Meijer strengthens asset protection and fraud mitigation using Genetec Security Center, Omnicast, Mission Control, and Clearance
Founded in 1934, Meijer is a family-owned, American supercenter chain primarily operating in the Midwestern United States. The company is credited for opening the firstever supercenter in 1962. Today, they operate nearly 300 retail locations across Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Ohio. They offer customers convenience, value, and fresh, high-quality products alongside a close-knit, friendly team that fosters a local hometown grocer experience.
Moving towards powerful asset protection technology
Meijer has always taken a progressive approach to securing their retail business. When past security system investments began aging, the supercenter retailer initiated a big upgrade. The team wanted to phase out older equipment and move to a robust and highly scalable IP security platform. They also wanted to connect video with other business systems to enhance fraud mitigation and operational intelligence.
With plans to build a remote operations center (ROC), Meijer needed a security platform with centralized management capabilities. Having a complete view across all stores and sites would help their ROC operators speed up incident resolution and better collaborate with others to close cases faster.
After much research, the Meijer team narrowed their search to three solutions. Following an in-store pilot project, Genetec Security Center stood out as the top choice.
“Genetec Security Center offered the richest feature set. It also gave us an opportunity to include other modules, systems, and devices into the unified platform,” noted Ryan Themm, Corporate Investigations Manager at Meijer. “The Federation feature was also significant. We saw value in being able to connect all our sites within Security Center and partition user access for different use cases. We quickly realized how that would multiply the impact of our ROC.”
Centralizing security management across all retail sites
Today, Meijer is using the Omnicast video management system to manage over 28,000 cameras across all supercenters, four major distribution centers, specialty healthcare sites, and corporate offices. They’ve also unified point of sale (POS), intrusion, video analytics, electronic article surveillance (EAS), and other systems within Security Center. More recently, they’ve started expanding the Synergis™ access control system across various sites and locations.
With the Federation feature, operators at the ROC have a centralized view of video and data across all sites. They can quickly address incoming alarms and handle investigations around the clock. Onsite loss prevention (LP) and security teams also use Security Center to monitor suspicious activity or conduct quick searches when situations arise.
At any time, employees can call the remote operation center to report concerns or an ongoing incident. The ROC team then liaises with on-site staff while using Security Center to gather real-time information.
“When we’re talking about the effectiveness of our ROC, being able to get the full scope of what’s happening in the moment is invaluable. If there’s an incident underway, we’re not just taking someone’s word for it. We can gather information in real time to make critical decisions. Having a unified security view allows us to enhance safety and maintain business continuity,” explained Themm.
Keeping tabs on suspicious POS transactions
Monitoring suspicious transactions can be challenging for big retailers like Meijer. The team is in the process of implementing Security Center Transaction Finder module to assist. Video at each register will be linked to POS transactions in real time. LP managers and ROC operators can monitor live transactions alongside receipt overlays.
The team can also review historical transaction data if bigger fraud concerns come into question. They’ll use exception-based reporting to quickly filter their searches based on cashier number, types of transactions, and even specific Universal Product Code (UPC) codes. This will help them not only identify potential process issues but also spot fraud and bigger Organized Retail Crime (ORC) rings in action.
“Using Security Center Transaction Finder, we’ll be able to broaden the capabilities of our ROC. We have signals coming in for large gift card activations and purchases but need to validate if those are legitimate transactions or not. With this tool, we’ll be able to set up many upstream and downstream actions,” said Themm.
Expanding analytics to enhance daily operations
Within Security Center, the team has also deployed various video analytics that help qualify events and ORC-related crimes. For instance, they use Genetec Mission Control incident management to notify and report when the cart locking technology triggers an alarm when people do not go through the check-out areas. Mission Control also provides additional insights into these pushout events helping with investigation efforts.
“Using analytics, we’re notified when cars or people are hanging around our fire exits. Those loitering analytics give us a big return on investment by identifying the potential for criminal activity. We’ve also started using analytics to help our operations partners enhance the customer experience. For example, we’re able to generate alarms and retrieve data on how long our customers are waiting in line. It’s a valuable tool that can lead to operational improvements,” said Themm.
