Exception Reporting Makes Fraud An Easy Mark

May 2012 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Matt Pillar, Editor In Chief

One billion dollar Mark’s uncovered half a million dollars in fraud and increased prosecutions with an integrated exception reporting package.

For its first 33 years in business, asset protection simply wasn’t a priority at Mark’s. The Canadian apparel retailer had no software tools dedicated to theft or fraud investigation, only a couple of employees in the sales audit department who looked for credit and debit transaction anomalies. “If those employees stumbled upon an overt case of employee fraud, the offender was simply fired. There was no formality to fraud prevention, investigation, or prosecution,” says Andy Buchanan, associate VP of asset protection at Mark’s. While many of the chain’s 400 stores were outfitted with surveillance cameras, the $B retailer lacked consistency in its video infrastructure. Some stores had one or two cameras, others had eight or ten, and they ran on as many as 40 different systems across the enterprise.