Risk and Loss Prevention professionals treated to day of world class
presentations at Retail Risk - New York
The Retail Risk
conference series is the biggest risk and loss prevention conference series
in the world. And delegates attending their second New York conference,
which took place at the Downtown Marriott in the heart of New York’s
financial district, could clearly see why...
Delegates
were treated to a veritable fest of new and exciting presentations by
outstanding speakers, brought together from around the world, freely giving
their expertise, experience and inspiration to the assembled audience.
RFID is impacting more and more
LP departments, most of whom have no ownership of the process driving it
adoption. Jon Wright of River Island, flown in from England
just for the conference, gave a slick, thought provoking presentation on how
his business had adopted RFID not just to reduce shrink, but primarily to
increase sales and improve the customer experience. Not only has his
department taken ownership of the adoption process, but managed to achieve
it without any involvement from IT – making the system quicker to adopt
without burdening other departments. John’s point by point guide provided a
blueprint for those present to follow in their own businesses, avoiding
pitfalls and learning from hard won experience. All in all, an excellent
take away for most of those present – but this was only the beginning...
David Thompson, Director
of Investigations, Research and Innovation at Wicklander Zulawski &
Associatesgave an energising and inspiring insight into WZ
interview techniques underlining why they have such an outstanding
reputation in the industry. Real video interview footage was shown and
analysed demonstrating the approach in an enthralling presentation, with Tom
Cruise and Jack Nicholson dramatizing some of the techniques learned in the
famous “You can’t take the truth” scenes from the Hollywood blockbuster “A
Few Good Men.” David then went on to expand on his techniques in a free
training workshop provided for delegates later in the day.
Following the first coffee and
networking break, David Bhattacharjee, Vice President of Data
Analytics for Stanley Black and Decker made the unfathomable
understandable and even entertaining, as he romped through a very
informative and educational presentation on using Big Data & Analytics to
improve store profitability. Big Data seems implicitly incomprehensibly
complex and David showed great skill in simplifying the approach in order to
make quick big wins in stores using existing infrastructure to reduce
shrink, improve hiring decisions and improve the customer experience as well
as boosting profits by millions of dollars.
Then followed Skip Myers,
hot from his breakfast session for those early risers determined to beat the
New York morning traffic. This time Skip talked about his Agile loss
prevention approach to addressing challenges posed by the business.
Skip is Director of Loss Prevention and Risk Strategy for Micro Center
who promises their customers that if they order online they can pick up
their purchase within 18 minutes of placing the order! This remarkable
service level also posed remarkable challenges for the LP department. Skip
demonstrated a thought process that not only supported the, frankly,
impossible-sounding customer service level to help make it a commercial
reality for the business, but also could be used by others to help “Ruin A
Bad Guy’s Day.” Remarkable!
After lunch and a further networking opportunity,
Rand Fernandes of Oracle spoke engagingly about the problem
everyone in LP is talking about around the world – How to define mobile POS
risk and what to do about it. The presentation was replete with insights,
practical advice and brilliant take away pieces too numerous to mention.
Then came Chris McDonald Senior
Vice President of Loss Prevention and Gary Moncur, Director of Loss
Prevention at Compass Group NAD. The inimitable “double act” have
been hits at several Retail Risk conferences around the world and New York
was no exception. Inviting the audience to give their own performance
appraisals, Chris and Gary used real anonymised case histories to show the
disconnect between employees and their managers. Their easy, entertaining
style combined with audience participation was a great way to take the
audience through a process of self-realisation; both as managers and
employees! Some brilliant practical advice was provided to fundamentally
change the annual review dynamic – material that is doubtless being put to
good use in businesses immediately by those fortunate enough to hear it –
both to improve their staff performance and to enhance their own career
progression.
Chris McDonald
|
Gary Moncur
|
Following the third and final break for coffee and
networking came two gems from out of left field.
First
Dr Clare Sullivan from the Law Centre, Georgetown University
spoke most engagingly on the emerging are of law around digital identity. In
a thoughtful, fascinating and charming presentation, which it is suspected
many thought might be dry and boring (what law isn’t!) Dr Clare held the
audience’s rapt attention, which did not falter as she unleashed one “bomb”
after the other. The inalienable right to a digital ID, countries offering
digital citizenships, the doctrine of mistake and the way in which contract
law would be changing forever are not hypothetical concepts – they are all
arriving in the next few years. Retailers will have to fundamentally review
their processes around customer information and store cards because damage
to a person’s digital ID will constitute damage to their intellectual
property and give rise to civil as well as criminal prosecutions – with
retailers in breach of the new required standards being held to account
through imprisonment or damages calculated with reference to the standing of
the individuals adjudged to have been wronged – worrying for all retailers,
but terrifying for those dealing with high net worth individuals. The most
frequently heard description after the conference uttered by delegates was
“mind-blowing!” Those present can consider themselves very fortunate to have
been given the early heads up on what promises to REVOLUTIONISE the use and
retention of data by all businesses over the coming TWO YEARS!
Rounding
off the show came a live video link to Tony Sales. The man dubbed by
the Press as “Britain’s Greatest Fraudster” gave no presentation.
For 40 minutes the audience simply got to ask one of the finest criminal
minds anything they wanted. Key questions were posed by audience members
keen to gain a unique and invaluable insight into the working of the
criminal mind. “What weaknesses would Tony and his gang of 50 look for in
choosing their retailer targets?” “What security measures would put them off
hitting a target?” “Where would Tony spend his budget if he were an LP
director looking to protect his business?” “What new threats did he see
emerging over the next 12-18 months and what could retailers do to prepare
for them?” The allocated 30 minute slot was significantly overrun as
audience members piled in their questions, all of which were answered in a
humorous and engaging style by the man once described as “underworld
royalty.” And on a practical level Tony provided real insight into a new
threat that is likely to hit every single retailer in the USA over the next
12 months and what businesses need to look out for to combat it. Sheer gold
dust.
Other popular free training workshops were run by
Matthew Attwell of ai Corporation, Chargebacks 911 and Ken Rayca of
Checkpoint Inventory Control Solutions, at which the writer was not
present.
The day was wrapped up by Chairman Chris McDonald, who
provided excellent chairmanship throughout the day, thanking all concerned
for an innovative, world class conference. Chris pointed out that the unique
value of the Retail Risk conferences was that they provided retailers, free
of charge, with the opportunity to expand their relationships and understand
where crime is coming from elsewhere in the world, before it hits the USA,
as well as understanding how others were successfully dealing with threats
that the US is experiencing too.
As Chris pointed out in his
closing remarks “It’s not just about what you need today, because you never
know where you are going to be tomorrow…”
Retail
Risk – New York will return to the city September 14th 2017