During the COVID pandemic, the Kiwivision people counting analytics helped them digitize the manual counting processes. It gave them the real-time occupancy data they needed to remain fully compliant with healthcare mandates.
"Instead of having greeters keep count of people entering our stores, we were able to quickly roll out the Occupancy Management package with KiwiVision people counting from Genetec. If authorities questioned our store limits, we had records and data to show them. From a legal standpoint, it lessened our risk exposure. It also helped us keep our stores open to serve our customers,” explained Themm.
Reducing cart pushout losses using Mission Control
To further enhance their loss prevention strategies, Meijer has linked Genetec Mission Control™ to shopping cart wheel lock technology. If someone attempts to push a shopping cart full of merchandise out the door without going through the check-out lanes, Security Center triggers a notification. This alarm automatically displays live cameras views of the incident so ROC operators and the LP team can immediately see what’s happening and identify the suspect.
When notifed of an incident, employees can use Genetec Mission Control to follow a series of checklist questions. They document what occurred and gather more information on the event, qualifying whether an actual theft has taken place or not. When it’s all done, Mission Control automatically bundles a case of the cart lock incident, including camera snapshots and all information collected from on-site staff. Later, LP managers can dive into the data and consider potential mitigation solutions.
“Not every cart push-out is intentional theft. Using Mission Control, we empower our in-store teams to handle these events effectively. We also gather a lot of valuable information that the cart pushout system alone doesn’t provide. We can then use custom dashboards to better understand what’s happening in our stores and quantify the return on our investment in this cart pushout prevention system,” said Themm.
Enhancing claim and loss prevention operations with Genetec Clearance
In any given month, the team at Meijer handles upwards of 2,000 incidents. These range from theft and ORC-related crime to fraud and insurance claims. Using Genetec Clearance, Meijer has been able to speed up the investigative process and significantly reduce costs.
To facilitate the management of their large caseload, Meijer integrated their risk management system to automatically populate incident data in Clearance. The integration ensures all relevant data is seamlessly pushed to Clearance to minimize time spent on data entry.
“With Genetec Clearance, we compile all our evidence within the system and securely share it with recipients via email. They download the evidence in the file format that they need, and we maintain a full chain of custody with audit trails. Our terms and conditions are built into Clearance, so the receiver fully acknowledges and complies with our legal policies,” explained Themm.
On more complex ORC or fraud cases, Clearance Drive has given the investigative team an edge. Clearance Drive uses Windows File Explorer to facilitate the mass transfer of files to and from the digital evidence management system. The team quickly compiles and organizes cases that involve hundreds of stores, thousands of transactions, and a large volume of video recordings, statements, and other evidence. Everything stays neatly organized in folders so recipients can quickly make sense of the information.
“We’re saving tens of thousands of dollars a year by not having to procure and ship DVDs. And our internal teams don’t have to spend time burning disks or searching through boxes of DVDs. Since we can easily export evidence from Security Center into Clearance and build cases faster, we’re saving time and labor when working on larger cases,” said Themm.
Building a retail data hub at Meijer
The plan moving forward is to connect and monitor more asset protection technologies within the unified platform. Integrating additional IoT devices and pulling more data from their existing technologies are the top priorities. Meijer also wants to expand the use of Mission Control to better support ROC operators and enhance incident response procedures.
As they continue to evolve security and operations, the Meijer team knows Genetec is always there to help.
“We’re constantly learning new ways to capitalize on Security Center to move our business forward. The Genetec team has provided tremendous support and guidance along the way. We already have a strong foundation with Security Center. Now, it’s all about optimizing the data and finding new ways to keep extracting value from our investments to better serve our customers,” concluded Themm.
“Within Security Center, the team has also deployed various video analytics that help qualify events and ORC-related crimes. For instance, they use Genetec Mission Control incident management to notify and report when the cart locking technology triggers an alarm when people do not go through the check-out areas." said Themm.