LPRC - Episode 13 – Science to Practice: A Case Study ft. Brian Bazer

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

In this episode, Dr. Read Hayes and Tom Meehan discuss the importance of applying a scientific approach to retail AP and how it helped LPRC BOA Chair Brian Bazer overcome past issues in the retail environment. The post Episode 13 – Science to Practice: A Case Study ft. Brian Bazer appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. Co-hosts Dr. Reed Hayes of the Loss Prevention Research Council and Tom Meehan of ControlTech discuss a wide range of topics with industry experts, thought leaders, solution providers, and many more. In this episode, Dr. Reed Hayes and Tom Lane discuss the importance of applying a scientific approach to retail AP and how it helped LPRC BOA Chair Brian Baser overcome past issues in the retail environment. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP-related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to improve merchandising and operations.

Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. All right. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of LPRC's Crime Science Podcast. And on behalf of my co-host, Tom Meehan of Control Tech, we'd like to welcome Brian Baser to today's podcast episode. Brian and I go way back, as well as with Tom, I'm sure, in the loss prevention or asset protection field.

But we're going to go ahead and ask Brian some questions to introduce himself. But the point here is with Brian, he currently serves as the chair of the LPRC's Board of Advisors, or is affectionately known the BOA. Brian's a longtime member of the LPRC Board of Advisors, which is a distinguished group of over 20 very senior LP or AP professionals working alongside some top solution partners and designers that provide guidance to the LPRC team to make sure that the team is focused on the research that's needed, and to help make sure that the LPRC functions at maximum capacity and optimally, so that the research and developments

that come out of the group are the best and serve the membership, also to make sure that we have the resources that we need to conduct that and access to data and to locations. But Brian goes back as a practitioner at several leading retail chains in different capacities, as well as serving in a consulting role at one point. So he brings together a lot of diverse and really useful background expertise and experience to the LPRC.

And we thought it'd be great to talk to Brian about his career and what he sees with what's going on, a little bit about what his thoughts are on LPRC now and LPRC future, but then also to go through a case study. Brian, while he was a vice president, worked with the LPRC on a very important product protection study, and it was very rigorously done. So we'll talk about that. Tom, I'm going to go over to you to maybe start the conversation today with Brian, and we'll go from there. Thanks, Reed. Thanks, Brian, for joining the podcast today. And I know Reed did a brief overview, but why don't you give the listeners just a quick bio and background on

what you've done throughout your career? Sure, Tom. Thanks. It's an honor to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me to participate today. Yeah, I've been pretty fortunate to have a long, successful career in retail, the majority of that being in loss prevention across multiple segments within the industry. So whether that's consumer electronics, discount, furniture, apparel, I've had the opportunity to play in those spaces as well as an addition to asset protection being in roles in human resources, change management, and in operations as well. So, hey, I've been doing it long enough that I think it was a successful career. And the nice thing is I've been able to build a lot of great relationships along the way and pick up a few learnings here and there.

And I really appreciate and value my involvement and time with the Loss Prevention Research Council. involvement and time with the Loss Prevention Research Council. Great. Thank you. Today, you know, again, thanks, Reid, for giving the overview here. But we wanted to talk about the product protection research project that you were involved in at Advanced Auto. Could you just give the listeners an overview of what the project was about and the problem that you were trying to solve? Sure. Appreciate it, Tom. Yeah. I mean, it goes back to, you know, my thought process back in the day is that, you know, you kind of hear that old adage it's better to work smart than hard. And I think these days you have to work smart and hard.

