Vendor Insight: The Cash Management Focus Of Retailers

By Ed McGunn, Fire King Security Group and Corporate Safe Specialists

As part of our continuous effort to keep abreast of retailers' remote cash capture improvement priorities, we conduct multiple surveys during the year. They go out to a number of industry segments including specialty retail, fast casual restaurants, quick serve restaurants, and c-stores. In 2010, after compiling the results of 12 surveys, the top two cash-handling priorities were: 1) reduce cash shrinkage (the number one issue to 52% of respondents); and 2) increase staff productivity (48%). These findings were reinforced by another survey we conducted in 2011 focused on c-stores. The two most serious cash handling issues to c-stores were inefficient cash handling and cash shrinkage from internal theft (69% and 64% respectively). Importantly, it does not look like either of these two issues is going away; more than 80% of respondents thought the seriousness of each issue has remained the same or increased since last year.