Uncategorized — Page 183

Checkpoints Hot New Clothing Security Tags

September 22, 2010 by Staff Editor

Checkpoint has released several new clothing security tags this year. They are a breath of fresh air in the hard tag market. Given that the importers try to copy and in most cases do a very poor job of coping Checkpoints clothing security tags . I guess you know who the real leader is when everyone tries to copy you.

But lets get to the new tags. They three tags represent several different areas in the clothing security tags arena. This is clothing security on steroids.

First up is the G3. It has the same lines as the mini hard tag but has some visual and physical differences. The first thing you notice about the G3 is the color. It is a combination of off white and light gray. The colors are elegant and will clearly be a complement to any style clothing. The technology changes are first class and what you tend to expect from Checkpoint. The G3 is a physically stronger tag as if the original mini was not enough. The seam of the mini was on the side. The G3 has what I can only describe as a hidden seam. It makes these clothing security tags very tough. Checkpoint has also made the G3 a bit more aggressive in detection.

Next up is the pencil tag. It is a slim tag about two inches long and very thin. The lines are clean and it clearly is designed to take the wear and tear that clothing security tags must endure. This tag will virtually disappear on small clothing items such as ladies swim wear and lingerie.

Last but clearly not last in the offerings is the button tag. These clothing security tags are the hottest things that have been released in some time. It is round about 1.5” across. It is dark gray and has a height profile of about 0.5”. This is a very new tag design. The button tag is very compact and like the pencil tag will disappear on your merchandise. One of the best features is that the button tag is very difficult for the shoplifter to grip. Because of the round smooth lines and surface shoplifters will become very frustrated in their attempts to pull on them.

Both the G3 and the button tag have the raised ring that makes the pin extremely difficult to get at with cutters. All of the tags are well engineered and have smooth lines. They so not have any edges that will snag clothing including very delicate fabrics.

Take your clothing security to a new level. If you would like a sample please contact us.

For more information on clothing security tags contact us at clothing security or call 1.770.426.0547

Criminal background check

September 22, 2010 by Staff Editor

Depending upon the type of business; the criminal background check may place emphasis on different aspects of a potential employee’s background. For example for a job that requires driving, a history of drunk driving or drug violations will be more important than minor misdemeanors involving petty thefts. A criminal background check for a job involving the handling of money would place emphasis on arrests and convictions involving gambling or embezzlement. A security officer criminal background check would place more emphasis on finding convictions for weapons, assault or sex crime charges.

One problem for investigators in a criminal background check are juvenile criminal records. Many states allow access to juvenile files if they involve serious crimes but there are still some states that continue to seal all juvenile criminal records for even the most serious crimes. Juvenile records may be less important for a criminal background check on an older potential employee but may be very crucial in evaluating a very young employment prospect.

In addition the the above problems an additional problem is that many names are similar and someone with either a warrant or a criminal record may have a common name and his birth date may be the same as several other people.

The problem is that an employer does not want to deny a position to someone simply based on a case of mistaken identity. This could lead to legal problems and lawsuits if an error in identity is made.

On the other hand a sensitive position should not be filled by a judgement call or the benefit of the doubt. The investigator must be certain that the persons who have similar names and birth dates to people with records or warrants are, in fact, not those people and that may require some extra effort to contact the agency who put the record into the law enforcement tracking systems. There must be no doubt as to the identity of the person undergoing a criminal background check. It is certainly best to find out the individual’s background accurately prior to, and not after he is on the job.

For more information contact us at criminal background check or call 1.770.426.0547

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: criminal background check

Retail loss prevention solution a click or call away

September 21, 2010 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Retail Loss Prevention has been around for many years. Names like Store Detective, In house Detective, Grocery Cop, Loss Prevention Agent, Undercovers, and more have been bounced around and used all over the place. Whatever the name, the job of a person in Retail Loss Prevention is ever-changing.

From Apprehending shoplifters, to running an inventory, leaders in Retail Loss Prevention are always out to find the best return on the investment. This is no small feat. As most business people would probably agree, a knowledgeable and effective loss prevention department can seriously impact the business. Now, whether this impact is negative or positive depends on the organization.

Knowledge is power. In this day and age, it is important for loss prevention leadership to look at ALL aspects of the retail business. Is the retailer suffering from shoplifters? What about organized retail crime rings? Are they having issues with cash shortages? Maybe their receiving habits have gone unchecked for too long. What about employee awareness? Deciding what works best and building a custom program to each retailer should be the goal.

By far, one of the best ways Retail Loss Prevention can impact their business and partners is by helping build the awareness of all employees. Most employees are not aware of losses other than shoplifters. They don’t know about markdown abuse, price adjustments, refund fraud, discount abuse and other point of sale schemes used by the dishonest employee. Employee awareness impacts shrink and losses effectively when managed appropriately.

As experts, Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. provides a valuable service to the retailer working closely with management, ownership and or operations, they can advise on all aspects of the business where opportunities for improvement exist to reduce losses and boost profits.

For more information visit us at retail loss prevention or call 1.770.426.0547

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: loss prevention, Retail Loss prevention

Security and Loss Prevention – Providing the same outcome thru different tasks

September 21, 2010 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Security and Loss Prevention have, throughout their history, been lumped together as one in the same. Some call Loss Prevention, Security, some call Security, Loss Prevention.

I personally believe they are different, here’s why.

Security is, as its name indicates, a position of securing, keeping secure or providing a secure environment for people, places and things. When you hear the name security, you automatically think of a person in a uniform, assigned to patrol or monitor a particular area.

When you hear the name of Loss Prevention, you think of a plain clothes store detective or undercover loss prevention agent. Both working to protect the assets of the company through a pro-active approach, one is overt the other is covert.

Security and Loss Prevention, different or not, should have the same goal. Provide the retailer or business with a safe, secure and profitable environment.

Through shared responsibilities, Security and Loss Prevention offer a great partnership.

Retailers must have their fingers on the pulse of the business to truly identify what is needed. Is it a uniformed security program, or should they develop a full blown loss prevention program? What is the environment? What is the business? What do the stores or business look like? Large box or smaller boutique styles? The demographic can also dictate when and where a uniformed security presence is best suited versus the undercover loss prevention personnel working to apprehend would-be thieves. Having uniformed security personnel at the front of a business can sometimes deter customers. Having a poorly trained and uneducated loss prevention program can lead to bad business practice. It’s no easy task. Security and Loss Prevention are two business needs that should be address by every retailer, business owner and manager alike.

Consult a Loss Prevention professional to asses your specific situation and recommend the security a loss prevention services that best fit your goals.

For more information visit us at security and loss prevention or call us 1.770.426.0547

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: loss prevention, security and loss prevention

Bad Hires – What are the Costs?

September 21, 2010 by Staff Editor

Are background checks part of your company’s pre-hire procedures? If not, they should be because the cost of hiring the wrong person can be high in more ways than one.

You invest a lot of time and money into hiring the right person for your company: running ads, recruiting, reading and sorting through resumes, narrowing down the candidates, arranging phone interviews, live interviews, second interviews, calling employers and references, completing new hire paperwork, checking identification, completing tax forms and more forms. Then time spent training and educating the individual to your company’s way of doing business while he is being paid a salary. All this time involves other productive employees and occurs before there is any production at all from the employee. The Department of Labor estimates that it will cost one third of an employee’s salary to replace him and that figure goes higher with the relative position of the employee.

Plus, there are non-quantifiable losses when the background checks fail to eliminate an undesirable candidate. Loss of morale within the company being shorthanded again, or even loss of customers, cash, or other assets are examples.

And when the problem employee is finally gone, the process begins again.

The current economy has produced a large supply of applicants for every open position, and all the applicants want to appear as appealing as possible. Use comprehensive background checks, personalized for your company’s unique requirements, to fine the applicants most suited for your team.

Call 1-770-426-0547 or click here to discuss how you can lower your hiring costs through the use of background checks.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Background checks

New Tools In Employee Theft Investigation – Atlanta

September 20, 2010 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Conducting an employee theft investigation is a complicated undertaking best left to professionals. However, in the past several years a new CCTV tool has not only become available but the cost is now very reasonable. This tool is the link between a retailers CCTV system and their POS.

Employee theft at the POS was always time intensive. You had to match up the detail tape to the CCTV recording of the cashier at the POS. Time stamps on both systems never matched up and even when they did it was very difficult to keep going back and forth between the two.

Now imagine this, you are conducting an employee theft investigation of a cashier. But now the POS terminal data show up on the same screen with the video of the cashier and customer.

