The D&D Daily e-Newsletter for the LP & Safety Industry
Jim
Mires
VP Loss Prevention
DSW, Inc.
Today more than ever Loss Prevention is less about Loss Prevention and more
about being fully integrated into the entire business. For example, how many
times have you been involved in initiates that are not specific to driving down
shrink but really about driving profitability to the organization? It is
happening more than we realize and this is a credit to where the Loss Prevention
Leadership has grown.
I have been in and out of this business for 20+ years and the one thing I can
say is that Loss Prevention is changing as rapidly as Omni retailing. For our
chosen profession to stay relevant and cutting edge we are obligated to immerse
ourselves, and our teams into “the business”. It is more than developing
tactical skill sets that focus on exception reporting, CCTV, physical tools, but
truly developing skill sets of ourselves and our teams that are forward
thinking, strategic in understanding not where the business is but to anticipate
where the business will be in 5 years, 10 years or beyond. For example, when
will we have 3 D printers that customers can download their product of choice
and how do we be prepared for that. Sure it seems beta at this point but at some
point being able to order from your Smart phone was beta, or having product
delivered the same day to your home seemed unrealistic.
Will there ever be the day that a customer can hologram the item that they want
to their home. I know this is all futuristic but for us to be on the front side
of controlling loss and driving profitability our challenge is to think
different, hire and develop a skill set that is more millennial than Gen X. How
many of you thought we would see a day without physical checkout lanes in retail
locations? It’s here.
Brick and Mortar will continue to share traffic with on line, and other forms of
Smart technology and this is where we have to hire and develop differently.
There will always be the need for boots on the ground investigations and
Operational Controls experts but today is about big data analysis and more
collaboration with IT.
Many of us remember detail tapes on registers, then our industry implemented POS
and computerized transactions, today we are talking about predictive models,
RFID becoming more of our lives, Absolute unit accuracy will be critical for the
companies that want to exist in an Omni world. I love technology and am
consistently challenging my team and my vendor partners to develop more, quicker
and effective tools that are cutting edge and forward thinking to keep pace with
the growth of Retail.
I am sure that many of you have thought about this and this seems like a blindly
flash of the obvious, however the purpose of this was in part for me and to also
continue to challenge all of us to keep the long term vision of what we do, how
we do it and to continue to Think bigger.
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Jim
Mires
