industry focus
Making the most of Christmas 'present', not the ghost of Christmas past
The COVID ghost of Christmas past continues to spook a retail sector that has gone from egregious excess to rampant recession in less than 12 months.
Rising costs, staff and stock shortages and outages stalk the aisles and shelves of stores across the UK along with increasing violence and aggression towards colleagues already spooked by cost-of-living concerns.
As stolen goods rather than stollen cake become the Yuletide priority, resilient and resourceful retailers have become used to dealing with what may seem to be a never-ending economic hangover of increased organised and opportunistic crime.
Instead, they are turning to more cost-effective, collaborative and intelligence-led solutions where more focussed LP teams are better informed by granular risk data that enables the optimum deployment of the more limited security resources.
This has become the specialist area of risk-led intelligent solutions provider Amberstone Security which set the co-ordinates for significant business growth earlier this year after striking a major private sector investment deal with The Argenbright Group, a billion-dollar frontline services specialist organisation looking to expand its UK and European influence and operations.
Jason Trigg, the former managing director of Amberstone Security who has transitioned to become the new CEO of Argenbright Europe, said: “With organised and opportunistic crime levels going through the roof and many retailers having to be careful with spending because of the economic challenges, many leading high street names are already looking at best practice and greater integration of technology and human resources.
“They recognise that businesses cannot operate in silos. They have started to target harden their store estates and they are also better at collaborating to reduce their risks through greater intelligence – richer data and AI-driven solutions co-ordinated by real-time information via centralised security operations centres (SOCs) so that they are more in control.
“With police and store personnel thinner on the ground than ever before as a result of the ongoing economic situation data, its capture and targeted deployment will be increasingly at the heart of the solutions this Christmas and moving forward,” he said.
“As a business you have to be both a disruptor of traditional LP models and an integrator of both technological and physical approaches and be prepared to collaborate with retailers on bespoke solutions such as the transformational guarding model we helped develop with one of the UK’s leading supermarkets.
“This is not only an intelligence-led and integrated solution, but it provides stronger links with the business, law enforcement and wider communities – it also provides accredited career progression for those involved.”
To this end, Amberstone is using the multi-million-pound Argenbright investment for strategic investment and acquisition, but as Jason adds: “It will be business as usual for existing Amberstone customers, albeit we will be able to invest more in our ongoing collaborative and intelligence-led partnerships with them.”
Amberstone is now focussing upon the Christmas ‘present’, both in terms of added value innovative gifts that continue to give and very much the here and now on what is possible through customer caring and sharing.
For more information, please contact us today.
