The Future is About Your Security

Many retailers are unaware of what is going on in their business, yet we are all concerned about making a profit. I realize some of you will dispute this fact, but I presented at a conference recently to around 150 retailers. During the presentation I asked them how one category was performing per square metre compared to another category. Alas, nobody was prepared to speak up and tell, me the figures, one delegate was honest and told me he knew his total performance but had no idea of how one category performed against another category. This working in the dark approach is a major problem for many small retailers, compare this with major retailers where they know how every individulal product is perfoming as a single unit and compared to every other product on the shelf. The implications of this is that as an owner you cannot monitor what the business is doing and the business may be loosing profit because one category is not prerfoming as you thought. Plus, if your team know this is the case they will abuse the system and as a result theft could become a major problem for the business and as an owner you may not even be aware. This is affecting your bottom line. If you had a policy that allowed you to manage, measure and monitor theft in your business the result would be that fewer items would go missing and as a result you would need to buy less and sell more. All missing items have to be paid for, either by the consumer who has to pay more or by the owner who gets paid less. If you could halve the ammount of product that goes missing all parties in the relationship will benefit. But your team are all honest The first step in the process of change revolves around your thinking process. I often ask small business owners if they have an honest team and nearly all the time I am told that they are honest and therefore no security system needs to be placed into their business. If I as the same question of somebody in security they will tell me they have never met an honest person and that given the opportunity we will all take advantage of the system in place. Hotels will confirm this as they find shampoo, soap and towels often go missing. The customer may look on this as a perk of stopping at the hotel, but the hotel has built this shrinkage into the system and all guests may for the stealing of such items. If you go into business you have to out the systems in place that all the team can use as a guide line to help the business maximise profits. We all have to agree with the security specialists that we have to manage our business so than no induividula can take advantage of the situations that we as retailers are creating. Hear are some simple rules and ideas: