Loss Prevention

Epicor Eagle

Retail loss prevention is all about keeping theft and shrinkage to a minimum. There are four types of shrinkage in a retail business to account for:1. Employee Theft: According to the National Retail Security Survey, the number one

source of shrinkage for a retail business is internal theft. Some of the types of employee theft include discount abuse, refund abuse, and even credit card abuse.

2. Shoplifting: Customer theft occurs through concealment, altering or swapping price tags, or transfer from one container to another. While shoplifting remains a smaller inventory loss source than employee theft, stealing by shoppers still costs retailers about $10 billion annually.

3. Administrative Error: Administrative and paperwork errors make up approximately 15% of shrinkage. Simple pricing mistakes due to markups or markdowns can be costly to retailers.

4. Vendor Fraud: The smallest percentage of shrink is vendor fraud. Retailers report vendor fraud occurs most when outside vendors stock inventory within the store.

The right technology provides the ability for a retailer to simultaneously analyze and interpret point of sale (POS), receiving and store performance metrics to direct retailers to the right pain point to make a difference.

Start with employeesThe best loss prevention practices start with the fundamental blocking and tackling practice of managing employees’ use of their business system. Eagle manages this with usernames and passwords and several different username/password capabilities. Eagle has an extensive library of security flags which provide a host of flexible methods to establish the system security for employees. Eagle also uses “role-based” security which means that all users under a specific role, such a POS clerk, have the same capabilities and security level at all terminals in a store. These capabilities are defined by the role(s) assigned to that user. The beauty of role-based security is that a retailer can add or subtract bits from a role and making a change to the ‘role’ affects all users assigned to that role. This makes managing security straightforward and easy. Eagle also offers, for purposes of meeting credit-card compliance standards, strong passwords which means that the passwords expire after a certain timeframe and users are locked out after a given number of failed login attempts.

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About EpicorEpicor Software Corporation is a global leader delivering business software solutions to the manufacturing, distribution, retail, and service industries. With more than 40 years of experience, Epicor has more than 20,000 customers in over 150 countries. Epicor solutions enable companies to drive increased efficiency and improve profitability. With a history of innovation, industry expertise and passion for excellence, Epicor inspires customers to build lasting competitive advantage. Epicor provides the single point of accountability that local, regional, and global businesses demand. For more information, visit www.epicor.com.

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Another important best practice in loss prevention is establishing an employee pricing plan with the Eagle CPP or the price matrix. Rather than allowing an employee to discount another employee at POS, a pricing plan makes it plain for everyone to know and understand any special pricing that a retailer is offering their employees.

Equally important, the best practice for every retailer is cash balancing their cash register(s) or till(s). Eagle offers a straight-forward and easy to use Cash Balancing viewer that enables the system to accumulate cash drawer totals by clerk or terminal and close out the terminal (zero-out the totals) at any given time. Such capability gives the retailer the ability to ensure, for both loss prevention and customer satisfaction, at any given time that the store’s clerks are being honest and accurate.

Loss prevention and inventoryThere are several best practices when it comes to loss prevention relating to inventory. The use of Eagle’s bar-code scanning for point of sale is a base level use of technology which improves managing loss prevention in a variety of ways. The use of bar-code scanning makes it more difficult for customers (and employees) to change prices than if items are individually stickered or inked. Additionally, barcode scanning sets the stage for the use of the Eagle mobile (RF) applications for managing inventory receiving, shrinkage, and counting. These mobile applications make it easy to manage receiving freight at the back door (ensuring that the freight received is the freight billed), to the shelf (regular and cyclical inventory counts ensure accurate inventory), all the way through to the sales floor and checkout counter (verifying UPC linkage, price changes/updates, and inventory locations).

Reporting and analyticsA critical component for any retailer wanting to keep a close eye on their retail business is reporting and analytics. Exception reporting is the selection and highlighting of objects that are in some way different or not within the expected outcome. Results that fall outside a set of predetermined threshold values (exceptions) are highlighted. This enables the retailer to identify immediately any results that deviate from the expected results. Eagle offers a wide range of reports that illuminate areas of concern. For instance, the Price Exception Report, monitors gross profit margins and prices charged for merchandise at the point of sale terminals. This report should always be run daily because it allows a retailer to target problem areas and alert the retailer to possible pricing or training needs. For instance, the Price Exception Report provides information about price variances, or those items sold at a price different than the system price, to identify situations in which clerks are selling items at a discount. This report is just one of a number of exception reports that Eagle provides.

As a part of their toolset for managing loss prevention, retailers need to see an audit trail of who, what, when (maybe even where) regarding changes in their business. An audit trail is a chronological sequence of records of a businesses process of function. The Eagle System Audit and Reporting Tools provide several different audit capabilities. ITR, is one of these audit tools, and it tracks changes to inventory items, from receiving to sales to shrinkage or price changes giving the retailer a snapshot of why their inventory quantity or price has changed. Similarly the customer maintenance change log stores a record of every change made to the customer maintenance file so a retailer can quickly see who might have changed a customer’s credit limit.

The contents of this document are for informational purposes only and are subject to change without notice. Epicor Software Corporation makes no guarantee, representations or warranties with regard to the enclosed information and specifically disclaims, to the full extent of the law, any applicable implied warranties, such as fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, satisfactory quality or reasonable skill and care. This document and its contents, including the viewpoints, dates and functional content expressed herein are believed to be accurate as of its date of publication, [Month Year]. The usage of any Epicor software shall be pursuant to the applicable end user license agreement and the performance of any consulting services by Epicor personnel shall be pursuant to applicable standard services terms and conditions. Usage of the solution(s) described in this document with other Epicor software or third party products may require the purchase of licenses for such other products. Epicor, the Epicor logo, Business Inspired, and Eagle are trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation, registered in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2013 Epicor Software Corporation. All rights reserved.

Loss PreventionEpicor Eagle