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RetailWATCH: Tyco Retail Solutions Aids 7-Eleven in Asset Protection

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven operates some 50,000 stores worldwide in 16 countries. In the United States and Canada, the company operates 8,000 stores and grew by some 1,000 stores last year alone.

7-Eleven focuses on being the world’s best convenience-store retailer, known for its beacon in the night service for customers looking for a place to get a cup of coffee, a cold drink or something good to eat any time of the day.
 
“Most people think of 7-Eleven as a small-box retail store and think that the issues we face are scaled down in the same way,” says Mark Stinde, VP of asset protection for 7-Eleven Inc. “But we do a lot of things in our stores and face some complex issues. We sell food items, which involves food-safety issues. We sell tobacco products, which come with regulatory concerns. We sell gasoline that comes with environmental challenges. On top of that, we’re a 24-hour operation that brings in guests at all hours of the day and night, which presents a number of issues.”
 
According to Stinde, asset protection is a key support function and the best way for any asset protection head to do his job properly lies in having a true understanding of what it takes to operate the business. “I spent 60 days in a store learning the business, all the way from how you order donuts to how you clean the grill to food temperature expectations.” Operational knowledge gained early on helped Stinde to better manage asset protection.
 
One of the key issues 7-Eleven faced related to high robbery rates. The company not only engaged consultants to help with the problem but also went to the prisons of America and interviewed convicted robbers, asking them about aspects of a store which could tempt a potential robber. Insights discovered included things like how well-lit a store is, both inside and outside. Another aspect lay with keeping cash levels low so robbers would avoid 7-Eleven due to the small amount of cash on hand.
 
Strategy
 
The asset protection team’s strategy is four-fold: the first pillar centers around revenue-and-profit assurance, which is focused on making sure that what gets reported in stores, be it a sales number, profit number, a mark down or a write-off, is all reported correct. The second pillar lies with inventory variation control. The third includes incidents and investigations, doing the work on the operations end to control the risk. The last pillar centers on safety and asset protection awareness, making sure associates are engaged to ensure security and loss prevention.
The team is held accountable month to month on when technology investments will reap financial return. “We can’t just be a cost center in the organization; we really should be an income center,” says Stinde. “You also have to consider if asset protection in any way negatively impacts the customer experience in the store.”
 
Driven by the need to use data to drive decisions, Stinde’s team purchased a new state-of-the-art-expectation-based reporting system called SecureTM from Sysrepublic. The system integrated the existing ClickIt DVR technology deployed by Tyco Integrated Solutions in 2012. The Secure system was integrated into 7-Eleven’s APIS case management system. “Each technology improvement provides great value to our program, but the effective integration of all these tools is what really makes the system power and adds value,” says Stinde.
 
According to Stinde, the Secure system’s ability to integrate to any type of data is a huge advantage. Data that has been brought in includes Oracle feeds, mainframe feeds and flat-file feeds. “It’s flexible enough to take any data source, map it in our database and run exceptions on the data.”
 
Opportunities arose to automate the team’s case-management process, which used to be a mere manila file folder or a document stored in a computer. The team is now able to track incidents and cases all the way from cradle to grave.
 
Video Integration
 
Most of the 7-Eleven stores had been using outdated VHS video technology, and a large $40 million sum was invested into making the upgrade to digital video technology. Care was taken to ensure the new technologies were compatible with existing systems. “I have to recognize Tyco Integrated Security, who did a flawless job on the integration of 4,000 systems in 9 months in our stores, which was a Herculean effort,” says Stinde. “That may sound like a small number, but we’re a small format store. One of them is a 360-degree camera, and one is a 180-degree analytics camera at the front door. We have the ability to measure traffic, dwell time, and other analytics from the systems. Not only do we have remote access to the systems, but we have integrated this video into our Secure exception-reporting system.”
 
The integration has served several levels of the company well, with the customer insights, innovations and new store design teams all tapping into data provided from the well-executed systems integration. Data is constantly being utilized to better understand the stores and customers.
 
“We always have to stay vigilant to some of our key robbery-prevention procedures because of the fact that we operate 24/7 in all different parts of the country. We will continue to focus on safety and ask ourselves if we can implement better operational standards in stores,” says Stinde. “We’re also in the very early stages of what we can do with data. We’re doing a great job around the point of sale, but need to ask what additional things can be done around other components of the business.”
 
Mark Stinde’s interview first appeared in LP Magazine here.