Itim’s Loss Prevention Application  

In the current retail environment, loss prevention is always something retailers need to keep an eye on.  Loss prevention is typically the term used to describe the condition where the retailer has been subject to some form of deliberate fraud.  This usually involves staff collusion, and monitors are required to check and report on transactions as they grow through the tills in-store.

In a world where there is now a significant turnover of retail store staff, loss prevention is a necessity.

The inevitable impact of fraud is margin erosion.  Essentially, cash which should be collected by the retailer is not collected.

Most retailers do not report fraud, as systematic fraud is difficult to measure.  However the numbers are not insignificant.  Most loss prevention systems pay for themselves within months.

The goal of loss prevention systems is to trap fraud early (as it happens) and to provide support in prosecution (accumulated or verifiable evidence). Simply the public introduction of a loss prevention system can act as a deterrent, so inevitably these systems are now an essential part of a retailer’s armoury.

Itim’s Loss Prevention is an application which is available to all customer who are users of TRS store EPoS application or our older product (Chameleon).

Itim’s Loss Prevention application consists of two major functions:
 

Alerts Management

This allows you to set up alerts based on business rules.  These alerts are captured and held on a database, and can cover any aspect of a till’s operation.

This would typically include alerts on:

• Cashier actions - This can include cashiers ringing up their own sales, purchasing out of trading hours, ringing through unusual staff discounts, ringing through own returns etc
• Returns & Refunds - Problems in this area can include the misuse of gift vouchers with returns, refunds for more than the price for items not on the original receipt, invalid transactions, end-of-day sales, voided sales transactions, too many within the same day, etc.  Alerts can be set up for each of these scenarios
• Discounts - These are usually above limits set for the staff members which need to be tracked
• Credit Card Usage - Usually to do with manual enter of credit card numbers or the manual crediting of credit cards
• Use of Media - Incorrect or unusual usages of gift vouchers, including overs or shorts
• Other Customised Alerts - These cover things like dump code sales, sales outside trading hours, managers overrides, negative cash declarations, petty cash out, suspended transactions, etc

The intention here is to provide low level alerting of potentially fraudulent, or inappropriate transactional activity.   The alerts manager is very configurable, so business rules for the alerts can be defined by the retailer.
 
However the volume of alerts can be high, and so in addition to an Alerts Manager, retailers need intelligent reporting of alerts.  Consequently our loss prevention system provides a reporting tool to go with the alerts.
 

Benefits  

 There are many obvious benefits of loss prevention:

• Identifies more cases of theft
• Pinpoints the right cases
• Increases likelihood of obtaining confessions
• Increases case values
• Enhances LP analysts' creativity
• Improves return on existing security systems
• Deters fraudulent activity

All of this contributes to bottom line improvement for retailers.  

There are some other benefits of the loss prevention application.  Essentially alerts can also point out where there is a poor understanding of policy and procedures in the store base.  Consequently it can point out the areas where there is a need for more staff training or better procedures.

For more information, please email us or call on +44 (0) 207 598 7700.