And when I was confronted with a challenge within advanced auto parts, one of the key loss categories was tools. And so the thought was, well, what do you do? Well, the mindset back in the day was if you had a shrink issue, you locked it up. Well, you know, we didn't know what we didn't know, and we didn't know whether that was the best holistic way of approach to prevent the shrink. the best holistic way of approach to prevent the shrink. I mean, one of the things that I enjoy most about my involvement with Blossom Ranch Research Council is it's really about enterprise success. It's not just about shrink. So it's about the customer experience, making that frictionless experience. So it's increasing sales, decreasing shrink, keeping customers safe,

keeping product availability, keeping it on the shelf. These are all components of the LPRC. So I met with Reed around doing some study and some research and saying, look, what is the best way to look at this holistically and focus on tool shrink within advanced auto parts. And so what we ended up doing was we took five control stores in each group and worked with cross-functionally across the organization. So marketing was involved, merchandising was involved, the buying group was involved, the operations field leadership team was involved. And we came up with, I believe it was four different key pieces that we were going to look at.

We looked at, obviously, you know, locking it up as a possible solution. We looked at public view monitors down the tool aisle as a possible solution. We looked at signage. If we kind of increased our awareness of the customers around loss and theft, could that make an impact? And then the fourth group was the control group. And we had five stores within each of those groups. And we looked at and once again worked with real estate, worked with marketing and sales and operations to come up with these control groups that best represented each other.

So whether it was location or sales volume or shrink within those locations, we wanted to pick a subsegment of stores that best represented each other and that we could compare apples to apples. And we did that project and we ran the test for well over six months. Great. So I'll kind of open this up and Brian, I'll ask you to kind of go through this and then I'll ask Reed kind of the same question. What can you tell the users about the process and how you got there and specifically the use of the SARA process and what that meant to you as a retailer? And then I'll ask Reed to kind of talk about it from a researcher standpoint. Sure. I think, you know,

traditionally my experience had been within retail is what I'll call the ready aim or the ready shoot aim model, which is, Hey, somebody has an idea, let's execute it. And then after we execute it, we'll try to tweak it. So it's kind of that whole ready, shoot aim piece. And the thought process was, well, look, if we did our due diligence and aimed before we shot, could we be more cost effective and could we be more efficient organizationally? So I think the feedback that I would give the listening audience is that the process might take a little bit more time up front. But on the back end of the process, it's really going to streamline. You're going to ensure that you're making the right decision up front.

You know, if there's, you know, I think we've heard that phrase sometimes fail fast. If the hypothesis that you're working isn't the way to do it, then it's better to learn that quickly and to learn it up front and to have your ducks in a row and to have to try to organizationally shift and pivot off of a failed strategy. So as we were trying to set these pieces up, I think that that was one of the key pieces that by doing your due diligence up front, partnering with the READ and the research team and doing it methodically and scientifically, partnering with the people within the organization.

Once again, I mentioned before, marketing was a big proponent of this. Merchandising was in on this strategy. Operations, real estate, everybody was involved. So in my case, what we were trying to do is communicate with Brian. And I think the idea was just what he said. Look, you know, we've got a serious issue that we want to deal with. We'd like to take a little more systematic approach, but we want to work holistically with all the business partners. And so that's what Brian did at first. Hey, we're going to define what the issue is and what we might look for from the LPRC research team to help us out on this and to work with us on it.

In the meantime, I know, Brian, you were working with, as you mentioned, all your different business partners to bring them into the loop, get their input and ideas. On our end, we set up a workspace on our communication platform that we had at that time. And we allowed us to put together PERT and GANTT charts to schedule what all would happen and when and who would do it and be responsible. And we work through the research protocol, what's going to generate the best, most rigorous evidence for Brian and the team to evaluate as they make their decisions and not on what they would do, but also more specifically how and where, and then set up a regular call schedule to bring everybody together on a regular basis and give in a format where everybody could share their ideas and discuss what we were doing, why and how, and then what we were starting to learn and what it might mean.

