Exception Reporting Limitations

Exception Reports were designed to enable loss prevention analysts to sift through the massive amounts of data created by point-of-sale systems to identify "exceptions" in the norm.  In most cases, this meant finding people.  According to the most recent University of Florida study on retail shrink, exception reporting (or exception-based reporting (EBR)) is deployed at almost 90% of all retailers, but shrink remains constant.  

Agilence has designed its software to remove the inherent flaws found in exception reporting tools. Below is a list of the flaws found in exception reporting and the ways that Agilence solves the problem.

• Exception reports identify exceptions only.
  • The flaw is in what EBR considers an exception.  Exception reporting looks at all transactions at a macro level and identifies exceptions across the entire body of transactions.  This means that a certain number of voids are considered normal. 
  • Agilence goes deeper to look at each line within the transaction.  Any irregularity is considered an "exception" to steal the term.  So, all voids are irregularities.  This process gives a much more granular view of the data.
• Exception reporting is data only and not efficient.
  • Exception reports are data only.  There is no real linkage to the corresponding video.  Therefore, analysts must take the time to find the proper video and then analyze it.  In older environments, this means getting in a car and driving to the store.  However, even with networked DVRs, the analyst must compare end of transaction time stamps and then scan the video over and over to fidn the right transaction.
  • Agilence combines the data and the video in a single screen and its patented item-level synchronization takes you right to the exact spot in the video where the irregularity occurs. 
  • Agilence also displays the full transaction receipt and enables the analyst to simply scroll through the receipt while displaying a static image of the video for each item in the receipt.  This enables an anlyst to process 50 to 100 times more investigations than with traditional exception reporting.
• Exception reporting identifies problems well after the fact.
  • By the time an irregularity becomes big enough to trigger an exception, the loss is already significant.  Take the case of a BOGO where the promotion was not dropped to the POS.  In most exception reports, no exception will be triggered until the BOGO is over.
  • Agilence identifies this error on Day 1, giving the retailer time to fix the problem and avoid the large shrink numbers that would otherwise occur.

But, all is not lost.  Agilence includes a Dynamic Integration Tool that will import the data from your Exception Report and automatically identify the corresponding video with all of the other benefits mentioned above. Learn more about Exception Reporting Integration with Agilence.