impacted

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t’s not news that 2020 has been a chaotic year. From the global COVID-19 pandemic beginning in March to the protests across the country in response to the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis at the end of May, it seems impossible to predict what might happen next. But as we’ve seen so many times in the past, history often repeats itself. And this isn’t the first time that widespread civil unrest has taken hold of our country—with longlasting results.

With 2020 being an election year, many political experts and media outlets have been hyperfocused on how these atypical current events will affect the presidential election this November. However, the United States was in a similar situation only half a century ago, during the year of the 1968 presidential election.

The Link Between Riots and Elections Political experts have found that when civil unrest devolves into chaos and violence, it generates the wrong kind of attention and provokes a hostile response, as seen when Nixon based both his campaign and his presidency on his law and order stance. These experts have also uncovered the direct link between public awareness of race-related civil unrest and violence (such as riots and looting) and a decline in the Democratic vote share in both 1968 and 1972.

Many political observers expect that President Donald Trump will heavily feature law and order in his campaign for reelection. The president already got started with a tweet in May, along with his use of the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” which originated with third-party conservative and 1968 presidential candidate George Wallace.

What Happened in 1968?

Early in the pandemic, the National Retail Federation (NRF) found that more than nine in ten customers changed their shopping habits in response to the pandemic, and more than half of customers chose to shop online for products they would normally buy in store.Though retail has had to adapt to other industry changes, like the shift to online retail and greater digitization, there isn’t a precedent to guide how we can adapt our businesses to the changes brought on by a pandemic.

In April 1968, civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, followed by politician and longtime civil rights advocate Robert F. Kennedy a couple of months later.

The nation erupted in protest against these events, with riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, and many other cities. The Vietnam War was still raging on, with hundreds of thousands of troops deployed in a long and bloody war that divided public opinion for years. The year of 1968 even had its own public health crisis, though on a much smaller scale, with the “Hong Kong flu,” which led to the deaths of about 100,000 Americans.

Unlike what we’ve seen in the protests against racism and police brutality this year, the protests in 1968 were far more violent and widespread. As civil unrest descended into chaos and violence, the political response focused on the idea of “law and order,” previously limited to more regional politics in the Deep South, making criminal justice an essential policy platform on a national scale. The Republican presidential nominee based his campaign on law and order, leading to a wave of repressive criminal-justice policies that affected politics for decades after the 1968 election. This newly introduced policy platform pressured politicians of both parties to feature law and order in their campaigns in order to be elected.

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A political scientist from George Mason University said to the Washington Post, “One of the things that I think a lot of people don’t realize is that urban rioting in American history has almost always helped conservative forces.” With the resurgence of law and order in political discussions, I think this year will continue to have some surprises in store for us.

What Does This All Mean for Retailers?

Something else that isn’t news: the retail industry has taken a huge blow during the coronavirus pandemic. Many retailers have not been deemed essential businesses, so they had to close operations for at least a couple of months starting in March as the United States instituted measures to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Early in the pandemic, the National Retail Federation (NRF) found that more than nine in ten customers changed their shopping habits in response to the pandemic, and more than half of customers chose to shop online for products they would normally buy in store. Though retail has had to adapt to other industry changes, like the shift to online retail and greater digitization, there isn’t a precedent to guide how we can adapt our businesses to the changes brought on by a pandemic.

With the protests that began in late May, retailers faced another issue that impacted them more than other industries.

Civil unrest—such as riots and looting where destruction of property is the main result—heavily impacts retailers of all sizes. As retailers closed locations or boarded up their stores to protect their businesses from the violence, major retailers like Target, Walmart, and Nordstrom conveyed their support for the movement, rather than outright condemning the damage to their businesses.

The NRF addressed looting in a statement in early June, focusing on the history of racial injustice in America and supporting peaceful protests while also decrying the negative impact of “the actions of a few.”

Though major retailers have largely been supportive of the protests, they often aren’t the ones who suffer the worst consequences when civil unrest becomes violent. If smaller retail stores are damaged by riots or have merchandise stolen by looters, their entire businesses could be compromised.

Though many business owners have insurance, the money they receive from their insurance companies might not be enough to repair all the damages, let alone help them recoup from sales lost when they had to stop operations to protect their employees’ safety and repair any damages.

As we’ve seen this year, small businesses have also been hit the worst by COVID-19. In a study published in July, researchers found that over 40 percent of small businesses have temporarily closed because of COVID-19, and overall employment by small businesses has declined by 39 percent since January.

As we are approaching the end of 2020, I believe there are going to be a lot of changes, not only within the retail industry but also in the political world. The digital transformation will continue to accelerate at a rapid pace. Retail has met and overcome many obstacles in recent decades, and I’m confident that we will continue to see that resilience in the future.

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47

ASK THE EXPERT

Supportive Coaching Reduces Shrink and Adds to the Bottom Line

Interview with Corey Adams Adams is the vice president of client services at Appriss Retail where, since 2011, he has helped 100+ retailers around the world maximize their success with the installation, development, and usage of analytics tools and programs. He manages a team of consultants working in the US and abroad. He has more than thirty years of experience in retail and loss prevention, ranging from a Global 50 retailer to small specialty chains in both field and corporate positions, as well as law enforcement.

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artin, an LP analyst for a major retail chain, looked at his screen and wondered. “Why were the cashiers at store 5221 popping open their cash drawers three times as often as cashiers at a similar store?” Cynthia, the store manager, rubbed her head as she read a notice from Martin that all the cashiers in her store needed to be retrained because the transactions contained “too many exceptions.” She cleared her schedule to start the hours of training, though she was uncertain where the associates were failing.

These fictitious characters illustrate a common disconnect.

Poor cashier habits and untargeted training cause inefficiency and loss at the front of the store and create noise in the analytics channel. We talked with Corey Adams to find a way to address the issues.

finding out the “why” behind unusual behavior can deliver big results. Is there a mechanical or software glitch that makes drawer-popping necessary?

Why is this an important consideration now?

Retailers have had tremendous employee churn this year, and we are looking ahead to holiday hiring. Supportive training helps stores retain employees, reducing hiring costs and employee fraud risk since new hires are more likely to steal than employees with longevity. Additionally, it communicates a commitment to employees.

LP professionals need to work with store operations and management to lower risk and reduce noise through cashier coaching. Sales reducing activities (SRAs) include cashiering techniques falling outside standard approved process. Point-of-sale (POS) improvisations, workarounds, and forgetfulness are often cited as training issues, but they need to be addressed because they cause noise in the data stream.

Why are cashier techniques and retraining LP’s problem?

Isn’t that up to store operations?

LP professionals need to work with store operations and management to lower risk and reduce noise through cashier coaching. Sales reducing activities (SRAs) include cashiering techniques falling outside standard approved process. Point-of-sale (POS) improvisations, workarounds, and forgetfulness are often cited as training issues, but they need to be addressed because they cause noise in the data stream.

This leads to false positives in the exception-based reporting (EBR) system, which then leads to unnecessary investigations.

The noise also raises the threshold for what looks like outlier behavior. True fraud is often masked, and excessive SRAs often lead to lower profits and diminished customer experience.

How does LP get involved?

At an executive level, the LP team should be developing a closer relationship with operations. LP benefits from solutions that allow them to identify SRAs. They can approach operations with ways to improve key operations metrics—better customer experience, increased sales, greater efficiency, and lower shrink.

Top-level executives also need to communicate to analysts and investigators that it’s okay to be curious.

Consider your example. Martin noticed unusual activity and prescribed a remedy. However, he should have been more specific. The manager will deliver generic coaching and do it for all the cashiers, whether they need it or not. Additionally, Martin should have followed his curiosity. In the real world,

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What do you see as the highest hurdle?

The decision to make time to implement an improved coaching process. An automated system to monitor the need, the action taken, and the results would allow store management and LP the time to focus on delivering appropriate training.

Once a process is in place, though, store management will be able to deliver less frequent, more impactful training. Better training leads to a more pleasant customer experience and more efficient operations. Plus, minimizing SRAs will dramatically improve profitability. |

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FEATURE

WE ALL KNOW… OR DO WE?

IMPROVINGTHE SCIENCE OF EVIDENCE-BASED LOSS PREVENTION

Syda Productions/fran_kie/Shutterstock.com Photo illustration by SPARK Publications

By Cory Lowe, PhD, and Read Hayes, PhD

WE ALL KNOW…OR DO WE?

L

oss prevention is one of the most neglected areas in criminology; in fact, searching the most prestigious journal, Criminology, for “loss prevention” returns zero articles. Likewise, a search of Justice Quarterly returns four articles; the Journal of Criminal Justice returns four articles; and the Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency returns just two articles—and these journals have been around for decades. This is not to say that high-quality loss prevention research does not exist; in fact, our colleagues at the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) have published many articles, and there are many studies in criminology and other fields that are directly applicable to loss prevention. Nevertheless, the point remains that loss prevention is an immensely neglected aspect of research.

This lack of research is problematic because retail crimes are a serious threat to retailers and communities. Retailers need to know what does and does not work to reduce shrink and protect their assets while increasing sales.

Furthermore, criminal justice policies have a tremendous impact on retailers, and we need to know how these policies affect theft and other forms of shrink. If we are going to make informed, evidence-based decisions, we must conduct rigorous studies using the appropriate data.

Unfortunately, even though retailers generate a wealth of data on a daily basis, many decisions are still based on anecdotal evidence—that is, on things that “we all know.”

Rigorous, well-designed loss prevention studies would not only give criminologists new insights to the causes and nature of retail losses but also help retailers and the public make more informed decisions.

For example, it is common to hear loss prevention leaders suggest that raising felony shoplifting thresholds

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is associated with increases in shoplifting. If anyone understands trends in retail theft throughout the industry, it is loss prevention leaders who examine these trends on a regular basis; however, existing research suggests that raising felony thresholds has little to no effect on crime. Of course, the primary problem with these studies is that they often rely on official statistics to determine whether policy changes

thefts are not discovered until products are inventoried, and once a shortage is discovered, it is difficult (if not impossible) to determine whether this is due to theft or some other source of shrink. Second, one of the determinants of whether crime is reported is whether the victims believe something will be done about the crime. If individuals believe the criminal justice system will not treat the crime seriously, then victims may

The dark figure of crime: crimes that are never detected or reported and are never included in official crime statistics result in a change in crime.

