Retailers have traditionally worked with razor-thin margins and loss prevention continues to be a crucial area for helping them protect profits and secure their bottom line from multiple sources of threats – from the petty shoplifter to dishonest staff, to organized retail crime syndicates.
An extended focus area of retailers to increase profitability, in addition to dealing with shrink is understanding customer traffic behavior. While shopper counting solutions have existed for some time, Traffic Intelligence solutions can help retailers amass insights that extend beyond mere shopper count. They can improve queue management and merchandising, increase effectiveness of marketing campaigns and even test the efficacy of new store layouts. Data from traffic can help businesses increase the conversion rate of potential to actual customers, and improve the way they address people in and outside of the stores.
Traditional technologies used in loss prevention can be extended for retailers to harness the ample benefits of both Loss Prevention and Store Performance. Having inputs from multiple sources on a regular basis can provide retailers with greater visibility into business performance; by bringing together data from POS, loss prevention and inventory management systems, it can boost effectiveness and give retailers valuable insights they did not previously have. In addition to the benefits discussed above, such integration also brings benefits such as reducing energy consumption and false alarm incidences. Traffic Intelligence can ensure the EAS systems are supplied with power only if shoppers are in close proximity. Incidences of false alarms that arise from misplaced directionality can also be reduced, as Traffic Intelligence can differentiate between entrance and exit traffic. The EAS system will hence only sound the alarm when a potential shoplifter leaves the store, and retailers can avoid situations where the alarm sounds whenever a shopper merely walks past the exit.
In this issue, learn how retail giant FJ Benjamin use Tyco Retail Solutions’ Traffic Intelligence and EAS solutions to improve operations, cut costs and boost profits.
As technologies integrate, the value of the information it provides can be leveraged by multiple stakeholders. Data derived from systems can be used for marketing analysis, for store managers to improve customer service and for loss prevention managers to ensure store security. Huge potential remains for brick and mortar businesses to optimize in-store processes and improve customer satisfaction, via the integration of loss prevention and store performance solutions.
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