In the open and customer friendly department stores, that Åhléns has all over Sweden it is difficult for staff to have an overview of all the customers. This makes loss prevention difficult as the staff has to focus on providing service to customers at the checkouts. Furthermore, staff is often single at the counters in the stores meaning that it might be difficult to seek assistance in the case of an incident and document the issue later.
In the open and customer friendly department stores, that Åhléns has all over Sweden it is difficult for staff to have an overview of all the customers. This makes loss prevention difficult as the staff has to focus on providing service to customers at the checkouts. Furthermore, staff is often single at the counters in the stores meaning that it might be difficult to seek assistance in the case of an incident and document the issue later.
The Milestone XProtect video safety system has been installed in all of the Swedish department stores. In the bigger stores, the system is augmented with an operator providing proactive incident prevention. In the minor stores, the system provides visual evidence enabling easy documentation of incidents. The user friendliness of the Milestone software is an advantage to Åhléns as little to none training is needed for the local staff to perform the needed functions.
The solution architected by the Milestone partner Nokas in most of Åhléns 75 stores in Sweden provides situational awareness and easy documentation of incidents. The video security system also has the advantage that it has increased the sense of safety among staff. Going forward Milestone interconnect enables Åhléns to connect all stores in a network giving benefits in operations and providing flexible setups that can give a further boost in safety efficiency.
Åhléns’ mission is to make life simpler, better and more rich every day. This means that the shopping experience has to be excellent. The design of the 75 Åhléns retail stores in Sweden has an open and inviting Scandinavian design giving the shoppers an easy access to goods and service as needed.
The backside of this is that loss prevention becomes important, as the staff are dedicated to supporting and servicing the shoppers with little time for other tasks.
Åhléns has been using analog security video in stand-alone setup to prevent losses and provide documentation of incidents. The larger stores have an operator based setup enabling proactive loss prevention by detecting potential miss doers in advance. Åhléns is providing documentation of incidents to the law enforcement services, and needs to do this as efficient as possible.
The analog systems are now being phased out for networked video based on Milestone XProtect Expert or XProtect Enterprise. The ease of providing documentation of incidents in the VMS has been a benefit to Åhléns, compared to the cumbersome process in the old analog system.
Furthermore, the Milestone Systems enables the retail store to use mobile clients giving first responders the advantage of additional situational awareness. Åhléns wants to be an attractive and safe workplace. This means that the staff is made aware of the benefits of the video system that gives them an additional level of safety as incidents can be quickly detected and handled. At the same time store procedures for payment and goods handling can be monitored and discrepancies resolved because of the video system.