The D&D Daily e-Newsletter for the LP & Safety Industry
By
Francis Clark
VP Business Development
Profitect
My Thought Challenge and likely my passion is how to get
more people converted from Loss Prevention to Asset Protection other than the
‘name change’. I see a lot of ‘name change’ without the ‘brain change’ and to me
that is sad because there is an enormous amount that the analytical mind of the
Loss Prevention executives can bring to improving the business; not just ‘cuff
‘em and stuff ‘em’. The larger chains have more difficulties as their managers
often do not consider themselves ‘owners’ of their stores but rather just ‘doing
the job’ and that means they miss lots of opportunities to improve the business.
I see similar on the Audit side and indeed on the Loss Prevention side where a
store is visited just because it’s been “x” number of weeks since someone has
been there versus the conditions that are negative to the successful operation
of the business put this store on the top of the ‘visit list’ and not just
‘visit’ but a very ‘focused visit’.
Adrian Beck was very insightful in his book “new Loss Prevention” where he has
tried to nudge the thinking of Loss Prevention toward a more holistic view AND
ACTION toward the larger business scope. If you’ve not read it, you should!
Loss Prevention and Asset Protection executives today spend an enormous amount
of time ‘traveling’ and the ability to make that travel into even more and more
effective total business results is desperately needed in almost every company.
It means looking at each store like the owner. Shelf allocation, staffing,
training, product availability and quality, normal review of all process and
procedures and compliance NOT JUST those aligned with Loss Prevention. Observing
transactions, observing staff in various functions, looking for waste, neglected
opportunities, too much inventory, too much damage/return to vendor; basically,
if you owned that store....all the things that you would look at and take ACTION
on.
And I think there is an opportunity for D&D to aid in the evolution toward Asset
Protection. While the ‘law and order’ side is still relevant (even perhaps more
so) there is also the business improvement side. I’d like to see contribution of
articles about how an Asset Protection person actually improved sales, added to
customer satisfaction, saved capital investment by highlighting an overstock
condition, identified a lost sales condition due to product failure, etc. The
opportunities on this side of the business are not only plentiful....but sorely
needed.
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By
Francis Clark