For example, a widely discussed study by Bartos and Kubrin (2018) used data from the Uniform Crime Reports and found that California’s enactment of Proposition 47 had no detectable effect on violent crime, and possibly a small increase in some property crimes, if any. This study has been cited by policy makers and think tanks to justify raising felony thresholds elsewhere; unfortunately, studies such as these cannot account for what criminologists refer to as the “dark figure” of crime. The dark figure of crime is the number of crimes that go unreported or undiscovered and, therefore, never show up in the official statistics. If most retail theft goes undetected and/ or unreported, then studies that rely on official statistics cannot establish whether increasing thresholds are associated with changes in theft.

Of course, there are several reasons to believe retail theft is underreported. First, many retail

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not bother reporting it to the police.

If raising the felony theft threshold leads to a reduction in crime reporting among retailers, then studies that rely on official crime reports may show an apparent decrease in retail crime even if it is, in fact, increasing. Studies that rely on official statistics may not find the “true” effect of these policy changes because the increase in crime is offset by a decrease in reporting. This issue reveals two important criminological questions: (1) is an increase in the felony threshold for theft associated with greater shrink, and (2) is an increase in the felony theft threshold associated with reductions in crime reporting by retailers? These types of questions can only be answered if retailers cooperate with researchers to conduct the necessary research.

However, there are many more topics in loss prevention that require additional research, including the effectiveness of loss prevention solutions, the factors that promote

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

WE ALL KNOW…OR DO WE? US Spending on Science, Space and Technology Correlates with Suicides by Hanging, Strangulation, and Suffocation

effective collaboration among ORC investigators, and many other topics.

$30 Billion

10,000

$25 Billion

8,000

$20 Billion

6,000

$15 Billion

4,000 2004

2005

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Hanging Suicides

and reactive investigations were, unquestionably, the best policing practices. This lasted until research suggested that: (1) in most cases, victims waited too long to call police, so rapidly responding to these calls would not solve crimes; (2) random patrol did not seem to reduce crime in well-designed studies; and (3) only a small subset of cases could be solved via investigations, and those that could be solved were largely solved because of victim cooperation and evidence collection at the scene of the crime, not anything done in a crime lab.

All these studies challenged policing and led to more innovative, proactive policing strategies.

Establishing Causal

Bandwagon effect: the tendency of people to adopt the widely held attitudes and beliefs of others within their group LP MAGAZINE

Hanging Suicides

Of course, we all know that increasing felony thresholds is associated with increases in crime; however, there are several problems with “we all know” thinking in loss prevention, just as there are problems with “we all know” thinking in criminology. “We all know thinking” is the tendency for people to unquestionably stick with what they and others in their group think they know. First, this type of thinking is problematic because in many cases, we are lying to ourselves. It can be unpleasant to think about and admit, but there is a lot we do not know. Second, this type of thinking is problematic because it is contrary to innovative thinking—it does not require an individual to think critically or question what they think they know, because they “know” that they are right about what they know. Finally, this type of thinking is prone to cognitive biases; that is, defects in thought processes that are likely to produce flawed decisions.

In fact, “we all know” thinking represents a cognitive bias known as bandwagon bias or the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect refers to the tendency of people to adopt the widely held attitudes and beliefs of others within their social groups.

For example, at one point, police all agreed that rapid response to calls for service, random patrol,

US Spending on Science

The Problems with “We All Know Thinking”

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US Spending On Science

Relationships in Loss Prevention Science The discussion of the relationship between felony thresholds and crime reveals the complexity of establishing causal relationships. It is important to establish whether relationships are causal; otherwise, we might come to believe that a supposed cause is more important than it actually is.

For example, did you know that increases in US spending on science, space, and technology is associated with increased suicides by hanging, strangulation, and suffocation from 1999 through 2009? Based on this information, we might decide that we should reduce spending on science and technology. Of course, it is more likely that a third factor is related to both of these and that there is no causal relationship between US science and technology and suicide. This highlights the importance of establishing causal relationships—if we believe a cause produces an effect, we will make decisions based on that belief.

There are at least three criteria that must be satisfied to establish a causal relationship between a presumed cause (such as the adoption of a product protection

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WE ALL KNOW…OR DO WE? solution) and a presumed effect (such as a change in crime or shrink). First, there must be a systematic relationship between the presumed “cause” and the “effect”; in other words, when one event occurs the other event must consistently co-occur, which is called correlation. Second, the “cause” must always precede the “effect” in time; there cannot be times when the “effect” precedes the “cause” (temporal precedence).

Finally, all other explanations for the relationship must be ruled out (isolation of cause). The studies on the relationship between felony thresholds satisfy the first two criteria; however, they cannot satisfy the third because they cannot determine the extent to which

the policy changes affect changes in reporting.

Different types of studies and different types of evidence are better equipped to establish causal relationships. While speaking with loss prevention professionals, it has become clear that most loss prevention decisions are made based on anecdotal evidence, at worst, or on the basis of results from a descriptive study, at best.

Furthermore, even when retailers conduct an internal study, they are often rushed and are not conducted with the rigor necessary to provide the best evidence. Of course, this is the nature of our fast-paced industry—we need solutions that reduce shrink and improve sales, and we need them fast.

However, when studies are not rigorously conducted over a

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Three Criteria for Establishing a Causal Relationship 1. Correlation: systematic co-occurrence of cause and effect 2. Temporal precedence: the cause always comes before the effect in time 3. Isolation of cause: all other explanations are ruled out sufficient period of time, we may make decisions that have unexpected, negative consequences. For example, teaching kids to “say no to drugs” to reduce drug use or introducing at-risk youths to the horrors of prison to deter them from crime— both seem like good ideas at first.

However, evaluations of the original Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) curriculum and “Scared Straight” programs suggested that these programs and practices resulted in increased crime and substance use. Similarly, in a search to reduce loss, many retailers have locked up products in glass cases and cabinets. If the goal is solely to reduce theft, then this is a wonderful solution; however, retailers must also make sales.

The Hierarchy of Evidence in Loss Prevention Research

The hierarchy of evidence in loss prevention research, which has been adapted from evidence-based nursing, shows the different types of studies and the “quality” of evidence they tend to provide. At the top of the hierarchy are systematic reviews and meta-analyses of well-conducted research, while anecdotal evidence and expert opinions are at the

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bottom. Types of studies near the peak of the hierarchy tend to satisfy all three criteria for establishing a causal relationship (correlation, temporal precedence, and isolation of cause) when they are well designed and well conducted, while types of evidence at the bottom cannot even begin to establish a causal relationship. However, the types of research at the bottom are an incredibly important foundation upon which more rigorous studies can be built.

To return to the example of locked cases and cabinets, anecdotal evidence (level 7) and research that describes the problem (levels 5 and 6) suggest that locked cases are associated with a reduction in sales. This is presumably because they introduce friction into the shopping experience. However, unless we conduct a well-designed study, we will never know whether this is true because there are many other possible explanations. For example, it is possible that retailers installed these cases and cabinets in locations that were experiencing a simultaneous increase in crime and local economic decline. This would produce a combination of reduced sales and increased theft that would have encouraged retailers to

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

WE ALL KNOW…OR DO WE? Hierarchy of Evidence in Loss Prevention Research

1

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Randomized control trials

2 Evidence from well-designed controlled trails without randomization (quasi-experimental)

Evidence from systematic reviews of descriptive and qualitative studies (meta-synthesis)

3

Evidence from well-designed case-control or cohort surveys

4 5

Evidence from a single descriptive or qualitative study

6 Anecdotal evidence, expert opinions (not based on rigorous research)

7 (Note: This was adapted from Ackley et al., 2008)

install cases to protect these stores’ diminishing profitability. Later, when management examines the sales reports, they may find that sales decreased after the cases were installed. This establishes that there is a correlation between cases and reductions in sales, and establishing a correlation is a key feature of case control and cohort studies. However, to ensure the trend started after the locking cases were installed (and not before), retailers must examine the trends in theft before and after the installation. Examining the trends before and after installing the cases will allow managers to ensure there is a correlation and that the cause preceded the effect—two of the basic criteria for establishing causal relationships. Examining the “before and after” effects of a solution is a key aspect of many quasi-experimental studies (level 4).

Of course, this is preposterous because “it is accepted wisdom, and we know for certain” that cabinets and cases reduce sales specifically because of shopper friction. This is a joke in “scare quotes” because we cannot be sure our explanation is correct. Cases and cabinets may not affect sales because they slow down the shopping experience or reduce impulse sales, but rather they may just drive customers away because they signal that the store is crime prone. In this case, removing thousands of dollars’ worth of cases may not be the right, cost-effective solution; instead, stores may need to take other actions to buffer the negative effect of the cases on customer perceptions by making the store locations safer, or at least making them seem to be safer.

If we want to produce the best knowledge regarding the effect of locking products in cases on shrink and sales, we should conduct randomized controlled trials (level 2 in the hierarchy). In this type of study, several stores would be randomly assigned to a control and

Criminal justice policies have a tremendous impact on retailers, and we need to know how these policies affect theft and other forms of shrink.

If we are going to make informed, evidence-based decisions, we must conduct rigorous studies using the appropriate data.

Unfortunately, even though retailers generate a wealth of data on a daily basis, many decisions are still based on anecdotal evidence—that is, on things that “we all know.”

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WE ALL KNOW…OR DO WE? treatment group, and glass cases would be installed in the treatment stores to determine whether these stores experienced reductions in sales, theft, and customer traffic, and whether installing the cases was associated with increased fear of crime. All of these factors (sales, shrink, customer traffic, and fear) would need to be measured before and after the installation of the cases in order to establish a correlation between cases and these outcomes, and to ensure that cause led to the

reviews are highly structured summaries of research on a topic, while meta-analyses provide a quantitative summary of the effect of one or more phenomena on others.