And so that was kind of my recollection from the time. And it was really, for lack of a better term, a thing of beauty to watch it all come together in such a systematic way where we're working together with this team and everybody's working in this holistic way. Everybody's in the loop. And so things actually went pretty smoothly there. We can go into more detail, Brian, but what are some other things that you recall from the journey and the process that were helpful for you all, but might be helpful for the listener out there that's doing their own research or working somehow with the LPRC or another organization? Sure, Reid. I think one of the most important pieces of the process was what we were going to measure,

the measurements of success. What were we going to view as success within this project? Because I think sometimes people think, oh, it's a loss prevention project. Success must mean lower shrink. Well, that was one component of success that we were measuring as part of this process. The other things that we looked at in addition to shrink impact, we looked at the customer perceptions, partnered with Reed and team and the scientists were out there actually having dialogue with the customers to talk about their experience, kind of going back to what I mentioned earlier during the intro about this frictionless experience.

So having that dialogue with the customers and their perception of buying tools and advanced auto parts was an important part in measurement of success. Sales, obviously, was a key indicator from a success standpoint. With product availability in turn, could we then ramp up our sales in that particular category? The other thing that we looked at was also the employee experience. What did that look like from a labor standpoint? Obviously, when you lock something up or you put some type of control device on something, that kind of throws a wrinkle in your operations model, your op model, because now from a labor standpoint, it either takes time to put that device on or take it off, or in the instance of locking the tools up, if somebody needed to buy a tool, the person had to come from either behind the desk if they were ringing up a customer or from the back if they were processing freight

or wherever they were, and to unlock the case, get the tool for the customer to provide that experience so they could sell that item. So the employee experience was an important part of our measurement of success as well. And then last but not least, the LPRC helped us with doing the offender points of view, the offender intercept. So what were the shoplifters thinking about the situation? Did they understand that we had put store view monitors

in the aisles? Did they see the signs that we put in place? Did locking the stuff up make a difference? A quick little story from the experience. In one instance, we had a quick aha where the offender was like, no, it didn't make a difference for them because unfortunately, the associate forgot to lock the case. So I, when you think about strategies and the importance of having a strategy, it's also important to be able to execute that strategy. And I think that was obviously one of those kind of, yeah, you're right. If we're going to have cases, they probably

should be locking and we should probably lock them. Yeah, that's a great anecdote. And that's why, like you're saying, Brian, we try and have that 360 view. What are your customers thinking? How does it affect their experience and likelihood to buy and come back a second time? And then from your associates' employee standpoint, we brought in employees not only from that particular initial test lab, because we use one store in Gainesville that was an area that's a pretty challenging area. They've experienced some greater than average, in fact, sometimes much higher problems there and got their take. And that's how we learned how would we deploy. Again, it's not what, but how we do it, how high should a sign be, where should it be, what should it say, what color,

what graphics. And then, all right, on the locking shelf, how do we actually lock it? But how do we work that into an employee's efficient tasking process so that it is probably going to be executed properly, even though, as we knew through the test, it wasn't always going to be? How do we put EPVMs, enhanced public view monitors, in? What height? What should we do to enhance them to help the C get fear component? All those things. And so we also brought associates in from other area stores to get different takes on what it looked like. So now we've got shoppers and customers, shopper customers. We've got

employees. And of course, as you mentioned, Brian, offenders all giving us insight and feedback before we go ahead and deploy in a randomized controlled trial, a very rigorous experimental design. Tom, I think from your standpoint, as a longtime practitioner, but now as a solution developer and provider, what are some things that come to mind with you on the way Brian put this together as a process and all the different testing that went into it to learn how to do this in addition to find out if it worked? Any thoughts from you? Yeah, I think one of the key things that Brian talked about is the misconception that it's always about catching the bad guy, locking the goods up. And when you do a study like this, the importance of the impact on sales

and customer service and the overall customer experience. And I know from my own personal experience, I think the last 10 years of my career, shrink reduction, fraud reduction was a given. It was you had to do that. So we're paid for. But when we presented a program or plan, we actually were more focused on developing programs that would enhance the customer experience, enhance the selling environment. And not only from the customer side, but to your point, and I think Reed and you mentioned this, and Brian, which is the associate side too, what can we do to make our employees and associates lives easier? Because a lot of the methods to protect products are time burglars for employees if you don't really go

through a methodical process and look at, okay, how is it going to impact the offender? Is this actually going to deter it and mitigate anything? And what's the end result? But then taking that extra layer and saying, what's the customer experience like? What's the selling environment like? Putting applications in that make the associate and the employee's lives easier. So now you have a total experience. Your customer's happy. Your bad guy's angry.

