Knowing when things are right is important, but knowing when things are wrong may be even more vital.
Lowes Foods, a Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based regional supermarket retailer with 97 stores across North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, is using exception-based data analysis to receive real-time notifications of potential loss prevention problems. Using Profitect's sales module and in the process of implementing the vendor’s inventory module and mobile field application, the Lowes Foods asset protection department is obtaining inventory and POS exception reports.
The grocery retailer was up and running with Profitect in less than one week from receipt of the data, with initial user training within three weeks. Within days, Lowes Foods was able to identify trends and patterns associated with areas leaking profit -- including shrink, process mistakes and more -- and take the prescriptive action needed to solve and correct them.
Sophisticated data analytics allow retailers to take much of the guesswork out of loss prevention.
By diving into volumes of inventory and POS data at previously unattainable speeds, analytics solutions can quickly identify areas of concerns and issue real-time notifications. This allows loss prevention staff to maximize the use of their time on investigating anomalies, instead of digging through data or wasting time on false alarms.
"We looked into a number of different solutions to help us elevate our services and offerings and found that Profitect best fit our needs," said Tony Hiatt, manager of investigations, Lowes Foods. "The product is very intuitive, requiring minimal training. Profitect's customer service allowed us to see immediate results in the way we run our business and in turn, pass that improved experience along to our consumers."