For example, there are meta-analyses of the effects of drugs across many studies; these provide a summary of the average effect of a drug.

However, to conduct meta-analyses and systematic reviews, there must be a large amount of research on a topic. Unfortunately, we have not conducted enough well-designed and

There are several problems with “we all know” thinking in loss prevention, just as there are problems with “we all know” thinking in criminology.

“We all know thinking” is the tendency for people to unquestionably stick with what they and others in their group think they know.

effect. However, random assignment of stores allows us to rule out other explanations because it ensures that any differences between the groups is due to random chance only; in other words, the control group and the treatment stores should be very similar with regard to other characteristics. This is important because it means there cannot be any other factor that explains differences in outcomes between the stores. This study would enable us to understand the effects on sales and shrink and would provide evidence of whether this was due to decreased store traffic and/or increased fear of crime at the store.

Finally, at the peak of the hierarchy are systematic reviews and meta-analyses of well-designed and well-conducted studies. Systematic

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well-conducted studies to even begin to conduct a meta-analysis. In other words, we don’t know enough.

Improving the Science and Practice of Loss Prevention Research

The industry can do many things to promote evidence-based research.

The first step is not to be too ambitious—there are many things that we do not know that we do not know because we have not conducted basic research. For example, qualitative and observational studies need to be conducted on topics such as: (1) what works to encourage compliance with mask policies, (2) what is the safest and most efficient way to conduct curbside delivery, and (3) what factors contribute to the successful prosecution of ORC offenders. Heck, we don’t even

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have a good, industry-wide definition of organized retail crime. Addressing these types of issues and answering these types of questions are the foundational first step to promoting evidence-based practice.

Of course, making loss prevention evidence-based will require that retailers invest in research, but there are many opportunities for retailers to do this. First, there are many young (and old) researchers at universities who must produce research to advance their careers.

Many of these scholars need data and would love to conduct surveys with your customers or access your existing data. Furthermore, they are accustomed to doing research with humans and protecting their privacy and confidentiality. Of course, all of this is also true of organizations like the LPRC that work with retailers and LP solution providers every week to conduct impactful, relevant research. A large amount of research needs to take place, and it will take time to develop loss prevention into a fully fledged science with a large body of research findings. Nevertheless, if we work together as an industry, then one day we will be able to honestly and confidently say what we all know and what we do not know.

DR.CORY LOWE is a research scientist at the Loss Prevention Research Council. He received his doctorate in criminology in 2020 from the University of Florida (UF). At UF he specialized in crime and delinquency prevention, communities and crime, criminological theory, and research methods and data analysis. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and other scholarly publications on the causes of crime, crime and delinquency prevention, and the factors associated with substance use and delinquency.

DR. READ HAYES is director of the Loss Prevention Research Council and coordinator of the Loss Prevention Research Team at the University of Florida.

He can be reached at 321303-6193 or via email at rhayes@lpresearch.org.

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

SUPPLY CHAIN

By Glenn Master Master is a recognized industry expert with over twenty years of experience in loss prevention and security management. He has worked both domestically and internationally specializing in supply chain, transportation, and logistics. Master has held executive and management positions with companies such as Pitney Bowes, Newgistics, Office Depot, Henry Schein, and Motorola. He is cofounder and current board director of the International Supply Chain Protection Organization (ISCPO). He is also an adjunct professor at Texas Christian University teaching undergraduate courses in criminal justice, security, and LP management.

He can be reached at Glenn.Master@pb.com.

The COVID-19 Evolution and the Global Supply Chain

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t was March 3rd in Dallas, and we had just kicked off the sixth annual International Supply Chain Protection Organization (ISCPO) conference. Despite several speakers pulling out last minute because of company travel restrictions due to COVID-19, the conference was a huge success overall. The underlying tone that week, however, was that a tsunami was building in the form of a global pandemic. Little did anyone know when they departed the conference what events would unfold in the next thirty days.

While most of us in loss prevention are accustomed to dealing with all kinds of immediate emergency situations and impending disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a set of events that the global supply chain had not experienced since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The gravity of this situation became even more apparent the following Tuesday when I hosted a supply chain industry leadership call to understand what my LP peers were anticipating within their respective businesses.

This event was called the “COVID Peak,” and it rivaled everything you would normally see during Christmas peak—times ten. As with most peaks, this bountiful number of packages posed many challenges for the global supply chain.

As peers from across the globe began to share their experiences, it became obvious that we had all underestimated what was occurring. The impact of the pandemic was starting to spread worldwide, creating a global supply chain slowdown. Employees were unable to go work in distribution centers, trucks were unable to transit cross-border, and airlines were scaling back daily LP MAGAZINE

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flights to levels never experienced before. The end result was that global e-commerce and fulfillment was going to experience major slowdowns—and in some cases, no movement at all. At that point, I began to implement business recovery calls within my own organization, as is protocol for any impending disaster. Little did I anticipate that the pandemic would not only impact our business but also my family.

While global pandemics are nothing new to society, very few of us were alive to have experienced the last pandemic, which was the Spanish flu outbreak in the early 1900s. Over the next several months, the global population took part in a collective lock down, and we witnessed the world economic markets begin to crash unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. Needless to say, it was a time of great uncertainty where many of us were forced to balance work with the need to take precautions for our families’ personal safety, security, and financial well-being.

From April through June we saw retail commerce come to a complete halt, e-commerce was reduced dramatically, and necessities such as toilet paper, bleach wipes, and food were becoming absent from grocery shelves. For people living in concentrated cities such as New York, these problems were further compounded. And as predicted, we saw a major slowdown in the global supply chain.

Something, however, began to occur towards the end of May. As human beings have done since the beginning of time, we began to adapt to this non-normal way of life. While retail in general was suffering greatly because brick-and-mortar stores were closed, there was a progressive surge in online ordering, which resulted in a tremendous increase of e-commerce parcels flooding the supply chain and transportation networks. This event was called the “COVID Peak,” and it rivaled everything you would normally see during Christmas peak—times ten. As with most peaks, this bountiful number of packages posed many challenges for the global supply chain: ■ Forecasting. Retail typically does a good job forecasting events and the volume of goods directed toward its contracted transportation providers. But it wasn’t until orders started coming in that the industry realized e-commerce was increasing exponentially, making SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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it difficult to forecast the anticipated volume. A worldwide population had time on their hands while being quarantined at home and was spending that time shopping online.

■ Logistics. Proper volume forecasts dictate how transportation providers will staff and adjust their shipping platforms. However, the unexpected online volume came with little if any warning, resulting in processing backlogs. In some companies, these backlogs were up to four weeks. In addition, most e-commerce parcels that are shipped to international destinations normally travel as cargo in the bellies of passenger flights. With global airlines reducing their flights by up to 90 percent, this left very few options for shipping companies. In response, some airlines began to convert their passenger aircraft into cargo planes by removing the seats and cubing the planes out with parcels.

Surprisingly, logistics providers adapted very quickly to these challenges.

■ Staffing. In the midst of a full-fledged pandemic, regional outbreaks had a major impact on staffing. This was especially true in large-scale distribution centers, now tasked with processing a significant volume of products as they flowed into and out of their facilities.

Areas especially hard-hit included Italy, Spain, the UK, and the northeastern US. New and innovative ways were needed to conduct health screening of employees prior to entering their facilities. A wide variety of methods were used, such as screening the temperatures of employees and even using new technology such as thermal imaging. In the early stages of this process, best practices were shared between organizations to pursue the most efficient and cost-effective methods. It was truly a trial-by-fire methodology that was evolving daily, but it was also among the most collaborative times I’ve experienced in my career.

and the ever-changing local, state, and federal policies, situations were occurring where normal security protocols were not being followed by management. The scammers were actually doing surveillance for potential distribution center burglaries.

The Future

As the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes our world, more consumers have begun shopping online in greater numbers and frequency. According to new data from IBM’s US Retail Index, the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years. This event will be an evolving opportunity for retailers to reposition themselves by driving revenue through e-commerce.

According to new data from IBM’s US Retail Index, the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years.This event will be an evolving opportunity for retailers to reposition themselves by driving revenue through e-commerce.

This is also going to equate to sustained volumes in the global supply chain and create additional challenges for loss prevention teams that have responsibility in this space. As someone who has spent their entire career in the supply chain, I see how the rapid pace of e-commerce growth is reshaping how transportation providers are doing business. Retailers are challenged with speed and cost-reduction as their parcels are shipped to their consumers. This is going to result in consumer parcels transiting numerous providers, which in turn will increase exposure to theft, lost, and damage.

Very similar to criminal justice law not keeping in pace with cyber-tech crime, the transportation industry has been slow to evolve with this ever-changing e-commerce driven market. Most of these companies view loss at a shipment level verses a parcel level, and it will require loss prevention to push carriers to change.

Focus for the future in transportation must include adopting and accepting industry security standards, compliance auditing, and investigations. These companies will also have to realize that if they do not have LP professionals within their own organizations to do this work, outside organizations and outsourcing must be considered. Either way, it’s a great time to be a loss prevention professional in the supply chain space.

The Evolving Role of Loss Prevention

With the fast-pace changes occurring both internally and externally, supply chain loss prevention professionals found themselves in an ever-evolving role to help their companies get through the crisis. During the initial months of the outbreak, employee theft progressively went down, while cargo theft saw a dramatic increase. This was a direct result of organized groups understanding the volume spikes occurring in the transportation network.

These crime groups also recognized that large quantities of freight were being left in distribution center lots unsecured. The old adage “freight at rest is freight at risk” was a contributing factor in most of these thefts.

Predominately in the US, fraud schemes also became prevalent. Individuals posing as federal agents were coming to distribution centers requesting to check on COVID-19 prevention measures. Most companies have very stringent policies on vetting any law enforcement or federal agency workers that arrive onsite unannounced.

