Balancing New Technology With Loss Prevention Risk

By Joe LaRocca, founder and president, RetaiLPartners

Retailers are anxious to implement new technologies to enhance the customer experience, but any new implementation must take loss prevention into account.

It’s easy to get excited about so much of the new technology currently in stores and on the drawing board. Approximately one-third of retailers now use handheld registers, changing where we transact business in the store. Touchless payment instruments, such as RFID chips inside phones and cards, will satisfy consumers’ desire to carry around less stuff as well as merge loyalty and payment accounts. Retailers need to plan for every inevitability — and introducing emerging technology to busy stores and the general public can bring with it a plethora of new operational challenges and options for criminals.

One example, mobile point of sale (mPOS) devices, gives retailers the ability to engage the customer in their own setting — for example, in the fitting room, delivering an opportunity to “upsell” by offering additional items, then completing a sales transaction right on the spot.