ORIS Forums
Retailers and logistics providers urged to 'make the call' to share best practice on Coronavirus
ORIS Forums, the award winning not-for-profit intelligence and best practice sharing organisation, is urging more retailers and logistics providers to ‘make the call’ and collaborate with each other on a weekly basis to share tips and information around the Coronavirus crisis.
Established in 2006 and representing more than 150 retail brands, the primary objective of ORIS Forums is to bring retailers together to collaborate and share best practice to reduce theft, fraud and other risk within the retail industry – in stores, online and within the supply chain.
ORIS operates 11 forums: Fashion, DIY & Building Trade, Café, Dining & Hospitality, Supermarket & Grocery, Speciality, Omni-channel, Logistics & Supply Chain, Health & Safety, HR, Security Operations Centres and a forum for those retailers trading in Ireland, and members collaborate on everything from internal theft and shoplifting, to lone working, counterfeiting and defamation claims.
As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, all quarterly face-to-face meetings have been cancelled for the time being and replaced with weekly ‘virtual meetings’ for each Forum in order to provide a touch point for members to remain connected and share best practice with other businesses. Issues discussed range from store and DC closures to social distancing policies, insurance challenges, Furloughing and re-opening strategies.
ORIS Forums is now wanting to open the network to include non-members during the pandemic, to help the industry get back on its feet.
Managing director of ORIS, Louise Kadege said: “We ordinarily meet face-to-face, but during the crisis we are supporting our members through the hosting of weekly virtual meetings.
“We facilitate the meetings online using Microsoft Teams which is as good as meeting face-to-face - better in fact because we are all safely working remotely from our own homes. Feedback from ORIS Forums members is that they have found these meetings extremely useful.
“We now want to open this facility up to other retailers and logistics companies who are not currently members of ORIS Forums to provide them with support during these unprecedented times. We fear they may be struggling in an information silo on their own while being put under daily pressure by their own businesses to provide regular updated COVID-19 information and analysis on how it will impact them.
“The sharing we have seen has been really useful for ORIS Forums members and I’m sure those retail businesses and logistics providers that are not currently members would feel the same.
We would therefore like to invite any interested businesses to reach out and join the meetings, free of charge, for the duration of the pandemic situation.”
If you would like to be involved, please contact ORIS Forums.