However, because of the uncertainty surrounding the virus

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LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

EVIDENCE-BASED LP

by Read Hayes, PhD, CPP

Computer Vision Can Enhance Decision-Making

Dr. Hayes is director of the Loss Prevention Research Council and coordinator of the Loss Prevention Research Team at the University of Florida. He can be reached at 321-303-6193 or via email at rhayes@lpresearch.org. © 2020 Loss Prevention Research Council

A

ll day, every day, we’re making decisions. Think about it. Tune in to how you continuously take in information from the minute you wake up until you fall asleep. We consciously (or something less than that) onboard data via our sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste.

We draw on our accumulating dataset to make even the simplest choices. And we come to realize, over time, that the better our data, the better we are in using this information, the better the choices we seem to make.

Safeguarding Vulnerable People and Places

The same holds true in our professional roles as place and corporate guardians. We need good information, we often need it fast, and we need to be good at assimilating relevant data, forming a contextual picture, using good, evidence-based action frameworks, and making “the call.”

Our primary role, of course, is working to protect our people, places, and assets from the never-ending threat criminal offenders or victimizers pose. Safer places attract and retain good people, including employees, service partners, and customers. This priority means asset protection and loss prevention professionals are obligated to develop and deploy effective countermeasures or safeguards.

We can’t just wing it or rely on simple benchmarking.

We need to do a deep dive into our enterprises’ dynamics, understand prevailing and periodic risks, understand the threats, know our current controls, and know how well we execute them and their actual effectiveness. Then we harness protective frameworks like Professor Ron Clarke’s Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) model. We build, test, and retest, our solution sets. Dial them in. Create logical and science-based practices. Audit and adjust them. Execute them over time.

But regardless, our programs need to be executed leveraging the best information we can gather and access.

And we often need real-time decision support.

Situational Awareness and Understanding As we know, decisions can be better informed incorporating relevant data. More-informed decisions usually result in better outcomes. An ever-improving artificial intelligence (AI) can assist decision-makers in the moment because: (1) AI systems provide additional information to users than what they sense, already knew, LP MAGAZINE

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or could recall during an event, and (2) AI has immediate access to much more data than any user possibly could.

AI systems result from careful dataset collection, annotation, or labeling to identify verbiage, spoken language, or still or video imagery. These datasets are then used to “train” models or algorithms to identify or further learn from real-world, often real-time data that’s pulled or pushed to onboard, other on-premises, or cloud computers where inferencing or analyses are quickly conducted. This process not only is rapid (low latency), but also can pull on incredibly large datasets, including reports, scientific papers, photos, and more.

Computer Vision AI

Computer vision AI typically refers in part to using trained models to recognize visual features and actions. Our current computer vision AI stance at the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) is simple. We stipulate there are three connected but distinct computer-vision-enabled human feature or action recognition issues: ■ Positive/ethical use. Recognition models provide place managers with a heads-up on potential threats in order to better safeguard vulnerwwable people and places.

That’s it—they provide an alert. A subcomponent of this is that recognition model accuracy continues to improve with different people and condition scenarios. Dataset training increasingly includes more relevant, targeted, and contrasted data; camera image resolution continues to improve; and software/hardware speed improves with ongoing breakthroughs.

■ Limitations. Again, recognition models do not make any actual decisions, but rather inform the decision-maker of a possible threat to assess. Cancer physicians don’t let computer vision (CV) models make decisions, but they do increasingly leverage them to increase diagnostic accuracy and speed. So CV technologies support the manager by providing a data-driven heads-up. The manager may then decide to collect other information to validate a possible threat. The manager may also decide possible responses and may then decide whether to actually initiate any action. Like any process, especially protective efforts, AI use requires sound preparatory and ongoing use training as well as performance monitoring and process adjustments to maximize effectiveness and equitable use.

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Data privacy. CV-supported guardianship is employed because place users need some protection. But another component of any information collection, including HR and health records for example, need additional safeguarding. Personal images of known offenders or other threats are used to detect possible threats to people, and this dataset should be protected from unlawful or unfair use including unauthorized access.

Machine learning and deep learning AI are here and continue to expand to enable better protection, service, and place experiences, as well as efficiencies. It is vitally important AI users think through their technology needs, use cases, outcome measures, and best ethical and efficacious protocols.

sources, including LP Magazine, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the National Retail Federation, the Food Marketing Institute, and the Loss Prevention Foundation.

Likewise, our team at the LPRC is working every day to curate LP-focused, actionable information for you and your teams. The CrimeScience podcast is uploading two to four new episodes weekly featuring practitioners, scientists, and industry and medical experts providing concise ideas and updates. Look for it wherever you listen to podcasts.

Our team is also updating the LPRC COVID-19 and Rioting landing pages daily with new resource links and studies. Visit lpresearch.org/covid-19-resources. Visit the LPRC Knowledge Center at lpresearch.org to access over 300 LP and AP reports, hundreds of offender interview clips, webinars, working group action notes, cluster call notes, and other podcasts. Finally, visit the LPRC’s YouTube channel at bit.ly/LPRC-Youtube.

■

Recognition models do not make any actual decisions, but rather inform the decision-maker of a possible threat to assess.

2020 LPRC IMPACT and STRATEGY@

This year’s LPRC IMPACT conference is a full go for October 5–6, as is the third year of STRATEGY@ for the most senior LP and AP leaders. The big difference is that both will be digital using new virtual conference platforms but may still include on- or near-campus components depending on safety and travel conditions near that time.

Please register at lpresearch.org/impact or reach out to us at operations@lpresearch.org with any of your questions or suggestions.

Science2Practice

Professionals constantly improve their knowledge and skills. We all work hard in so many ways. But to stay at our best, to deliver great results, to stand out for even greater challenges, we need to keep learning. An abundance of pandemic information is out there from a variety of

THE LPRC IMPACT CONFERENCE IS GOING DIGITAL. OCTOBER 5 - 7, 2020 LPRC IMPACT is an opportunity to engage with your peers and collaborate on emerging ideas & research to fight theft, fraud, & violence. This year’s conference will transition to a fully virtual event, FREE for all to attend.

REGISTER NOW AND JOIN GLOBAL INDUSTRY LEADERS, LP/AP EXECUTIVES, & TECHNOLOGY EXPERTS FOR IMPACT 2020!

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operations@lpresearch.org

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE ADT COMMERCIAL

Elevated Skin Temperature (EST) Systems Life is different today. Screen for people with signs of elevated temperature entering your business.

Thermal Imaging for Elevated Skin Temperature Screening EST systems use thermal imaging technology to screen people for signs of an elevated skin temperature. All objects emit infrared light—a type of radiant energy that’s invisible to the human eye that we feel as heat. Thermal imaging cameras use a special lens that focuses infrared light to detect relative skin surface temperatures and can provide a leading indicator of elevated body temperature.

At ADT Commercial, we are focused on bringing the best FDA-cleared products to our customers. We offer a number of different systems as the operations and best-intended use varies from system to system. We will help you to understand the merits, limitations, and impact of the various solutions, and how they might fit in a multilayered approach to safety that best meets the needs of your organization.

Why Consider an EST System for Your Business Fever is one of the most common indications of illness.

The use of an FDA-cleared EST system can help you to efficiently screen for people with an elevated skin temperature attempting to enter your business—allowing you to take appropriate measures.

Benefits include: ■ Expeditious initial screening, avoiding delays in entry

Image Courtesy of FLIR Systems.

EST Systems Are Regulated by the FDA1

Noninvasive, noncontact first-step screening for visitors, employees, customers, vendors, contractors, and so forth ■ Helps identify those who may need additional screening to confirm elevated body temperature ■ Provides cognizance of screening, potentially deterring individuals exhibiting signs of a fever from entering ■ Helps improve duty of care to employees, promoting a healthy work environment Solutions available include: ■ Scalable and flexible solutions for different entry points and mounting locations ■ Cost-effective to enterprise-level solutions ■ Mobile and stationary solutions ■ FDA-cleared ■

Top Five Questions to Ask When Evaluating EST Systems for Your Business

Image Courtesy of FLIR Systems.

In light of recent events, discussions surrounding the implementation of EST systems for use in commercial facilities are on the rise as organizations consider all measures possible in response to the COVID-19 global health crisis. Following are just a few of the most fundamental questions to ask when evaluating these solutions as part of your overall security program.

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1. Is the system FDA-cleared?

As FDA-regulated medical devices, telethermographic and EST technologies used to provide an initial screening of human body temperature are subject to various FDA premarket clearance, registration, labeling, complaint handling, and quality regulations, among others.2

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Image Courtesy of FLIR Systems.

4. Does the application present any employee or consumer privacy issues?

Especially given the widespread application uses being considered for EST systems amid the COVID-19 pandemic, employee and consumer privacy issues must always be a top consideration. It’s imperative that businesses seek legal guidance to develop protocols following the confirmation of an individual with an elevated temperature and ensure their collection of skin temperature and fever data complies with all applicable laws concerning privacy and confidential health information.

While the FDA has temporarily relaxed certain premarket clearance and registration guidelines and has stated that it is “committed to maximum regulatory flexibility” amid the COVID-19 global health crisis, it’s important to keep in mind that the more stringent regulatory requirements are expected to be reinstated post-pandemic.3 In evaluating different vendors and solutions, ensure the manufacturer’s device is FDA-cleared for use as a telethermographic system intended for adjunctive diagnostic screening under 21 C.F.R. 884.2980(a).4 In the event that the device is not FDA-cleared for this purpose, ensure the manufacturer otherwise: (1) meets the requirements set forth in the FDA’s April 2020 Enforcement Policy for Telethermographic Systems;5 (2) meets the necessary requirements to achieve FDA clearance; and (3) has plans to immediately seek FDA clearance when the period of regulatory flexibility expires.

