News this week from the Convenience Store website reports that shop crime is at its highest level since 2003. With theft increasing at 5% per annum according to the ONS, retailers of all types are frustrated at the lack of attention shop theft is given in relation to other crimes.
In 2016 the ACS Crime Survey showed that shop crime alone cost the C-store sector alone more than £43m, despite millions being spent by C-store operators on crime prevention measure over the same time. In early 2015, the BRC reported that shop crime across all retail sectors during 2013 – 2014 stood at a staggering £335m – if we assume the same 5% increase then all things being equal, shoplifting is on course to pass £400m by the end of 2017.
I’m sure social and economic reasons for theft are many and varied, but the fact is, shop crime is a significant challenge all retailers face yet interestingly, many don’t know to what extent it’s a problem until it comes to stocktake time. That need to change.
Two ideas to help retailers get a grip on shrinkage:-
- Check inventory daily and by exception – not on a cyclical basis. If you check gaps on the shelves daily, this can help highlight which products are potentially being stolen and allow you to act. If something is being regularly stolen, then you can move it to where you can keep a better watch on it, maybe put it on display behind a counter or use dummy display cases on the shelves instead of ‘live’ products. Having the ability to check, analyse and then present shrinkage as a KPI can really help focus the mind.
- Keep a record of known incidents and share quickly with colleagues and other stores. The ability to share information quickly across any retail estate remains for many retailers one of their biggest challenges – filling in books, sending emails, telephoning head office/other stores and sending memos all generally arrive too late.
Thankfully, Metro provides retailers with a range of expedient ways to highlight issues and quickly record and share incidents with colleagues, head office and neighbouring stores at the push of a button.
KPI Dashboard: Nothing focuses the mind like a big red graph illustrating the cost of shrinkage to a business. Metro’s simple to configure and use KPI toolset can display key business data. KPIs can be used to illustrate any style of information from sales and shrinkage, to wage costs and more – a full range of KPI types are available and these graphical representations can be a store, region, area or company-specific and can also be drilled through to a grid view to compare performance with other stores.
Incident Reporting: Incident reporting in Metro is quick, easy and has the capability to feedback end KPI dashboards with relevant data. Incidents of all types can be routed, interrogated and extracted through the reporting tool contained within Metro. Informing others of Incidents in a timely and efficient manner is vital in the battle against shop crime. The user is guided through the completion of certain process elements with intelligence and validation at each stage to ensure right first time submission to relevant parties.
Journal: Dispense with written store diaries, this online Store journal is a configurable electronic diary for the recording of daily events, incidents, and performance acting an efficient store handover function for when the early shift hands over to those trading the store late into the evening. What’s happened, who did it, what to look out for…
Drop RMS a line to discuss how we can help your retail business fight back against shop crime.
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