Your employee's happy. And it really works out. And I think from my experience with the LPRC, it's always that total package and not so simple as, hey, we can run through. And it resonates with me when I hear Brian say, lock it up. You know, 20 years ago, I worked for Home Depot. And that was, you know, at that time, that was when we were figuring out, hey, you can't just lock stuff up. And now, you know, fast forward to 2018. And if you lock something up, there's a high likelihood that

they're going to click a button on their phone and have it shipped to their house that day. So I really think that the customer experience impact is there. And, you know, we're asset protection practitioners. So we're always going to protect the profit. We're always going to do that. But I think today being a business partner and going into the room and saying, hey, of course, we're going to protect it, but we're really interested in selling more of it and providing great service and making our employees happy. So I think, you know, Brian hit it on the head and I can relate to it personally and professionally. That's great. Brian, I was going to ask you also, what was some of the feedback from your

business partners about the process and then feedback about what the outcomes were. Yep. Great. Thanks, Reed. Yeah, the feedback from the team across functional within the federal parts was they loved it. They loved to be part of the process. They loved the fact that they could actually see the thought process from beginning to end and what was going to happen.

And then by creating this base camp strategy where they could actually go in and look at the test and where things are and what was progressing and what were the results at any given time throughout this six months. Because once again, you know, we're so used to having this kind of immediate gratification piece where we want to know now, we want to know now. So it was a little bit of a longer runway that some of the people I'd worked with were used to, but because we kept them and had transparent communication and constant communication, they actually appreciated it and felt like they were part of the process. So that was a huge home run for the asset protection team and for this test. And then the other part, when we think about assessing results,

is I want to point out to the listening audience, too, that when we were looking at impacting the tool shrink across the chain, that this was, in fact, across the chain. You're always going to have those kind of outliers, those problem areas where you might have to do something different, right? But when we look at this particular test that we were doing, was looking at for the bulk of the 3,000 plus locations within the organization. And I think that, you know, as a practitioner, you always have to look at that. Are you looking at this to be chain wide? Are you looking at this to be something that's directly for your outliers on either end of the spectrum? It's an important thing to know. And then last but not least, when we're assessing results at the end of the day, it was really about the return on investment.

What was that return on our investment? And when you think about shrink reduction being part of the process, you know, did the shrink reduction offset the incremental costs associated with the public view monitors? Or did it offset the cost associated with the lockup cases or the labor impact that the cases had? Because obviously we had to funnel some more labor into those stores because of the operating model. So all of those things came into play. And when we looked at all of those components, we looked at all the pieces at the end of the day. And this test now is probably a couple of years old. So it's safe to say that it was already implemented. So there's no trade secrets here.

Signage actually in this particular instance, worked best. It was the best deterrent across the bulk of stores in this particular issue. Now, in the outlier stores, we had significant theft in that particular category. Then, yeah, we used protective devices and we used lockup cases in those kind of outlying pieces. But when we looked at the bulk of the stores for the chain at that time, the best return on our investment, the most impact from an RRI standpoint was making sure that we had a robust signage program.

And I want to touch real quick, if I could, Brian, on a key point you made. And that is, you know, evidence-based practice, we're not just collecting evidence to make decisions. That's what we're, you know, we're trying to collect the best evidence to make a better decision. And, and you called out to me a very huge thing. And so when we talked about, all right, are these solutions going to be used in all stores, only in the very worst stores that perform or have the largest problem over time or some combination and so on. And so as we talked to you all about it, you decided, look, some may be everywhere and some may be somewhere. So let's look at that. So when we look at, you know, an experiment, we're talking about sampling or any research, all right, what

are we going to sample? It needs to be representative of what the, you know, the population of interest is. And in this case, it's all stores or problem and problematic stores. So our sampling needs to reflect that. So like you say, we want to look at that. And so what solution might work the best have the greatest impact, what solution might be the most cost effective, which sometimes are two different things, as we all know. And so I would say that that was a big part of it that you called out, Brian, that we make sure that we're measuring the right thing in the right places. And so another one is we found the signage had a very significant impact. It really helped reduce theft and loss of those items, protected items.