5. Is a secondary screening process required?

In many cases, manufacturers have obtained an FDA 510(k) premarket clearance for the product. To be eligible for such clearance, the FDA requires that an EST device be used alongside a primary means of confirming a fever, such as a medical thermometer, and should not be used for sole screening or diagnosis for any disease or condition. It’s important to note that elevated skin surface temperature on its own is not indicative of illness and that COVID-19-positive individuals may be asymptomatic and still be contagious. Any claims by manufacturers that a device can detect individuals who are COVID-19 positive are baseless and misrepresentations of these solutions’ capabilities.

Image Courtesy of FLIR Systems.

2. Does the system meet FDA accuracy requirements?

In order to take advantage of the FDA’s temporary flexibility, the FDA recommends, among other things, that the temperature accuracy of an EST screening system be less than or equal to ±0.5°C (±0.9°F) over the temperature range of at least 34–39°C, or 93.2–102.2°F.6 Ensure the device being evaluated delivers accurate, repeatable results.

3. What kind of warranty programs, training, and technical support are offered by the manufacturer?

Protect your investment by confirming your solution is paired with a comprehensive warranty program and quality technical support by a strong manufacturer.

1 Devices cleared through the FDA 510(k) process must be used as part of an adjunctive system, whereby cameras are used alongside a primary means of confirming a fever, such as a medical thermometer.

2 See Section 201(h) of the FD&C Act (21 U.S.C. 321(h)).

3 For further FDA guidance, please visit https://www.fda.gov/media/137079/download.

4 For those products that have FDA clearance, it is useful to determine whether the FDA clearance covers over-the-counter use of the device or whether the device’s clearance is limited to prescription use only. If for prescription use only, it may be necessary to rely on FDA’s Temporary Enforcement Policy guidance and/or seek a new clearance if the product will be marketed and used by a non-health-care professional.

5 See FDA Enforcement Policy for Telethermographic Systems During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Public Health Emergency at https://www.fda.gov/ media/137079/download.

6 For further FDA guidance, please visit https://www.fda.gov/media/137079/download.

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SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE 7PSOLUTIONS

Fighting Loss Prevention during Uncertain Times

By Jeff Clark, Founder and CEO, 7PSolutions

W

hen the New Year rang in on January 1, 2020, none of us could have predicted what the year was about to bring. After a few seemingly ordinary months, our lives began to change in ways that we could never have imagined. As we began to learn more about the novel coronavirus and the shift to closing down a global economy, all of Jeff Clark our plans and goals for 2020 commenced to shut down as well.

As we met internally, we wondered how our real-time GPS solutions might be affected as global economies were coming to a halt. It was only a few days into that first week of shutting down that we quickly understood the increase of theft we would witness in all levels and areas of the supply chain.

Within those first two weeks, we experienced a dramatic increase in our business focused on loss prevention.

The largest increase in our fight against theft focused on internal investigations and e-commerce. Over the last several years, we have been involved in countless arrests using various real-time GPS devices fighting porch piracy and organized retail crime. The difference we encountered was a combination of internal, supply chain, and e-commerce investigations being linked together and through different LP roles within an organization.

Utilizing our family of devices, our team was able to match the right devices with the task at hand. In many instances, this included more than one type of device based upon the scope of the investigation. Although we have positioned different devices to meet the demands of each task, we have a few common denominators: real-time GPS, our RouteWatch SaaS, and LELiveLink.

Customers utilize our real-time GPS devices with confidence, understanding the power of accuracy and security of the data.

Whether using a Disposable GD100, a reusable covert device, or our extended battery, SmartBox Users appreciate the reliability of our entire real-time GPS family. This data, combined with the accuracy of our devices, is demanded and, in many instances, determines the ability to gain a search warrant or not. Regarding data security, how is your data managed? Is this question part of your GPS program?

RouteWatch users manage assets based on their roles and what they need to know. Monitoring centers utilize our Tiles feature within their Security Operations Center, while other LP operations LP MAGAZINE

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utilize the real-time tracking to monitor assets moving around the world. Regardless of the role and responsibility of each LP member, all manage their assets using our event-based communications.

Additionally, many customers choose to utilize our 7P monitoring center, where we provide 24/7 event-based monitoring and law enforcement escalation globally.

Whether 7PSolutions is providing 24/7 monitoring or the customer is doing it themselves, law enforcement escalation can be accomplished in seconds once a possible theft has occurred.

This is accomplished through our LELiveLink, which allows the user to share the device’s real-time tracking with law enforcement and others who may then see the live tracking on their laptops, smartphones, or tablets.

RouteWatch, TEMS, and LELiveLink have been important tools for our customers for over ten years. When 7PS entered the market, our expectation of what should be provided as a tool for real-time supply chain visibility raised the standards of our industry globally—from factory to end customer, whether sitting in a truck, on a store shelf, or carton on a front porch. We continue to educate customers on what you should expect, not what is necessarily being sold in the market. COVID-19 will come and go, and your strategies will continue to change as well. 7P will continue to provide solutions today while continuing to develop for the future.

Let us know how we may allow you to see your supply chain at a glance.

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE AFA PROTECTIVE SYSTEMS

It’s a Matter of Trust

I

n virtually every aspect of our lives, the choices we make every day are influenced by “trust.” We trust in the places we shop, the quality and safety of the food we eat, the dependability of the cars we drive, the systems and software we use, and most importantly, the individuals we interact with on a daily basis. Trust is essential in providing us with confidence that the choices we make are right in every area of our lives. Given all that goes on daily, we would not be able to effectively function if we did not have that confidence.

AFA, you can count on an unwavering effort to provide exceptional service underscored by prompt and forthright communication, knowing your customers, employees, and assets are protected.

Ability AFA’s heritage as the nation’s first central station fire alarm company is a great source of pride to us. Fire, life-safety, and security system services are only as good as the people and technology behind them. With over 145 years of experience delivering systems and service, AFA stands alone when it comes to serving the fire, life-safety, and security challenges and needs of its valued customers.

“Trust,” as defined by Lexico.com, is the “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.” In considering your provider of fire, life-safety, and security system services, shouldn’t these powerful qualities stand at the forefront of your decision-making? Are they not essential in making the right choice in protecting your employees, customers, and assets?

Strength At AFA, history and relationships matter! The long-term partnerships we have built with our clients, business partners, and employees over the years are what matters to us most—relationships where a person is treated as a trusted partner taken at his or her word, versus a number in a computer, is what makes us different.

At AFA, stability, dependability, and strength are a reflection of over 145 years of proven ability to deliver uninterrupted levels of service to valued customers.

Trust is essential in any relationship. You should be able to rely on your partner with trust. You should be able to take them at their word. You should be able to count on their ability and have confidence they will have the strength to be there when you need them the most. Don’t just choose any service provider when it comes to fire and life safety; choose a partner you can trust. Choose AFA Protective Systems, Inc.

Reliability When it comes to protecting people and property, reliability is a must. Genuine peace of mind comes from the confidence your fire and life-safety systems will function when put to the test. You need to rely on a trusted partner to protect you at all times, a service provider that understands the importance of prompt follow-up and timely communication.

Since 1873, AFA has established a culture of responsiveness, earning a reputation for reliability that starts with our company-owned central stations, where prompt response times are essential. AFA’s central station services are available 24/7 by phone, website, or email. Our many technicians are dedicated to repairing your systems efficiently and effectively. At AFA, follow-up and follow-through are essential cornerstones in delivering superior customer service.

Truth Trust can only be achieved when you have confidence the information you receive from your service provider is truthful.

Choosing a provider with proven integrity is vital in establishing a mutually rewarding business relationship. When partnering with

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SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE CHECKPOINT

Welcoming Back Customers In-Store, In-Style Sleek Appearance, Maximum Detection

Features Wireless Connectivity Boosted Detection ■ Quick Fit Based ■ ■

Advantages ■ ■

Instant Synchronization No Floor Cutting

ming Back Customers In-Store,Customizable In-Style Acrylic Etching ■ ■ ■

pearance - Maximum Detection

RGB LED Colors Alarm Notification via Audio WAV File

is the first transparent acrylic antenna to ed in the NEO range. Designed with store s in mind, this sleek and slim antenna ich Bluetooth™ wireless connectivity and he highest performing electronics on the ur NG10 is the first transparent acrylic antenna to be he advance released RF technology de-aesthetics in in the NEO range.improves Designed with store mind, this sleek and slim antenna features richin Bluetooth™ igher detection rates mean reduction wireless connectivity and delivers the highest-performing electronics shrink across even the smallest ofimproves tagged on the market.

The advanced RF technology detection.

O

Higher detection rates mean reduction in inventory shrink across even the smallest of tagged products.

Powered by NEO

With intelligence built in, the NEO platform advances performance capabilities beyond the traditional antenna. A sophisticated sensor, NEO can connect directly to store networks,

by NEO smartphones, and the Checkpoint cloud platform with no middleware, allowing continuous and seamless data gathering.

With its 24/7 real-time remote monitoring, any issues are picked up advancplatform NEO thenew in, The igence built immediately. electronics mean the antennas are compact and slimmer with the scope of supporting more technology, without the traditional beyond mance capabilities changing the aesthetics of the antenna frame.

A sophisticated sensor, NEO can connect LP MAGAZINE store networks, smartphones and the nt cloud platform with no middleware,

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“As the first acrylic antenna to be released in the NEO range, we are CUSTOMIZABLE: excited to see the market reaction to • the Acrylic Etching NG10. We have already sold almost 1,000 units ahead of its launch, exceeding • RGB LED Colors expectations with thevia unbeatable • Alarm Notification Audio WAV File detection that NEO is renowned for.”

– Simon Edgar, Senior Director of Global Product Management, Checkpoint Systems

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

63

SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE SOLINK

Modernizing Alarm Systems to Actually Protect Your Business

C

An Alternative for LP teams

ommercial alarm systems, and the workflow by which alarms are handled at central stations, haven’t meaningfully evolved in twenty years. Long before COVID-19 and the recent political unrest in North America, this service model had shown its age.

