In an ever increasingly competitive marketplace where every decision can have an impact on a business’s profit margins and market shares, investing substantial amounts of money in a risk management and loss prevention program can be a tough sell. However, when done right, risk management and loss prevention can in fact add great value to your company. Here’s how:
Crime reduction: A good risk management and loss prevention program will help reduce crime in a few ways. To begin, by thoroughly analysing your company’s specific risks, threats, and vulnerabilities, it will be able to provide you with custom-built solutions to help efficiently mitigate them. From the integration of cutting edge loss prevention technology to the implementation of risk reducing best practices at the store level, the key is to establish a strategy that will aim to prevent both internal and external criminality with a multi-tiered approach.
Incident management: Another way that a high-quality risk management and loss prevention program can add value to your company is by efficiently managing incidents of any type. Incidents can come in all shapes and sizes, but the common thread is that they almost always result in losses for your company. Whether it’s a customer slip-and-fall accident, a disgruntled employee making threats, consumer dissatisfaction, natural disasters or unpredictable emergencies such as a bursting pipe or a gas leak, no two incidents are the same. However, by having a thoroughly planned out incident management process and a dedicated team of incident management specialists, their impact on your company will be greatly minimized. Cutting down on losses in productivity that would stem from having store management need to deal with the incidents, reducing legal costs, insurance premiums and the amounts spent on claims, and ensuring that problematic situations will not be escalating to unmanageable heights are all ways that incident management will help boost the profitability of your company.
Image: Often times, companies can underestimate the impact that their image can have on their profits. However, in an age where news broadcasters are always looking for eye-grabbing headlines and social media makes the worldwide propagation of information a mere click away, the impact of bad publicity should not be taken lightly. Customers will without a doubt be put off by incident-prone stores that appear to be unsafe or that fail to provide a pleasant shopping experience. In addition, the way investors perceive the company will also have a great impact on its value. That being said, a strong risk management and loss prevention program goes a long way toward ensuring that your company will always be perceived in the most positive of ways.
