The point-of-sale system today is more than just a cash register or a checkout counter. It is an essential tool for tracking sales and differentiating between payment methods, such as cash, credit, and online orders. It monitors customer complaints, discounts, voids, and refunds.
As more restaurants realize the benefits of new tools and technologies, these advances are becoming crucial to stay competitive—especially when it comes to loss prevention and asset protection. Monika Shah, a leader in risk management, loss prevention, and compliance, says integrating security footage with the point-of-sale system will aid operators in these areas.
With the right technology and integrations, teams at all levels, including a brand’s loss prevention team, can use insights into sales, food costs, labor, and more to help improve ROI. Restaurants can implement tools like Envysion, a managed video and loss prevention software, to analyze the data and identify fraudulent activities like labor theft and fake transactions from location to location—and then put controls in place to stop them. When companies are considering updates to their technology stack, it is important to involve loss prevention professionals in the decision-making process.
Envysion is a comprehensive loss mitigation tool that provides managed video, auditing services, and behavioral pattern analysis. Envysion helps identify key risk indicators, fraudulent transactions, and irregularities within the business. “Envysion helps identify those fake transactions. Their reports will highlight transactions where there is a potential manipulation, zero dollar or higher dollar cash transactions in the restaurant. Sometimes no customer is standing across from the cashier, but they’re just ringing up transaction after transaction,” says Shah. Once these behaviors are identified, Shah recommends systematic measures such as caps on discounts, limiting the number of times certain keys can be pressed, and programming systems to ask for more questions and authorizations while staying mindful of speed of service.
“Monitoring and addressing theft or potential losses in business is challenging without a good loss mitigation tool,” Shah says. Shah emphasizes that having such a tool in place helps identify and validate who, where, when, and how the loss occurred. When implemented and used correctly, Envysion can lead to a reduction in losses of 3 to 5 percent, according to Shah’s estimates.
Envysion can also identify instances of no-sale losses and potentially identify individuals responsible for them. This is valuable because it’s difficult to prove losses when there’s no record of them. Shah suggests focusing on key risk indicators and addressing them in the short term before tackling other issues.
Restaurant brands that commit to robust loss mitigation measures can experience significant improvements, especially with support from tools like Envysion. “You can’t always prevent losses before they happen, but you can certainly help reduce losses and their severity,” Shah says.
In summary, the point-of-sale system has evolved into a powerful tool that goes beyond capturing transactions. With the integration of loss prevention software like Envysion, restaurants can analyze data, identify fraudulent activities, and implement measures to protect their assets and reduce losses.
To learn more about Envysion, check out the Envysion website.
To learn more about Monika Shah, visit her LinkedIn profile.
By Olivia Schuster