When the pandemic struck, the Solink team heard from our customers that they needed a reliable way to keep their businesses safe while their stores were temporarily shut down or operating in a reduced capacity. We’ve always believed that existing cameras are the best sensors, so we turned every camera into a modern alarm system. Customers wanted to verify when an actual break-in took place. They wanted to manage this system end-to-end, not rely on someone in a monitoring station who didn’t know their staff or businesses.

Solink’s cloud-based platform offers remote access to all your locations from mobile devices and browsers. Solink can operate with your existing corporate network or can be deployed to operate over wireless (LTE) access.

Law Enforcement Takes a Dim View of False Alarms and, by Extension, “Unverified Alarm Dispatches”

“My operators love using Solink as our sole alarm system. It has allowed them to identify various physical security issues and has reduced false alarms.”

Depending on the jurisdiction, false alarms can yield fines or penalties from law enforcement of $500 and up per incident.

In addition, acknowledging an alarm can take five to ten minutes and over forty-five minutes to dispatch police.

What’s worse, over 60 percent of the time, the dispatch yields a false positive for law enforcement. It’s becoming more frequent that officers are no longer dispatched to alarm calls unless the alarm can be verified, either by a security guard or a third-party visual verification.

– Justin Henkenberns, Director of Asset and Profit Protection, Restoration Hardware Solink can also bridge a conventional alarm panel to offer video verification to end users. Some alarm-monitoring companies offer “video verification” services at an additional cost. Solink can help you verify your alarm events often before you get the call from your monitoring station. It could be your employee who forgot her purse.

What Is Best for Your Business?

The alarm company’s full-service model suffers from time delays, verification challenges with law enforcement, and costly maintenance contracts. A self-serve model using intelligent video is far more responsive, more effective at reducing false positives, and is less costly to maintain and upkeep.

If you are interested in modernizing your security infrastructure, let’s talk. For more information and to get a sixty-day pilot, speak to a Solink video surveillance specialist.

Visit solink.com/hello_lpm.

Customized Alerts Directly to Your Phone, Tablet, or Computer Solink Video Alarms offer you visual verification using our app to see motion, video, audio, and a “newsfeed,” like the view to see how the perpetrator is moving through the store.

Solink can work with your existing security cameras and connect with your existing sensors and panels if desired. The configuration is so easy that many customers can self-serve or get instant help from our 24/7 customer support team. Solink Video Alarms can detect suspicious incidents to give you instant feedback once a motion event or person is detected. You can arm your site manually or automatically based on schedules or when the system recognizes that the location is closed.

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C-SUITE & SENIOR LEVEL EXECUTIVES ONLY

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LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

By Loss Prevention Media Staff

LP Magazine Hosts ORCA Technology Innovation Summit

The magazine website, LossPreventionMedia.com, offers readers daily breaking news, industry surveys, videos, press releases, case studies, and original articles from LPM writers and loss prevention contributors.

The website is updated daily with the latest information included in our daily e-newsletter. Sign up at LossPreventionMedia.com/subscribe for free to add your email address to receive our newsletter and other digital offerings.

O

rganized retail crime associations (ORCAs) across the nation are working diligently to enhance investigations and build cooperative relationships in the battle against organized retail crime (ORC).

Considering the growing impact on our retailers and our communities, these critical organizations underscore an increased effort on the part of retailers, law enforcement agencies, retail associations, and district attorneys to work together to confront organized retail crime issues at the local, state, and regional levels.

As emphasized as part of the recent National ORCA Leadership Conference, communication and information sharing are at the heart of this mission, but finding the right technology tools that support these diverse needs and are user-friendly, efficient, highly secure, and affordable is a tremendous challenge for these important groups that often operate on limited budgets. These types of solutions require exceptional partners with means and resources to provide an effective and secure platform, and those that understand the mission and are willing to work with the ORCAs to bring it all together.

As part of our ongoing support for the Organized Retail Crime Associations (ORCAs) across the nation, LP Magazine hosted an ORCA Technology Innovation Summit on Wednesday, September 16th, bringing together ORCA leadership teams to meet in a closed session with controlled access. Six solution providers that offer data management, data sharing, and data analytics were invited to attend. Some offer artificial intelligence, some with facial recognition, and all with capabilities to meet the critical needs of the ORCAs and their membership.

Read the full article on LossPreventionMedia.com.

“Two-and-a-half years ago, organized retail crime was not part of our vocabulary,” explained John Goldyn, senior director of loss prevention at Ulta Beauty. But as the retailer quickly grew, so did their losses. Theft of high-demand, easy-to-resell products were beginning to have to a material financial impact. “We started to get really concerned about the John Goldyn rise in ORC groups at the store level,” said Goldyn.

The company’s journey to support stores in the fight—to help them manage the difference between shoplifters and professional criminals—followed a traditional management roadmap to success.

Building an ORC-fighting capability at Ulta Beauty began with the collection of financial data that allowed LP to distinguish between theft types, so it could relate the story of how professional criminals differed from shoplifters. “One of our first jobs was to let everyone know how it affected us,” Goldyn explained. “Good intel is needed to set the stage to secure support of the stores and to sell the idea to the C suite.”

Read the full article on LossPreventionMedia.com.

True Cost of Fraud Study Finds 7.3 Percent Increase for US Retailers

By Loss Prevention Media The 11th annual LexisNexis® Risk Solutions 2020 True Cost of FraudTM Study: E-commerce/Retail Report surveyed risk and fraud executives at e-commerce and retail companies in the US and Canada and reveals that fraud continues to increase and most acutely affects mid- to large-sized e-commerce retailers and merchants. Retailers experienced increased online and e-commerce fraud volumes and monetary losses correlating to a mass shift to online and mobile transactions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The result of increased fraud volumes translates into a 7.3 percent increase in the cost of fraud year-over-year for US e-commerce and retail merchants. The LexisNexis Fraud MultiplierSM shows that every $1 lost to fraud now costs companies an additional $3.36 compared to $3.13 in 2019

LP Team Finds Value in Clichés as It Takes Aim at ORC

By Garett Seivold Professional buzzwords and clichés can be eye-roll inducing, but there is good reason why “buy-in” and other management mantras become popular. Especially when building a team from scratch, they often are exactly what is needed.

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and $2.40 in 2016—an increase of $0.96 over five years.

US costs are significantly higher than the cost that Canadian retailers face per $1 lost to fraud at $2.87.

The True Cost of Fraud Study is a comprehensive survey that compares fraud rates, impacts, and challenges related to fraud detection and prevention year-over-year and during COVID-19.

Read the full article on LossPreventionMedia.com.

COVID-19, Social Unrest, and Shoplifting

By Caroline Kochman Mask wearing is a surprisingly polarizing idea for Americans. Conflicts, which often occur in the retail setting, have escalated to physical confrontation and even murder. Masks are key to stopping the spread of coronavirus, but a lack of consistent guidance, much less laws requiring or governing their use, creates Caroline Kochman dangerous conflicts in retail stores.

Conversely, shoplifting, which creates daily conflict in stores, is a crime in all fifty states. Theoretically, the response to shoplifting is not about guidance, politics, or policy; it is about the law. Yet the same inconsistency abounds—inconsistency in the widely varying policies and responses that exist from retailer to retailer, police department to police department, and prosecutor to prosecutor, irrespective of state law.

These inconsistencies lead to increased incidents of theft and dangerous encounters in and around retail stores.

Achieving the needed consistency in the criminal justice response and policy on shoplifters will, like the mask issue, be an arduous, politically charged public process. However, retailers have sole discretion in modifying their internal policies on apprehension and prosecution for first-time offenders as changing conditions require, just as many have recently done with mask-wearing policies.

Further highlighting the importance of consistence in both policy and execution of policy was the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer responding to an alleged retail theft. This tragedy not only touched a nerve in our nation but also prompted virtually every retail CEO to renew their commitment to diversity, inclusion, and opportunity in their stores and the wider community. It shined an even brighter light on an overburdened system that is far more gravely broken than we knew or acknowledged.

The unfortunate reality is that social inequities still exist in both our policing and criminal justice systems and fixing them will be a long time in the making—just as correcting inconsistency of public policy will be. However, as so many retail CEOs recently suggested, retailers have a unique opportunity, even a social responsibility, to bring about change.

In terms of low-level shoplifters and the engagement of police, the retail AP/LP industry has the power to employ a modern and innovative response based in education and opportunity over police and punishment, something that is now more relevant and reasonable than ever.

Read the full article on LossPreventionMedia.com.

LP MAGAZINE

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A Video Surveillance Case Study in Failure

By Garett Seivold It’s easy to find case studies that describe how a video surveillance project helped to “transform” a retailer’s operations. How a new camera system has lowered their costs, maximized efficiency, or enhanced safety. Axis Communications has an entire book of them.

Market analysts expect organizations to increasingly be lured by the prospect of harnessing video’s power, especially as artificial intelligence (AI) improves analytics and turns images into a wide range of useable intelligence.

Nearly 85 million cameras will be active in the US by 2021, according to IHS Markit’s Video Surveillance Installed Base Report. That is about one camera for every four people.

Security device makers and installers routinely push out client case studies to advertise how well these projects go. They walk you through how this corporate headquarters, or that warehouse, effectively rolled out a new system, itemizing innumerable security benefits and quoting happy stakeholders. These accounts have merit: they offer valuable insight on project management and demonstrate how technology is addressing real security and loss prevention challenges. Since the focus is always on the value of technology projects, however, they’re never useful as a cautionary example. But the fact is that security projects can—and do—go horribly wrong, as one did for a group of libraries in the Pacific Northwest.

While not a retail case study, the countywide library system has a structure akin to a regional retailer’s, with a central branch and forty-six individual locations and 1,200 employees. Presented at an information security conference, the study, A Retreat from the Panoptic: One Public Library’s Experience with Video Surveillance, noted that the project ended with the library system ripping out all the cameras it had installed.

Read the full article on LossPreventionMedia.com.

