Business resumption, post COVID-19, poses many challenges for retailers.
One such challenge is the need for all parts of their estate, from shops and concessions to distribution centres warehousing and head offices, to be risk assessed with the latest challenges posed by the “new normal” factored in. But that’s not the end of the story…
The COVID pandemic has seen retailers judged by two standards. Legal requirements and public sentiment. Often the two are not the same.
It is not just the shear volume of work required within an incredibly short time frame. Speak with retailers you will find that their risk assessments increasingly have to try and take into account what staff, supplier or public sentiment will be in a given situation to be effective. And that goes way beyond the traditional role of compliance and takes them into the world of subjective judgements, which is a million miles away from the traditional skill set required of risk management functions.
And of course, the penalty for getting this risk assessment wrong is not just incurring the ire of a local authority inspector. It means not having staff return to work, enforced store closures, broken SLAs to customers and the potential for major brand damage; the Press seems ever increasingly keen to seize on any perceived infraction or misjudgement by any retailer and make it front page headlines. It is an impossible situation.
Fortunately help is at hand…
“Our organisation has been developing a concept of LP On Demand – a technology driven solution that virtually eliminates the need to put LP assets in place ‘just in case’ and allocates resources based upon actual ‘need’.”
Jason Trigg of Amberstone Security Limited continues, “Simply put we eliminate waste in the security and asset protection space by only having the right assets in the right place at the right time. Retailers are naturally sceptical at first. So we usually have to demonstrate success before getting buy-in. To demonstrate what we can do for a specific retailer in their specific circumstances we need detailed and up-to-date risk assessments to be made for our modelling, which we undertake at our cost.”
“If retailers would like help with their post COVID risk assessments then we are prepared to help them without charge. We are very experienced and know what works elsewhere – so we are not doing this for the first time like any single retailer will be. And whilst it is true that this process leads to an opportunity for us to show a retailer what we can do and the savings we can make for them on an ongoing basis, who isn’t interested in saving money right now!”
So, it seems, a helping hand is available to retailers with only a few strings attached. It is a win-win.
To discuss the possibility of business support across your estate, please contact Sales@Amberstone.co.uk
