5 Ways to Boost Loss Prevention Productivity while Mobile

The majority of loss prevention professionals are mobile most of the time, so as loss prevention leaders we need to make sure we design our tools and processes to fully support mobile teams. Moreover, our tools and processes must be flexible enough to support our people and be integrated with the data they need regardless of the location or device being used. Leveraging a software platform to keep all team members on the same page and productive is imperative for success in the modern business world, and there are several ways you can boost productivity for mobile team members:

1. Consolidate your data on one cloud-based platform

When you consider the plethora of data that a Loss Prevention team needs to access in order to be efficient and effective at their job, the list seems almost endless. Sales, shrink, inventory, audit, employee, transaction, video, traffic, compliance, HR, and countless more. As we analyze how our people are supposed to be productive when there are several systems, some of which can only be accessed when on a corporate network or laptop, the task of mobile enablement may seem daunting. Choosing the right LP platform and planning a phased consolidation of data onto that platform is the first step toward mobile enablement.

2. Get rid of your Excel reports

Consolidating your data does not have to be difficult. As a foundation, your store listing, employee files, incident reports, audit results and store financial and shrink information oftentimes provides a big step forward for LP professionals being able to access that information on their mobile device while in the field. Every organization we work with has dozens of Excel files with various bits of information and varying degrees of consistency, but liberating these information assets from Excel into a cloud platform is a great way to unlock value for your people and your organization.

3. Leverage mobile apps to make your data visible AND actionable

Once you have this information loaded into your cloud platform, making the information visible and actionable for team members is the fun part. Start by documenting what trends and alerts would be most valuable when your team members are visiting facilities, then create reports and deploy them to your mobile app so they’re available on whichever device your team member wishes to use.

4. Automate your processes for “one-tap” efficiency

Making data actionable requires the right balance between business insight and flexible technology. With your data consolidated on one platform you’re able to trigger events like “follow-up audit scheduled in 60 days because the current audit I just submitted on my mobile device had a failing grade”. These one-tap processes could also link in other departments: “quick action note to store ops” when an LP professional spots something that the ops team needs to follow-up on. Pictures and other attachments can also be loaded directly into your business process so you can share immediate insight to any and all interested parties with the tap of a finger. The list of options is endless, and a flexible LP software platform allows you to accomplish this at lightning speed.

5. Enable contextual collaboration

Email is typically a killer of productivity. Having questions, answers, random unrelated messages and lost conversations all located in an un-shareable repository is deadly if you’re looking to increase productivity. While there is still a place for email in the corporate world, much of the conversations between team members can happen in an open but secured manner so progress becomes more visible and contextual. If you need to collaborate on a case, you should be able to do that directly in your software. If you need to create an action plan related to a metric outlier, you should be able to do that directly in your software. The conversations you have in a socially-enabled manner are then available as training and can be incredibly valuable during team member transitions. This contextual collaboration can boost productivity and make work more enjoyable.

Using these methods can liberate teams from being disjointed and allows them to take advantage of the technology that’s has empowered a mobile revolution in the workplace. Specifically in the retail industry, being closer to the customer has never been more important and using the ThinkLP platform has resulted in results like teams saving millions of dollars and quadrupling incident management productivity metrics. If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to explore how a new loss prevention platform can help you boost productivity while your team is mobile.

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