Now we see in perfectly synchronized clarity both together. As the cashier is ringing up a pack of gum but actually bagging up DVD’s we see it as clear as day. That type of employee theft is as old as theft itself. But now there is no question at all what happened.

The cool thing about this new technology is that many new DVR’s have this great corporate fraud investigation tool built in. A simple connection is made from the POS terminal to the DVR, usually a CAT 5 cable. There is normally a little programming at the DVR as there are so many different POS systems out there that it simply needs a little adjustment.

Employee theft at the POS is now exposed quickly and easily. The best part is that the system is running 24/7. So when you catch onto an employee theft scheme and begin your investigation it is easy to go back and do research. This is another good argument for adequate drive storage on your DVR.

For more information contact us about employee theft investigation in Atlanta or call 1.770.426.0547

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: corporate fraud, corporate fraud investigation, employee theft, employee theft investigation

Retail Shrinkage And Loss Prevention – Atlanta

September 20, 2010 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Retail shrinkage cancels millions of dollars in sales. That means all of your hard work for an entire year can be wiped out by a single retail shrinkage loss.

Our goal as business managers is to get retail shrinkage and retail loss down to a manageable level. We will never eliminate it all together. However, we can push retail loss down and maintain it at a point where we can predict and budget for it.

What steps do you take to prevent retail shrinkage losses?

Let’s examine some of the common inventory shrinkage problems:

Pricing errors
   – Inaccuracy when pricing
   – Low price on item
   – Incorrect tag on item
Missing SKU/price tickets
   – Sales at the wrong price cause lost profit
   – Extra time is involved in tracking down correct price
Receiving errors
   – Accuracy in counting
   – All items must be correctly piece counted
Illegible or incorrect writing on documents
   – Written information must be easy to read
   – Information must be accurate
Padding inventory
– Gives a false picture of the company’s profits
Merchandise or product transfer
   – When a transfer is not generated, retail shrinkage is created for the sending store or unit
   – Incorrect transfers create retail loss
Shoplifting
   – Makes a substantial impact and can add up quickly
   – Shoplifting must be accounted for through incident reports and then writing off the items
   – Losses also include empty packages, price tickets hidden in bathrooms, etc.
Register discounts
   – Discount errors create retail loss
   – Only management should authorize discounts
   – Management must insure the correct amount of discount is taken
   – Deception constitutes fraud
Fraudulent or improper refunds/returns
   – Evaluate each situation
   – No receipt could mean possible shoplifted
merchandise
   – An associate’s best friend with receipt and no merchandise.

Retail Return Policy

A good return/exchange policy should contain the following items:

A time limit for returns and exchanges should be made. For example, no returns are allowed after 30 days.

Require ID

If an exchange is given, the original item should be circled and noted on the customer’s receipt. A new receipt should not be given to the customer.

Receipts should be required (train the customer). If a receipt is not available, then ask for proof of purchase such as a canceled check or charge statement.

Voids
– The “number one” way employees steal cash
– Associates void legitimate sales and steal the cash
– Investigate voids without management approval
Fraud or improper use of time card
– Ghost “employees” created in order to collect pay
– Clocking in or out for another employee

For more information on retail shrinkage contact us at: retail loss or call 1.770.426.0547

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: retail loss, retail shrinkage

Your Attitude About “Prevent Shoplifting Loss” Is Paramount

September 20, 2010 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Someone told me a short time ago that they did not have a shoplifting problem and that “their” customers would not do that to them. Wow, what do you say to this? We know from reliable studies that shoplifting makes up about 35% of retailers losses (employee theft is about 45%). For a retailer to have that attitude simply tells me that this person is asleep at the switch. His business, a gift type store, is a clear target. “Prevent Shoplifting Loss” is not even on his radar.

Many times we run into retailers that feel that if they are paying the bills and got some money at the end of the month that they are doing well. It doesn’t matter that shoplifters or employees are stealing. The sad part about this is that with just a little effort they could have much more money on the bottom-line. This is money or profit that they are already making. They just let it slip out the door.

Consider the cost to put in a Checkpoint system. It is a very small investment in both dollars and labor. The payoff is higher profits as the system generally pays for itself in six to eight months.

