Investing in loss prevention pays off with tangible ROI. That was a theme during the NACS Loss Prevention and Safety Symposium last week in Dallas. But showing that ROI to executives to get funding for loss prevention takes careful planning and strategy, speakers agreed.

Bob Wright, loss control manager, Kwik Trip, shared some ideas that worked for the Midwestern retailer as it refreshed its loss prevention program. They can be applied to any sort of new initiative.

• Self-scout. Take a 1,000-foot view of your current approach. “We would find external shrink and investigate it. We would find internal shrink and investigate it.” The team challenged itself to break out of that pattern and find a new way to help the company. Among the goals was to find ways to take burdens off other departments.

• Create the plan. Kwik Trip’s loss prevention group decided to “take the big swing” and try to get loss prevention staff out in stores. This solved three issues: closing the training gap (since the loss prevention staff can conduct in-person training in stores); creating loss prevention experts who can spend time in stores having challenges; and raising the overall awareness of loss prevention. Instead of asking for full funding for the ideal number of positions, the team asked for funding for a trial version of the ideal team. As you prepare to present your proposal, focus on ROI and understand that it might take several attempts. Incorporate all the feedback that you get. Ultimately it’s going to be a team project—loss prevention has to fit into the broader corporate structure and company priorities.

• Hire the right people and show wins. “You’d better have the right people, otherwise you’re going to sink fast,” Wright said. “We were lucky enough to get a lot of great applicants,” he said, including people with deep experience with Kwik Trip who understood the ins and outs of running stores. The team started in areas that had higher shrink and new stores, meaning there was low-hanging fruit in terms of immediate successes that boosted the case for further investment.

• Plan to adjust. “We’re still making daily adjustments,” Wright said. One adjustment was to increase the focus on what Kwik Trip calls “controllables”—cash, cigarettes and lottery. “Those are all things we touch before our guest touches them,” Wright said.

• Measure. It’s vital to be an advocate for your loss prevention efforts, and measuring results is a critical piece of that.

At the event, Brian Gray, managing director, Accenture, also shared six specific areas where tech is rapidly changing loss prevention. Even if retailers aren’t using any of them now, they might be accessible in the near future.

• AI surveillance and computer vision. Using existing cameras, AI can spot everything from safety violations to shoplifting to potential spill-and-slips in real-time and send alerts immediately.

• Real-time alerting and predictive analytics. Real-time alerting can be applied to everything from unusual flow rates on the forecourt to fuel delivery driver fatigue.

• Biometrics and facial recognition. The technology isn’t perfect in retail applications yet … but check back soon.

• Voice analytics.

• Cyber and quantum security. Put quantum security on your radar if it isn’t already. If quantum computing is unlocked, computers will become almost unfathomably faster. From a security lens, this means encryptions that are secure today may be easily hacked in the future.

• Physical AI and security. With agentic AI already stealing some of generative AI’s thunder, what comes next? Physical AI could eventually mean human-like robots but autonomous security robots are already here.

Read more on AI in loss prevention here.

Look for more coverage of the NACS Loss Prevention and Safety Symposium in upcoming NACS Daily newsletters and the February issue of NACS Magazine.