How much do your ‘sweethearts’ cost you?

Most of us will be familiar with spending money (sometimes a little too much!) on our loved ones. But from a business perspective, have you ever considered how much ‘sweethearts’ are costing you on a daily basis?

Sweethearting - a term coined to explain the process of staff members giving away free goods to friends and family at till points, is fast becoming a trend that retailers could really do without. Say, for example, one of your employees gives away goods to the value of £10 a week. That’s £520 a year. Now imagine that happens in each of your ten stores - £5,200. Not to mention the chance that if one employee is doing it successfully, it can quickly spread.

Although often seen by employees as a ‘perk of the job’ such theft may leave retailers feeling frustrated and out of pocket. However, having the right EPoS solution in place can help, as PXtech MD Richard Dorf explained to the Independent last week.

Richard said: “The personal nature of these thefts leaves retailers feeling helpless but having the right technology in place can catch the culprits. By linking each till with CCTV the proprietor can pinpoint the specific “sweetheart” down to an individual transaction. This was once a technology reserved exclusively for the big corporate chains. But these days cheap cameras and efficient but affordable software means anyone can be caught.”

And it’s not just the financial repercussions of theft that have to be considered, but the effect on customer service too. Richard added: “Classic scenario - one restaurant outlet had a store that increased daily turnover by £400 a day (about 20%) by removing staff operating a fraud.  Why? Not because they were necessarily stealing £400 a day, but whilst they were busy working the scam they weren’t looking after customers, upselling or cross- selling.”

Richard’s comments on the topic have appeared in the Blog section of the Independent, which you can read in full here.

Is it easy to be green?

Economic working is top of the agenda for most businesses these days – not just for the benefit of the environment, but as a way to cut down on costs too.

So when Retail Systems ran a feature on green retailing, we knew our client Pistachios in the Park would be the perfect fit. With a chain of cafes based in local parks throughout London, Pistachios in the Park is committed to selling locally and ethically produced produce – making them the perfect advocates for green retailing.

Aysin Djemil, operations manager at Pistachios, said in the feature: “Ethics and fair trade are very important. Lots of consumers are looking to buy organic, fair trade and equal opportunities products. And although Pistachios came from humble origins, we stipulated that whoever we go into business with must be ethical.”

They may have started from humble beginnings, but Pistachios’ success meant they soon enlisted the help of PXtech to remotely implement a company-wide sales drive and oversee brand management, while responding to local needs in real time across multiple locations.

PXtech Managing Director Richard Dorf added: “PXtech’s scalable solutions enable a family run business such as Pistachios in the Park to use tools which offer a level of insight previously only available to large corporates.”

Maybe it is easy to be green – so long as you have the right tools at your disposal!

If you would like to read the feature in full, please click here.