Remove The Bull's-Eye From Your Store

A recent National Retail Security Survey lists the two primary causes of cash shrinkage as internal theft (52%) and processing errors (27%). Retailers of all shapes and sizes invest time, effort, and money into procuring best-of-breed cash management technologies to ensure their stores don't add to the statistic. Cashintensive retailers are no different, as risk and liability are at a premium due to the large sums of money collected, handled, and stored on location each day. Therefore, cash-intensive retailers shouldn't be asking if they should invest in a cash management system, but rather, which one. Christopher Maitland, director of safety and security at Cricket Communications, Inc., had to find an answer to this very question.

Cricket Communications is a wireless service provider with retail stores that cater to credit- and income-challenged customers. Headquartered in San Diego, Cricket Communications is parented by Leap Wireless International. Leap and its joint ventures, which include Cricket Communications, now operate in 23 states, hold licenses in 35 of the top 50 U.S. markets, and employ 2,500 people.

Most of Cricket Communications' customers pay for their services with cash. Housing a high volume of currency at each retail location creates a plethora of cash management and liability risks, including internal theft, robbery, and processing error. Therefore, Maitland needed a cash management solution that would secure large volumes of cash.

Cricket Communications has continued to grow and expand with new markets spreading throughout the country. While growth and expansion are the cornerstones of retail survival, for this retailer, they produced an armored transport dilemma. At the time, Cricket Communications contracted an armored carrier to transport money from its retail stores to a local bank. Because the armored carriers could only service an area one day per week, six days worth of accumulated cash remained in each store at any given time.