Automotive Case Study

With a high number of stores and garages spread across UK and Ireland, customer experience and operational efficiencies remained the key goals.

• Inspiring their customers through a differentiated, super-specialist shopper experience – this includes a modern and exciting store environment where customers can experience and test the products first hand.
• Developing modern technologies and infrastructure to realize operational efficiencies, while at the same time managing a wide range of risks in-store, online, and within its different business units.

With an estate of several hundred stores, tagging systems had been installed over the last 20 years from several different manufacturers, using a combination of AM and RF technologies, with RF pedestals being dominant throughout the estate. As none of the tagging pedestals were remotely monitored, the company relied upon store colleagues testing the systems each week and reporting faults.

Significant costs were incurred through the manual application of labels at store level, fixing outdated pedestals, and stock losses. Only the highest-theft risk products were protected, around 17% of the entire range.

The company said, “We completed a survey of all stores to review the performance of our tagging pedestals and discovered that only 20% of stores had systems that operated at optimum levels , with the biggest issue being older pedestals that had developed a ‘gap’ over time in the centre where a tag could pass through without activating the gates. We also found that 10% of stores had pedestals that did not work at all, but store colleagues were unaware.

With this insight it was decided we needed networked tagging pedestals, that could be remotely monitored so we would know instantly when they were not operating correctly.

From completing our review, it was evident that if we wanted our tagging pedestals to activate every time a tagged product passed through (or as close to 100% as we could get), then AM technology labels best suited our difficult to tag product range, with the Sensormatic APX labels being our preferred choice.”

Over the previous years, losses connected to these challenges added up to ca. £1million a year, which put pressure on the profit protection team to prevent shrink and help drive the profitability of the business. #According to the company, “After reviewing our stockloss numbers for all of our products, a list of over 1,000 products were selected to be tagged at source (which is significantly more than can be tagged in store by store colleagues). With such a diverse range of products that the company sells, there were several products that we wanted to protect but would struggle to activate most tagging pedestals due to challenges with either the product itself or the packaging. Many of our products contain fluids, have high metallic content or both, all of which are known to impair the performance of label tags.”

The company said, “To establish which technology would give us the best activation rates, we tested several easy products (no metal or fluid), together with some of our more challenging items. We tagged each product with a variety of different manufacturers AM and RF label tags and tested them using their recommended tagging pedestals.

As an average across all the products tested, the activation results ranged from 43% to 72% of the time with RF systems, but 90% to 98% of the time with AM systems. The biggest driver in the range of results was our difficult to tag products. Most RF labels tested did not work at all on these products, and even the very best labels did not achieve high activation rates. AM labels overcame these issues performing significantly better. The system / label tag combination with the highest activation rates tested was the Sensormatic Synergy system using APX AM labels”.

Recognizing the strategic importance of advanced loss prevention technologies for its business, the company therefore decided to invest in a best-of class loss prevention program and focused on three project pillars.

In the first phase of the project, the company and Sensormatic Solutions decided to concentrate on immediate improvement opportunities, namely:

During the initial 25 store roll-out, the company’s profit protection team proved that an integrated loss prevention system enabled them to substantially lower operating costs, while increasing the level of product protection across the tested estates. By connecting their test stores to SMaaS, they gathered invaluable insights into how the EAS systems were being used, as well as initial shrink trends, causes and patterns.

The company added, “We now have multiple stores with Sensormatic Synergy pedestals installed and networked, and all using the SMaaS platform. In the 3 months since these have been installed, shrinkage rates in these stores have been 36% lower than in the rest of our estate and we have known every time an issue has affected our tagging pedestals (such as electrical interference), with the majority of issues being resolved remotely without the need for an engineer to visit the store.”

Through using the SMaaS dashboard we can now more easily distinguish shops that are heavily affected by external theft and have been able to take action to address this. Theft patterns are now much more visible with data to support, so if for example, a store sees consistently high alarm counts every Tuesday evening between 6pm & 7pm, then more colleagues can be deployed to the sales floor during these times to provide a deterrent.”

JAt Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI) we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. As the global leader in smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, our mission is to reimagine the performance of buildings to serve people, places and the planet. With a history of more than 135 years of innovation, Johnson Controls delivers the blueprint of the future for industries such as healthcare, schools, data centers, airports, stadiums, manufacturing and beyond through its comprehensive digital offering OpenBlue. With a global team of 100,000 experts in more than 150 countries, Johnson Controls offers the world’s largest portfolio of building technology, software as well as service solutions with some of the most trusted names in the industry. For more information, visit www.johnsoncontrols.com or follow us @johnsoncontrols on Twitter.

Sensormatic Solutions is the leading global retail solutions portfolio of Johnson Controls enabling smart and connected shopper engagement. By combining critical insights into retail inventory, shopper traffic and loss prevention, Sensormatic Solutions powers operational excellence at scale and helps create unique shopping experiences. Our solutions deliver realtime visibility and predictive analytics for accurate decision-making across the enterprise, enabling retailers to confidently move into the future. With more than 1.5 million data collection devices in the retail marketplace, we capture 40 billion shopper visits and track and protect billions of items each year. Our retail portfolio features the premier Sensormatic, ShopperTrak and TrueVUE brands.Please visit www.Sensormatic.com,  or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and our YouTube channel.