It really helped reduce theft and loss of those items, protected items. But it also had potential to protect other items that we weren't studying. And you can see that sometimes, not in this data set, but in others. And I think the other thing is that the cost effectiveness clearly of a sign versus some very expensive technology, like a heavy fixture, a protective fixture, is pretty clear to everybody on the on this podcast. But another part that we looked at in your case, too, is, all right, what's the onset of action, which thing kind of starts to work first after we deploy it, you know, and then what's the duration of that action of that deterrent measure that treatment? Well, what we found was the signage work started fastest and worked the best, but it also,

the treatment effect started to wane faster. The duration wasn't as long as you can imagine. It's like eating a breakfast, you eat a donut, you're going to get a burst of energy. It's going to be a greater burst than some protein, but you know what? The protein actually might last longer. It may cost a little more and so on, but what's the ROI? So without going too deeply in the weeds, Brian, that was all part of our conversations about what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. And then when you looked at results, all right, how do you, as a practitioner and you and your team, now take that to the bank?

Agreed, Reed. And I think another part about the, it was a benefit of the relationship with LPRC was, you know, I use the term signage. Well, that's kind of very broad and very generic. And I know that the Lost Prevention Research Council has done extensive research on signage impact. So understanding visual deterrence and understanding logos and colors and size. All those pieces go into signage. And so by partnership with the Los Perones Research Council, we're able to work with the marketing team and develop the science that is most effective. Excellent. Thanks, Brian. That's another huge point. And I think what I'll do is I'm going

to go over to Tom and we're going to wrap this up. Tom, any other last thoughts or questions, concerns here? Yeah, I have one question and it sounds like this, I wasn't directly involved in this research project. Did you incur any resistance to your senior partners or peers when you approach them with this type of project? What was it like for the folks that didn't really know about the Lost Roads of Research? So the folks in operations, the folks that were outside your direct circle? Yeah, Tom, great question. I think that like most of us, right, it's kind of the bell curve. You get those people on one end of the spectrum who are early adopters, and they love the notion that they're all in from day one and those are

your disciples and you rally those troops up very quickly and then you have the bulk of the group that's like yeah hey look man we're with you let's let's do it let's do something and so what do you want to do and then you have the other end of the bell curve which are the resistors that say you know no not going to work or it's going to too long. And what does that look like? And the nice thing about partnership with the West Provincial Research Council is that there are, you know, 50 plus other retail members who are doing work and doing research and being part of this process. So it's good to kind of help throw a little weight behind the conversation to push those resistors and move them a little bit further along the curve. Or if nothing else, not let them be distractors or detractors from the process. They can resist all day long as long as they're not inhibiting the progress of the research. Another great point, and we appreciate that, Brian. So what we're going to do is, again, we want to thank Brian Baser, our chair of board

of advisors here at the LPRC, and a longtime practitioner for so much of your insights and wisdom. And again, I got to be honest, we've worked on probably about 350 projects at this point over the last 18 years here. But this project stood out and stands out probably on top as far as the, not just the rigor, but just the process, how it was executed and the things that we just went through and described. So kudos to you and we appreciate all you do for the LPRC and the industry. And for Tom Meehan, our producer, Kevin Tran, our technical director, Jordan Burchell, I want to thank everybody for listening in.

And so long from Gainesville. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. We would like to once again thank Bosch for making this episode possible. If you would like to suggest topics for future episodes or provide feedback, please email kevin at lpresearch.org. See you next time.