1on1 with Read Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council | Ep. 35

By Jack Trlica The Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) at the University of Florida plays an important role in the retail loss prevention industry, providing evidence-based research that is used by retail executives to help them choose technology and strategies to reduce loss and increase retail sales. In this interview with Dr. Read Hayes, the LPRC’s managing director, listeners will learn how the LPRC came into being and how it has evolved over the past two decades.

Listen to the podcast on LossPreventionMedia.com or your favorite podcast platform.

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CYBER SECURITY

Are RFID-Blocking Wallets Necessary to Prevent Credit Card Theft?

By Garett Seivold Garett Seivold is senior writer for LP Magazine. A trained journalist, he has spent the majority of his career writing about security, risk management, supply chain, and loss prevention topics. He can be reached at GarettS@LPportal.com.

T

he pandemic is giving a substantial boost to all things touchless. So contactless credit cards, already gaining favor, seem poised to become ubiquitous.

They account for more than half of transactions in Australia and several other countries and are quickly becoming the default as new cards are rolled out in the US. All newly issued Bank of America credit cards are contactless-enabled and “most American Express products have contactless technology,” the company says.

RFID-blocking technologies have become big business. There are protective backpacks, wallets, sleeves, and shield cards. You can purchase shirts and jeans with RFID-blocking pockets built in. Criminals can buy readers for less than $100.

Much Ado About Nothing?

You can read accounts of information being stolen from RFID credit cards in scientific journals but not in police reports. It’s just not a thing, say most experts, including Eva Velasquez, CEO and president of the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).

The supposed threat is that information an individual skims can then be used to steal the victim’s identity or conduct fraudulent transactions using their details. But Velazquez says there is just no data to suggest that the theoretical risk is a real-world problem. In a recent ITRC blog, “Do I Need RIFD Protection?” the organization says, “while hacking of RFID items is certainly within the realm of possibility, it’s just not a viable threat, especially not in comparison to other behaviors that can leave you at risk.”

Indeed, many fraud analysts and criminologists are on record as saying that trying to lift information from RFID credit cards would be a hugely difficult and tedious endeavor compared to the ease with which someone can cheaply procure a trove of credit card information on the dark web.

The ITRC says there is nothing wrong with using a RFID-blocking wallet if it provides some extra peace of mind, but warns that it shouldn’t take people’s minds off the important security precautions they really need to take, like reviewing credit reports regularly and protecting online accounts with strong, unique passwords.

But Are They Safe?

RFID-enabled credit cards—you can usually tell them by a sideways Wi-Fi icon imprint—are read by RF-capable payment terminals. Wave them in front of the reader or tap it, and you’re on your way. But the security threat from an airborne information transfer is obvious—any in-range reader, not just a legitimate payment terminal, could capture the same information.

Indeed, many fraud analysts and criminologists are on record as saying that trying to lift information from RFID credit cards would be a hugely difficult and tedious endeavor compared to the ease with which someone can cheaply procure a trove of credit card information on the dark web.

Thus, as production of RFID cards began in earnest in the early part of the decade, scary headlines followed, like NBC New York’s 2011 piece “New Technology Can Steal Credit Card Info Right Out of Your Wallet.” In proof-of-concept experiments, researchers demonstrated how it could be done. A wave of digital pickpockets would hit the streets, some warned. And a new marketplace was born.

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Enhanced Security Features

Contactless cards today still have a computer chip and a tiny antenna and broadcast information through the air to be picked up by a contactless reader, but security enhancements make them fraud resistant, say analysts. The card chip in today’s contactless credit cards |

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

PRODUCT SHOWCASE transmit your account number and an encrypted one-time code to complete each transaction when you “tap” to pay—and doesn’t send your name, billing address, or the three-digit code needed for online transactions.

So, experts point out, even if someone were to successfully use a surreptitious reader, which would need to be within inches to sniff your payment information out of thin air, they would need to crack the bank’s complex algorithm to generate a new one-time code to complete another contactless payment. Contactless payment options like Apple Pay and Android Pay use near-field communication (NFC), a version of RFID, and since they require further authentication from the user, are even more secure, say analysts.

A more realistic and likely event is that a thief will get their hands on a contactless credit card. And without a PIN or signature required for use, it would be easy for someone with physical possession of a card to use it at a tap-to-pay terminal.

sales@7Pgps.com AFA PROTECTIVE SYSTEMS, INC. SINCE 1873

• Fire Alarm Systems • Design, Installation & Service • UL Listed & FM Approved Central Station Monitoring • Test & Inspection Services

At AFA, we deliver superior levels of customer service.

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A more realistic and likely event is that a thief will get their hands on a contactless credit card. And without a PIN or signature required for use, it would be easy for someone with physical possession of a card to use it at a tap-to-pay terminal Consequently, some card companies limit the amount of a purchase when conducted via contactless payment—although, in the time of COVID, these limits have often been raised or waived.

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69

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE Ross Findlay is now

a senior regional AP manager at Abercrombie & Fitch (Netherlands).

Andy Conway was promoted

to senior manager of internal controls and PP for e-commerce at adidas (United Kingdom).

Pete Kepler MBA, CFI, PMP

was promoted to director of security and investigations at Advance Auto Parts.

Amazon announced the

following promotions and new hires: Jeannie Tatis, senior regional LP manager; Joslyn Indreginal, regional LP manager; Larry Hudson, regional LP manager; Aradio Zambrano, regional LP manager (Mexico); and Jeremy Angle, APP, area security manager (web services).

James Peters is now a

territory AP manager at American Freight Furniture, Mattress, & Appliance.

Dave Harben, CFI, LPC

is now a LP leader, and Victoria Bartley is now a fraud prevention specialist at Apple.

Dr. Adi Raz was promoted

Bobby DeAgostino was

Tony Paixão, CFI, CFE is now

Carl Wehrspaun is now a

Roman Bielecki is now

Randall Thomas, LPC was

Jared Carleton was promoted

promoted to VP of workforce management at Floor & Décor. territory LP and safety manager at Goodwill Industries of Central Florida. promoted to director of LP and safety at Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana.

John Corner, CPS is

now a regional LP manager at Goodwill Industries Memphis.

Monique McGregor is now

senior LP manager at Canada Goose (Canada).

Michael Alves is

now a regional LP manager at goPuff.

Dawn Trojan, CFI was

promoted to divisional director of AP at CarMax.

Laura Neal was promoted

to fraud specialist at GoWireless

Bret Graddy, MS, LPC is

Jorge Reyes Jr., CSSGB, CISSP, CISM, CISA, CSO, PMI-RMP is now manager

now senior manager field AP, and Franklin Klink, MA and Cliff Braschler are now AP partners at Carvana. at Casey’s General Stores.

of global intellectual property and brand protection, OSINT/ORC at Great Healthworks.

Marc Sirianni was promoted

Rafael Rodrigues Bacelar was

to investigations manager at Coles (Australia).

promoted to LP analyst at Grupo DPSP (Brazil).

Matthew Dick was promoted

Kenneth Swaney was

Larry Carroll is now VP of AP

to head of stores risk and compliance, and Rodney Grant was promoted to regional risk and compliance manager at David Jones (Australia).

promoted to district LP leader at Hamrick’s.

Gary Kinsey, CFI is now a regional LP Manager at AutoZone.

Corey Finke is now an

Ann-Marie Bailey was

Teresa Warren was

Rebecca Martinez-Williams

to VP of data sciences and operations at Appriss.

Beth Cox is now a regional

LP and safety manager at At Home Group.

promoted to national AP manager at B&Q. Jon Parrett is now a regional

LP manager at Bargain Hunt.

Dustin Zink, CFI was

promoted to corporate ORC investigator at Bed Bath & Beyond.

Pamela Velose was promoted

to VP of AP, safety, and operations process at Belk.

Joey Lawrence, CFI was

Rey Rivera was promoted

to senior area LP manager at H-E-B.

promoted to crime analyst at Homebase (United Kingdom).

area LP manager at DD’s Discounts.

Sean Dessources was

was promoted to regional LP manager at Dixons Carphone (United Kingdom).

Leo Anguiano, LPC was

named VP of AP at Dollar Tree Stores.

security manager for EMEA at Elanco (Poland).

Arthur Ramsey and Beth Lucky are now regional AP

Matt Potter was promoted to

Jackie Johnson, LPC was

is now country safety and security manager at Ikea (Mexico).

promoted to AP and PP director at Festival Foods.

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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JD Sports Fashion (United Kingdom) announced the following promotions and new hires: Lee Faill, group head of retail PP EU (Netherlands); Carl Costello, group head of PP corporate, DC, logistics security (United Kingdom); Patrick Van Kuijk, territory retail PP manager (Netherlands); Henrik Midskov, MSc, MSyl, group PP manager; Ian Williams, group PP manager; and Stephen Valentine, group PP managers.

Nicki Houghton was

promoted to senior manager, education and awareness (information security and PP) at John Lewis & Partners (United Kingdom).

Staley Torrezani is now

a LP internal auditor at KaBuM! (Brazil).

Anthony Gabino, CFE, CFI

is now senior manager of AP at Kendra Scott.

Christopher Cobb is now

director of security, life safety, HACCP & SHE consultant at Kifaru Risk Management Services (South Africa).

Michael Mirand, LPC

Angel Déziga Velázquez

managers at Family Dollar.

to manager of global security at JCPenney.

Andrew Bailey, LPQ was

promoted to senior manager of AP for logistics, administration, and technology at Hudson’s Bay Company (Canada).

director of LP at eXtra (Saudi Arabia).

a regional security manager at Japan Tobacco International (Poland).

Mark Stinde, MBA, LPC

Matthew Bailie was

Saleh al Harbi is now

director of operations at the International Association of Interviewers (IAI).

promoted to senior manager of supply chain AP, and Andy Spears, LPC is now a multiunit AP manager at The Home Depot. promoted to district LP manager at HomeGoods.

Paweł Toms is now global

promoted to senior corporate LP manager at Books-A-Million.

state LP operations manager at Bunnings (Australia).

