How can I protect my business from?
Robbery is an offence where the culprit has used force or a threat directly after or prior to a theft. It's certainly not a victimless crime with over 9,000 incidents in the past year, furthermore, more than a third of these incidents contained the use of a weapon having a serious impact on staff in the industry as well as costing the sector £18million.
There are ways you can deter possible criminals without spending money on security but their effectivity is minimal. Keeping as low stock as possible and as little expensive items as possible may make your premises less desirable to the opportunist burglar. Other tactics such as leaving the till open and money in the safe may help again but without alarm systems, motion sensors and CCTV you can never really have peace of mind.
As well as CCTV providing high definition live feeds to your premises and evidence in court it is also proven that it is the most effective deterrent to burglars. More high-end HD CCTV systems now offer video analytics as well, these significantly improve the way you manage an incident for example any activity out of the ordinary will give you a notification or alarm making your response faster and even possible to prevent a break-in. Cameras are now a lot further forward in development and manufacturers such as Avigilon and Hikvision can produce images better than a 4K resolution working perfectly with Police facial recognition software.
As well as CCTV, an access-controlled stock room not only secures the room itself but allows managers to access audit trails making it easier to identify who accesses, when and how long for. In the event of a break-in valuables will be safer in a separate room but also broken entry of that safe room will notify the system.
Burglary
Burglary also isn’t unheard of for a UK retailer. Burglary is the single most expensive crime to the industry costing over £7,000 each incident on average, a hit of this size is devastating for any business so good well thought security systems are a must.
Some industry guides note that good lighting, strong locks, safety glass and stock reduction/relocation is enough and, in some cases, it may well be. Making the burglar as obvious as possible is a great tactic, with lighting and the layout of the premises you can achieve a good view but without a valuable eye-witness to call the police or intervene, the odds of catching the culprit are severely reduced. For an effective police response time installing a smart alarm system may be the answer.
Motion sensors, burglar alarms, CCTV cameras and even remotely activated doors can all be programmed to work together and give you peace of mind. Having these systems all integrated gives you more value for your security budget, the systems don’t only act by themselves on one easily used platform but they are made to communicate and work together to detect, deter and delay the intruder. A smart system can be accessed by yourself or a private monitoring company at an alarm receiving center (ARC).
Shoplifting
A common problem in every retail premises is the customer themselves and the risk of the ‘opportunist’ shoplifter. Making your security system obvious is key, If the culprit believes they are being watched they are far more likely not to steal, even simple signage and window stickers can help but a camera is a must to prove who the perpetrator is and make an example to those who try the same in the future.
Other tactics recommended by retailers include; insuring that you keep the premises tidy and give no reason for an ‘easy steal’, moving the till close to the exit so you can see who leaves and whether they have paid for their items, some even advise retailers to eradicate blind spots using mirrors this may be less effective as there is no playback or constant watch.
More commonly used defence tactics include electronic article surveillance (EAS), tagging items, security guards and point of sale cameras. Security guards are proven a great deterrent and very useful in disputes however in the case of a shoplifting incident they can’t provide a huge amount other than being a possible eye-witness. A better alternative to hiring a security guard could be security cameras, they come with a nicer price tag than a guard’s salary and in some cases may be more intelligent. The development of video analytics has allowed retailers to reduce the amount of security guards whilst increasing their control over the premises and also gaining a deeper insight in to productivity, marketing and crime
Employee theft is a serious problem in the industry, it’s much harder to tackle than the previously addressed subjects as trust issues arise, reporting is harder and there may be multiple offenders/suspects.
Although the cost of each reported incident is significantly lower than that of burglary and robbery, staff theft costs the sector £23million each year and an extra £5million is spent on trying to solve the issue across the industry.
The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) believe that the problem behind employee theft lies in the reporting of incidences with only 34% being reported to the police, with video analytics and smart IP cameras these incidents can be recorded without someone having to turn in a co-worker.
Heat mapping and EAS can assist with staff theft as well, cameras can be programmed and integrated with point of sale (POS) systems to know the difference between a good transaction and a false one e.g. heat mapping can tell whether a customer is at the till while a sale or refund takes place knowing whether the staff are within their rights to be using the till and if they are not, send a notification to the smart system.
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