The Future of Exception Based Reporting

 

Exception based reporting. It’s a simple, effective way for retailers to find fraud. Finding patterns in the point of sale data seems like a great way to find issues, but is it really? Exception based reporting was ground breaking when it was created...decades ago. Today exception based reporting still does what it was designed to do, but times have changed. There is now much more data to filter through, making the reports slow and outdated before you even look at them. Focusing on select areas will make the reports faster, but you could be closing your eyes to massive areas of loss. Shouldn’t your reporting be as agile as you are?

The answer to exception based reporting’s issues, Intelligence Based Reporting (IBR). This evolutional step takes the best of exception based reporting and adds to it the technologies present in today’s retail world. This means IBR collects more than just point of sale data. It also collects EAS and RFID data, alarm and access control data, video, and much more. All of this data together gives you a much better look into what’s causing shrink in your stores.

One major issue of current reporting is speed. Reports can take days or weeks to generate, and more data just means longer wait times. This raises the question, how long does it take IBR to generate reports? The answer may surprise you, because it’s immediately. This is because intelligence based reporting collects and analyzes all of the data in real-time, and notifies you when thresholds are crossed and exceptions are triggered.

The most powerful element of IBR is video. Seeing the numbers is one thing, being able to actually see the numbers in action is another. When you notice an anomaly in the data there is no more need to infer what happened. Simply watch the video and see what caused it. This feature allows you to react faster than ever before. No more long investigations, no more interrogating interviews, no more speculating. See it with your own eyes.

IBR is the next step in preventing fraud. It collects all of your data in real-time allowing you to prevent fraud faster, and the video shows you what happened without any guess work. There is one IBR solution already on the market, Retail 20/20. Retail 20/20 is a real-time IBR solution with integrated, synchronized video giving you more visibility into your stores. It’s more than exception based reporting and video, its intelligence based reporting.