In-store retail shrinkage continues to concern retailers already faced by thinning profit margins. As many as 39% of merchants link video surveillance to closed-circuit television (CCTV) solutions in stores to stay abreast of incidents in higher risk areas, according to a November 2012 retail loss prevention survey report from Aberdeen Group. The report indicated that 59% of respondents apply video surveillance in store departments, while 44% use CCTV specifically across POS systems.
StopLift Checkout Vision Systems incorporates ScanItAll software-based scan avoidance technology which analyzes CCTV video from existing in-store cameras to detect various forms of theft at both manned and self-checkout POS lanes. ScanItAll vision recognition technology identifies any instance in which merchandise is not scanned or rung up before being given to a customer. These instances can include cashier errors, customer errors at self-checkout, items mistakenly left in shopping carts ― and cashiers pretending to scan merchandise but deliberately bypassing the scanner, thus not charging the customer for the merchandise.
ScanItAll interprets the behavior of the cashier and customer by analyzing and understanding body motions at checkout. By mathematically analyzing the pixels of digitized video, ScanItAll visually scrutinizes how cashiers handle each item to determine whether or not it was scanned properly. The system understands a full set of fraudulent behaviors, including when a cashier covers a bar code by hand or purposely misaligns an item to avoid contact with the scanner. The technology can detect refund fraud, basket-based loss, self-checkout shrink and other operational inaccuracies.
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When a scan avoidance incident occurs, the StopLift technology flags the transaction as suspicious, identifies the cashier or customer and reports the incident, along with the date and time of the incident.
“Our technology has found that shoplifting is as much as five times more likely to happen in the self-checkout lane,” said Malay Kundu, Founder and CEO of StopLift Checkout Vision Systems. Furthermore, “using the incidents detected from their own stores, retailers are now able to train staff on the signals indicating when customers are either having problems using the self-checkout or are exhibiting suspicious behavior.”