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Burlington Stores announced the following promotions and new hires: Vince Conrad, district AP manager; David Cobarrubias, CFI, district AP manager; Robert Hurd, district AP manager; Paul Nájera, district AP manager; Kenny Hayes, district AP manager; Jerry Oppedisano, district AP manager; Josh Meins, CFI, LPC, director of LP; Brandon Homes, LPC, regional director of LP; Norm Heyl, CFI, district LP manager; and Jenn Wismer, district LP manager.

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has been named VP of AP, and Scott Bergset is now a district AP manager at the Kroger Company. is now an area LP manager at Loomis.

Christopher Sanjurjo CLSS, MA is now a fraud

specialist at Louis Vuitton.

Clint Orndorff was promoted

to market ORC manager at Lowe’s Companies.

Molly Gottlieb, CFI is

now AP manager for Europe at lululemon.

Aaron C. Wichmann, MBA, CFI, LPC is now

corporate AP manager at Lunds & Byerlys.

James P. Lapcevic, LPC

was promoted to senior manager of AP for supply chain at Luxottica.

Macy’s announced the

following promotions and new hires: Joe Coll, VP of AP operations and strategy; David Rogers, senior director of investigations; Joe Kinsey, national director of ORC investigations; Laura Papa, senior manager of life safety; Nicole Lauf-Smith, senior investigator; and Danielle Serfontein, senior investigator.

Melissa Mitchell, CFI, LPC

is now director of AP at MAPCO Express.

Antonio Carlos Rocha

is now an internal auditor at Marfrig Global Foods (Brazil).

Ken D. Gladney, CFI is now

senior manager of LP at Maya Management Group/ El Rio Grande Latin Markets.

Juan Francisco Mujica, CFI

was promoted to senior regional LP manager (Argentina), and Karen Carrillo is now

senior LP analyst (Mexico) at Mercado Libre.

Thomas Jensen is now CEO

at Milestone Systems.

Rachel Hoffman was

promoted to senior regional LP manager at Mobilelink.

coordinator; and Xavier Rogers, area LP manager.

Gregory Hammond was

promoted to associate manager of LP at rue21.

Randy Perkins is now

a district LP manager at Nordstrom Rack.

Paul Saward, APCIP

was promoted to group crime response manager at Sainsbury’s (United Kingdom).

Anthony Costanzo is now

a district LP manager at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.

Patrick McEvoy is now

divisional VP of AP, and Jennifer Welch was promoted to regional director of AP at Saks Fifth Avenue Off 5th.

Chris Rathgeb was

promoted to VP of AP and safety risk management at Paradies Lagardère.

Ryan Dzwigalski, CFI, LPC is now director

Keith White is now chief

of LP at Parkers.

of safety and security at Salesforce.com.

Ehab Zahran, CFI was

Cory Taylor, LPC was

promoted to senior director enterprise AP and safety at Party City.

Jamel Washington was

promoted to midwest south regional LP manager at Penske Logistics.

George Burns was promoted

to assistant VP of LP and safety at Pep Boys.

PetSmart announced the following promotions and new hires: Meredith Plaxco, LPC, VP of LP and safety; Melanie Millaway, CFI, director of investigations and security; Rigoberto Hernandez, CFI, senior LP and safety business partner; and Nathan Hamblin, LPC, CORCI, LP and safety business partner.

Ines Manotas was promoted

to senior security consultant Europe & US at Primark (Spain).

Kris Vece, LPQ was

promoted to VP of strategic account management at Protos Security.

Yovan Galico is now

Wahyudi Widodo is now

head of security for Mexico at Nestle.

Nordstrom announced the following promotions and new hires: Patricia Carbonara, threat assessment manager for violence in the workplace national LP; Andrew Marrero, program manager for LP systems and infrastructure; Lauren Gale, exception reporting

national risk prevention operations leader at PT. Trans Retail (Indonesia).

Devanand Yadav was

promoted to state head of security and LP at Reliance Retail (India).

Greg McGee is now senior

AP operations analyst at Rent-A-Center.

Michael Burch, CFI is now

senior account executive for commercial national accounts at Securitas Electronic Security.

Joshua Beckler was

promoted to senior district LP manager at Sephora.

Sonia Hernández is now

a district LP manager at Smart & Final.

Ryan Shedd, CFI, LPC

is now a regional AP manager at SpartanNash.

Jim Mullen, MBA is now

regional VP of operations at Stop & Shop.

Jacky Lee is now head

promoted to senior manager of AP at MOD Pizza.

Jason Swanson was

promoted to territory AP manager, and Laura Medellín Romero was promoted to regional AP manager (Mexico) at Sam’s Club.

of safety and physical security APAC at Swiss Re (Hong Kong).

Heather Gilbert was

promoted to lead corporate security consultant at Target.

The TJX Companies announced the following promotions and new hire: Justin Todd, ORC investigator for national task force; Chris Holmes, regional LP manager (Scotland); Mark Meszaros, LP advisor (Ireland); Przemysław Borucki (Poland), district LP manager; Krystal Buchanan, district LP manager; and Ricardo Hernandez,

West Coast distribution center LP investigator.

T-Mobile announced the

following promotions and new hires: Lekiya Manzo CFI, CFE, MBA, director of AP; Teri Poth, AP manager; and Michael Noss, senior manager of corporate investigations.

Ulta Beauty announced the

following promotions and new hires: Marc Tirheimer, area LP manager for ORC; Devon Smith, area LP manager; Ricci Cahoy, area LP manager; James Selman, area LP manager; and Jared Costa, area LP manager.

Marty Maberry is now a

regional LP manager at Variety Wholesalers.

David Fisher is now

division president at Vector Security Networks.

David Hargrove was

promoted to market LP manager at VF Corporation.

Cristian Candido was

promoted to executive manager of LP and property security at Via Varejo (Brazil).

Matthew Tracy is now a

regional LP manager at The Vitamin Shoppe.

Walmart announced the

following promotions and new hires: Jackie Chapman, LPC, AP senior director II; Mathew Logan, AP senior director; Mack McKeithan, AP senior director; Gaytanna McGuire, senior manager EHS eCommerce; Andrea Sanchez, environmental health safety facility leader; and Rich Souza, LPC, AP operations lead; Amanda Brooks, AP operations lead; Jason Drake, AP operations lead; Chris L. Sacramone, LPC, AP operations lead.

Alec Haines is now AP and

risk management business analyst at Weis Markets.

To stay up-to-date on the latest career moves as they happen, sign up for LP Insider, the magazine’s daily e-newsletter, or visit the Professional Development page on the magazine’s website, LossPreventionMedia.com. Information for People on the Move is provided by the Loss Prevention Foundation, Loss Prevention Recruiters, Jennings Executive Recruiting, and readers like you. To inform us of a promotion or new hire, email us at peopleonthemove@LPportal.com.

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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

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73

PARTING WORDS

Take Action in the New School of Uncertainty

By Merek Bigelow LPM Executive Editor

F

all is often a time for a reset, filled with new planners, new routines, and a cultural feeling of starting over. We set new goals for the year in January, but as summer winds down, I find myself often looking to get back into routine, check progress, revisit those goals and revise them to close out the year—both personally and professionally.

Fall 2020? It feels completely different. As I write this, it’s mid-August. If you’re a parent, you’re wondering how our children will return to school—virtual, hybrid, in-person, home-schooled? For everyone: it’s quarantine in some places, mask-free in others; it’s extreme news cycles and impending hurricanes and polarizing political debate.

Within our LP Magazine team members across the country, it’s amazing to hear team members talk about their own pandemic experiences in their states and how much it varies for each of us.

It’s unsettling to be living in ambiguity and might feel impossible to find your focus. And yet, pattern interruption is the best time to innovate.

Whether you’re managing a retail asset protection team, a solution provider serving retailers, or just trying to balance the constant comingle of home and work life, this feeling of ambiguity and uncertainty is central and has us all feeling like we’re in start-up mode in every aspect of our lives.

We’ve talked about how to make organization, process, and strategy changes during this time—not for the sole purpose of being forced into change right now but because now is the ideal time to pivot, refocus, and refine what works and what doesn’t.

Find Your Focus

Hard isn’t better than easy. Focus on better not harder.

If something isn’t working, stop relying on what you have historically done and change direction. Be clear and focused on your goal, but don’t be married to the path.

Some of the most successful comebacks result from hard left turns. Take action: if you’re not making movement, ask yourself why progress is elusive. Is there a faster path to what you want? Brainstorm different “hows” to get to your goal. The crazier the better.

And I Mean Really Focus!

We’ve all done this. We make a strategic plan that includes twenty initiatives that, yes, would move the needle. But when you focus on everything, you focus on nothing. Focus on that one thing. Personally, I have done this relating to health and wellness and my commitment to exercise. It’s what has kept me mentally sane during this quarantine, and I enjoy it. As my favorite Peloton instructor Robin Arzon says, “Build the house of hustle one brick at a time.” Take action: build your house. Create a playbook based on repeatable strategies that work. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

Create New Consistencies

– Author unknown, often attributed to Winston Churchill

I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear and highly recommend it. Here’s why. Clear is one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation. His book breaks down and distills behavior change into tangible, actionable steps based in science and psychology. These steps over time create long-term change and new habit creation. Whether you’re leading a team, driving innovation, or wanting to lose the “COVID quarantine 10,” this book will serve as a roadmap for enabling clear change in simple ways that make big impact over time. Take action: create small repeatable habits that create big change over time.

How can you end the year stronger than you started?

How can you see this ambiguity as an opportunity to start fresh or optimize what’s not working? Those are the questions I am asking myself as I reset for the last three months of the year. What does a successful year-end look like?

Accept the Ambiguity as Opportunity

We can stick our noses in the sand and wait this out, but something tells me this approach won’t bode well for any of us. What can we do but embrace it? I’ve been lucky to have some recent conversations with some incredibly smart and innovative retailers and solution providers.

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SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2020

Let’s not give in to the idea that 2020 was a crappy year.

Let’s finish 2020 a success, in what whatever ways we define it. We deserve it. |

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