Part 3 of the 4 part series covering essential steps in growing your bottom line
In this series I talk about essential steps to make more money, and to keep it! In this 4 part series we’re talking about Lifestyle, Business Development, Loss Prevention, Growth & Branding.
Loss Prevention/Asset Protection
Today we’re talking about protecting your inventory/assets. There are a vast number of professionals in this field. The terms of LP or AP have been industry specific. Loss Prevention has been specific to retail, and Asset protection specific for other industries.
I have cultivated a very niche clientele fulfilling these services, and my experience evolved from my time spent in the military, real estate, technology development, being a licensed Polygraph Examiner and Investigator. The universal terms everyone understands are narrow in defining our role.
Security executive, investigator, auditor, crisis manager, and risk manager all investigate asset protection or LP. All of these professionals are auditing or investigating the potential loss of assets. Job Titles and descriptions have been inconsistent among organizations. The industry has different proffesionals that specialize in separate areas. Theft and losses can come in many areas from vendor relationships to a lack of systems. It makes sense to hire a qualified professional to audit every area of business, or if you’re lucky, hire one person who is knowledgable in all areas.
The Usual Suspects in Loss Prevention
- External theft
- Organized Internal theft
- Process failures
- Lack of S.O.P.
- Failed performance reports and training reports
- Faulty contracts
- Inflated Vendor prices
- Lack of surveilance and technology analytics.
The loss prevention world to traditionally look to the military and police for recruitment, leading to generations of managers who can be viewed as more adept at adopting a reactive rather than proactive approach to the problems. I grew my clientele base because I understood how to balance the budget through vendor relationships, audit standard operating procedures, understand the political landscape, while thinking outside the box for preventative measures.
Bottom Line
If you’re the owner of a company or a concerned share holder, and want to audit your operation. Make a checklist as I do, and take as much time as you need to audit each area. Sometimes it takes me a day, and other times a lot longer. I can recall times auditing publicly traded gold mining operations and discovering many issues in all areas of my checklist. I’ve had some interesting cases that lasted months, and had to do surviellance to understand the loss happening.
- Review S.O.P. of operation, making notes on operational costs. Break down the process to look for a more cost effective way to operate.
- Review Systems, tracking analytics and technology platforms.
- Review Personnel – Employee contracts, position training and performance reports.
- Interview Everyone discreetly and individually!
- Review Equipment costs and Vendor relationships.
It’s really important to understand the political landscape, behind who put the current systems into place and why…