Profile of a Store

Did you know that you can create an instant store snapshot for all of your stores in just a three step process?  The Aspect EliteLP application allows you to add important data elements that help to create an easy to reference store profile.   As we all know, no two stores are identical.  Stores don’t live in a vacuum; each has a history and unique set of attributes that paint a picture of the store and contribute to the overall understanding the exceptions identified in Aspect.  When you create store profiles, you have no need to open other files or applications to see if the store you’re analyzing has a camera, is a High Shrink store, who the district manager is or what last year’s sales were.  You are able to click the Store Profile button on the main toolbar and see an instant comprehensive snapshot of the store. 

When you are entering attributes that you wish to see on your store profiles, you will find several preloaded but you are also able to add attributes that will be of the most benefit to your company.  You may want to try to determine what factors have proven to have high correlations with shrink in your company and be sure to include them on the list of attributes.  Your Aspect EliteLP administrator will need to help you with importing the store information using the Store Profile Loader.

Once the Store Profile Loader is run successfully, you will now be able to see these important attributes by clicking on the Store Profile button while viewing reports.  There are several times that you may wish to look at the store profiles.  Before store visits your RLPM can view store data at the touch of a button.  When running investigative profiles, all users can quickly get a picture of the store in question.  Users can also use the store profile when a phone call comes in about a specific store. 

Use the Store Profile as a one stop shop while running Aspect reports. Store Profile allows a quick snapshot of market activity – by focusing on key indicators you can get a sense of what is affecting a particular market or a group of stores within a market.  Again, the Store Profile is yet another piece to the prevention puzzle.  Why gather information from multiple sources and slow yourself down when you can get yourself a step ahead of the theft?  I will post some additional tips on loading information into your store profile for your admin on our LinkedIn site.

Even More Tools of the Trade

As a continuation of our last discussion on the many additional tools available to help you focus your investigation, I want to look at Transaction Analysis, Incident Analysis and Trending Reports.  All of this can be found under the Tools Menu.

Transaction Analysis: Many of you may be familiar with using transaction analysis from detail reports by clicking the right mouse button and selecting from a transaction detail popup menu.  However, the Tools menu provides the second use of this function. Access from the Tools menu allows you to use Transaction Analysis for ad hoc investigations of transaction detail. Transaction Analysis is a dual-purpose investigative tool that provides the investigator with the complete transaction record of a register or associate for a sales date. Users have found this analysis helpful when looking at trends of cashier dishonesty or searching for additional supporting evidence. 

Incident Analysis: The Incident Analysis tool allows you to obtain high-level summary information by store.  Information from Incident Analysis is often used to create benchmarks of “normal” store activity.  Meaningful sub reports and filters can then be created from these benchmarks.  This allows you to be able to more easily identify those that are outside of “normal” store activity. You can also create Incident Analysis Queries that you can save for future use.

Trending: Do you want to determine if a suspected dishonest associate’s patterns change over time when compared to others in the same group?  How about determine if activity changes when a suspected associate is out of the store on vacation?  The Trending tool gives you the ability to see how selected reporting elements change over periods of time.  Trending can be done on a Regional, District, Store or Associate Level.  Your Aspect Administrator can set custom trending periods to meet the specific needs of your company.  This also allows you to track information over selected periods of time and to compare key percentages between stores.  You will be able to find some additional tips on our LinkedIn page about how to build the trending reports if you have questions.

In my next entry I will look at using the Store Profile to enhance your analysis.  We are hoping that all of these tips are helping you to go above and beyond the basic functions of your Aspect EliteLP application.  The more evidence you can provide, the greater the reward when you are able to conduct your interview.  These tips/tools can help add all those important pieces to the internal theft puzzle your associates have created.

Going Beyond the Basic Reports

The Aspect EliteLP application offers you even more options for your investigating pleasure.  Under the Tools drop down menu are tools that go beyond the standard reporting in that they show you information at various levels in different ways to help you focus your investigation. Some of the most popular are:

·         Regions, Districts, Departments: Graphical analysis of incident activity for all regions, all districts within a region, or all departments in a selected store group.

·         Day and Time Reporting: Show graphs by day of the week and time of day for all Loss Prevention incident counts and amounts.

·         Top Ten Store Reports: Displays up to 9 concurrent reports selecting the top 10 stores in selected incident categories.

·         Transaction Analysis: Analyze transaction detail for a sales date for an associate or register.

·         Incident Analysis: Provides access to all of the counts, amounts, and percentages available on the Loss Prevention database.

·         Trending Reports: Shows the trend of various criteria over user-defined reporting periods.

There are so many ways that you can use this feature that we will break it into two separate blog entries.  The first will cover the first three of: Regions, Districts, Departments; Day and Time Reporting and Top Ten Store reports.

Regions, Districts, Departments: Sometimes it is much easier to present information to others when it is displayed in graphical form.  The Regions/Districts Graph tool can provide a whole array of information that can be presented in various ways.  These graphs can be used to present loss prevention or operational reports and are presented as color graphs which have a great visual impact for reports and presentations.  These graphs can help to provide awareness and training for any level within the organization.  Users have also presented the graphs at meetings to show participants exceptional behavior.  The graphs are also a great way to work on building partnerships throughout operations by displaying such topics as sales, cash sales and paid outs.

Day and Time Reporting: You can once again help build relationships with departments outside of Loss Prevention with the Day and Time Reporting tool.  This tool can be used to develop investigations or to display operational issues. The report will graph by a single count or amount.  This information can then be drilled down to the associates and/or transaction detail. You are able to track things like refund counts by time and help you to identify times in which fraudulent refunds may be occurring.  To assist other departments, it allows you to display sales by count to determine when transactions are occurring which can in turn help with the scheduling of associates. Other users look at price override amounts and counts.  When they see large spikes on one day, it may be an indication that markdowns were not downloaded into the store system.  We will post some additional tips for getting the most out of Day/Time Reporting on our LinkedIn page.

Top Ten Reports: Ever wonder which stores are ranked at the top for cash refunds? By using the Top Ten Reports, you have access to 90 different incident options in which to rank. This gives you an excellent starting point for more detailed investigations. When doing store visits, the Top Ten Reports tool is an excellent method to get an overview of a specific area to determine if a single store is ranked in multiple categories. Partner with store operations and look at stores with the highest sales amounts or the lowest counts of voids.  These reports easily identify the top or the bottom 10 stores meeting you selected criteria.

In our next entry we will continue to look at some suggestions on how to use the Tool in your Aspect EliteLP application. Continue to pass along suggestions as to what you would like to see as a focus and you may find your idea as our next topic of focus.  Hopefully by using tools like the Top Ten Reporting, you will find your store off the Top Ten list of stores to steal from.