Explore The Cross-Departmental Benefits Of Asset Protection

By The Business Solutions Network

By The Retail Solutions Network

As Five Below’s first asset protection department head, Gregg Smith sought to reduce manual processes with a data-driven approach that would positively affect the entire organization.

In today’s competitive retail environment, corporate leadership faces a variety of obstacles and is required to make many important decisions on a daily basis — all of which could be considered mission-critical and vital to the long-term success of the business. Such was the situation Gregg Smith faced when he joined Five Below in the newly created position of senior director of asset protection nearly three years ago.

As Five Below’s first asset protection department head, Smith quickly built a long to-do list. With various areas of the operation calling for attention, the trick was to gather enough data to make intelligent decisions about what exactly was needed and then to create a prioritized action plan to address the issues. While it would have been easy for Smith to focus only on problems and solutions that affected the needs of his department, he looked for opportunities to provide additional value to other functional areas of the organization. Looking back over his time with the company, there are three initiatives that stand out as having had a significant impact on the organization.