Celebrity launches, risqué marketing, store makeovers and fancy websites grab the column inches but don't guarantee a return on investment for retailers. The central tenet of this book is that the traditional approach to loss prevention does not address the problem of losses effectively - it is the wrong place to start when developing solutions. From an employee's perspective it has too many negative connotations and assumes a deficit model of their contribution. From a business point of view it leads to sub-optimal activities and inefficient allocation of resources. Think Performance Enhancement Not Loss Prevention eschews the usual questions such as "how do we stop our customers and staff stealing from us?" It argues that given over half of losses are down to internal issues a CEO, with the right strategy, can increase employee loyalty, motivation, engagement and effort and improve customer satisfaction whilst generating increased profits and delivering a guaranteed return. Four key insights underpin the book: 1. The traditional approach to loss prevention does not address the problem effectively and leads to sub-optimal activities and inefficient allocation of resources. 2. Retailers have sophisticated transaction capture systems and are data rich, yet still appear knowledge poor. This is because decision makers repeatedly use the wrong data and the wrong performance indicators to inform their thinking and their choices. 3. Retailers concentrate most of their loss prevention spend on investing in technology to prevent shoplifting meaning little or no emphasis is placed on reducing process failure. Yet, employees, through fraud and poor practice, are a bigger problem than shoplifters. Heavy investment has also taken place to upgrade electronic point of sale (EPOS) systems. Unfortunately, the way they have been implemented often supports and enables increased levels of employee theft to both take place and to go undetected for longer. Over half of losses can be attributed to EPOS shrink - operator error, theft and fraudulent transactions. 4. Head offices over communicate with stores, and the communication is often both poor quality and based on a lack of understanding of the realities of in-store operations. They tend to exacerbate this issue by unleashing teams of 'middle(wo)men' - regional managers - who engage in little more than retail voyeurism and can dilute key messages. Owners, chief executive officers and senior managers of retail organisations are shown how to embrace what has traditionally been a rather dry subject in a more intelligent and actionable way. The thinking and approaches are peppered with a dash of irreverence - think Bonnie and Clyde targeting your till - in order to make them more accessible, engaging and thought provoking. An integrated route map is outlined encompassing employee capability development, effective communication and fit for purpose roles and responsibilities. Underpinning all is the development of robust performance indicators ('Missing in Action', 'Show me the Money', 'Dodgy Discount', 'The Invisible Man', 'Bogus Boomerang', 'Power to the People' and 'Intelligent Integration') to drive retail results.
About the Author: Celine O'Connor has more than twenty years of international retail experience in the UK, USA and Ireland. She has worked and consulted in the fashion (men, women and children), footwear, accessories and gift sectors. She has comprehensive expertise in all aspects of retail operations management and loss prevention for multi-channel retailers and a strong track record in delivering significant bottom line improvements. Celine joined Blue Inc. (a predominantly menswear retailer with around 100 stores in the UK) as Head of Central Operations in July 2010. Previously she was an independent consultant following six years with Faith Footwear which included setting up an operational audit and loss prevention function from scratch. Prior to this she was based in San Francisco as Retail Operations Manager, overseeing all stores in the USA, for the global Japanese retailer Sanrio (best known for its Hello Kitty character). The role involved extensive travel across the USA. Celine began her career as a Retail Manager with Dunnes Stores Group, the largest privately owned retailer in Ireland. Gareth Wynne is a former Managing Consultant with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young where he worked with retail clients (healthcare, entertainment, grocery and catalogue) including Boots, Virgin Megastores and Last Mile Solutions (the precursor to Ocado). He has an MBA from Warwick Business School and started his career as an auditor with KPMG.