Microsoft shop adds loss prevention capabilities to its stable

Microsoft shop adds loss prevention capabilities to its stable

K3 Retail, UK provider of retail solutions based on Microsoft technology, recently launched a loss prevention (LP) application to reduce loss in store.

K3 Retail LP is a suite of analysis and evidence gathering tools designed to supports audit teams as they focus efforts on store and employee theft. If used creatively as part of the store manager mission, according to the company, it can help create a LP culture across the whole organisation which in turn not only drives down employee theft, but also makes store staff more aware of the other sources of shrinkage including shoplifting, card-not-present (CNP) fraud, process-driven loss and vendor fraud.

John Little, sales director at K3 Retail, said: “The K3 LP solution works on two levels. Firstly, it helps identify pre-meditated theft, which allows retailers to collect the evidence needed to prepare cases and prosecute criminals. Secondly it permits retailers to spot behaviour which could develop into more serious fraud.”

Touting integration capabilities

Little continued: “This LP application can be integrated into a retailer’s in-store CCTV to provide video evidence of suspect transactions, rather than wade through hours and hours of video footage. The transaction timestamp is used to allow LP managers to hyperlink straight to the individual transaction so that they can review the receipt alongside video evidence of the event.”

The K3 solution tests each point-of-sale (PoS) transaction against a ‘threat template’ that determines whether the transaction properties fall outside a pre-defined trigger range and should be flagged. This could be something as simple as a manual discount, or opening of the cash drawer without a sale.

Individual triggers are aggregated and compared against company, store and staff averages across time to identify incidents for which need further investigation. The analysis suite allows managers to drill down to a store and compare the performance of employees across the range of threat templates, the company added.