But even worse an attitude like this is frightening. To not use even good customer service skills to detect and prevent shoplifting loss is simply asking for shoplifters to hit you. Once you become known as an easy target it is like fly’s to honey. As with anything else attitude can be most of the problem. If that retailer does not understand that shoplifters are out there and take proactive measures to prevent shoplifting what do you imagine his employees think? They simply do not care.

In the long run retail is like life: survival of the fittest. If you are not stronger, smarter and faster than your competition then you are simply someone else’s dinner.

Don’t be someone else’s meal ticket prevent shoplifting loss you can also call us at 1.770.426.0547

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Prevent Shoplifting

Loss Prevention Security, Hiring Procedures, Atlanta

September 20, 2010 by Staff Editor Leave a Comment

Loss prevention security professionals that have been in the business for some time understand that simply conducting employee theft investigation after investigation is not the primary solution to company profitability.

I began to notice early in my career that the loss prevention people are really the ones catching the sludge coming out of the end of the pipe. We deal with the most undesirable soon to be ex-employees. When you are constantly doing this you have a tendency to look up the pipe and try to figure out where all of this comes from. The answer is that it starts the moment that a person walks in to apply for a job.

If your company has poor or weak hiring policies then you are simply setting the company and yourself up for more sludge. I am not even going into the issue of what this costs the company to train and replace the bad hire let alone the cost of that a poor performer caused you in lost sales and productivity. That is for another blog.

Loss prevention is exactly that, preventing loss. In a way when we have to conduct an employee theft investigation we have lost. Whatever the employee did should have been prevented. So how do we do this?

Security and loss prevention must be involved and have input into the hiring process. We should be working directly with Human Resource management as partners to achieve the company’s goal, which is a profit.

Our company should be selecting the most desirable and best candidate for the position. Part of this should be consideration for their background and attitudes. Has this person been involved in any undesirable behavior, criminal activity, poor personal money management and poor work history? In addition what is this candidates attitude towards management, supervision and loss prevention. What is their work ethic? All of these areas affect the company and loss prevention mission, profit. Loss prevention security is not simply chasing bad guys

This is in addition to security and loss prevention involvement in other areas such as inventory control, merchandising and store layout. Loss prevention security personnel must interface with all areas of the company to insure that the profit mission is achieved. But again these are issues for another days blog.

Security and loss prevention is one of the major keys to a profitable company. Ignore it as many have done and face an unprofitable environment while catching more sludge than you should have to.

For more information contact us: security and loss prevention or call 1.770.426.0547

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: loss prevention, loss prevention security, security and loss prevention

Loss Prevention Agent – To catch a thief?

September 20, 2010 by Staff Editor

A loss prevention agent, by industry standard, is a trained and well versed person working for the benefit of the retailer, restaurant or business owner. The primary mission of the loss prevention agent is to identify, observe and make the apprehension of customers suspected of theft.

Get to the point! A loss prevention agent has the responsibility of catching shoplifters. What a skill. I remember (as do most loss prevention professionals) spending countless hours on the sales floor, peeking around corners, under display shelves, using one way mirrors or in the rare event, using high tech CCTV equipment. I was undercover and the hunt was on.

Every day I came to work, I made it a point to show the business owner that shoplifters are in their store. I made it a point to blend in, become part of the local community shopping these stores. Pushing a shopping cart around the store and focusing on the “hard hit” areas like liquor, health and beauty or hardware. Sooner or later, one would arrive, a shoplifter. Your adrenaline kicks in, you try to remain calm. He selects 2 bottles of liquor and stuffs them into a backpack he has placed on the floor. Wow, I thought to myself, right in front of me. He stands up, as I read the label of the liquor bottle I’m holding, and heads down the aisle to the front of the store. I keep my distance, trying not to lose sight of him. He passes the opened and manned register and makes no attempt to pay for the merchandise. I gain on him. He exits, I follow. “Excuse me sir”, I say…

A common, everyday occurrence for retailers and small businesses alike, Customer Theft! More so a nuisance, but gone unchecked can ruin a business leading to employee layoffs and business closures. It wreaks havoc on the morale of other employees when they witness customer theft and nothing is done or can be done. It is said that roughly 30% of losses can be directly related to shoplift activity.

A loss prevention agent can be that solution. Hired specifically to detect and catch shoplifters, the right agent can make a huge impact on the success of your business.

For more information contact us at loss prevention agent or call 1.770.426.0547

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