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Interview
THE (GOOD) SHERIFF
OF NOTTINGHAM
As the benevolent enforcer of ‘shrink’ reduction
strategies at Britain’s best-loved chemist, there is no
such word as ‘can’t’, according to Robert Jennings,
head of loss prevention at Boots UK
WHEN Jesse Boot started Robert under his ever-watchful eye, a task
dispensing his low-cost herbal Jennings that his broader staff
remedies in Nottingham during the empowerment strategy was more
mid 19th Century, his business than able to cope with.
model became the inspirational Jennings trained as a pharmacist
medicine for those that followed. It and has worked for Boots for 22
was not simply about making years in other capacities including
money, but taking a philanthropic management and property and it is
stand in a community that had this cross-business approach that
nurtured his ambition. has prepared him for the challenge
Boots’ model was a potent of loss prevention.
cocktail of commercial acumen and His role now crosses occupational
business benevolence. He wanted jurisdictions of security HR, legal,
to get on in commerce but to do so operations and supply chain and his
he also needed to beat the fixed- strategy of involving all Boots UK
price cartels run by other less store staff as empowered enforcers
reputable chemists so that he could of the zero-tolerance message to
reduce the price for poorer shrink is paying dividends.
families. This winning strategy be a watch word for the business “There are a lot of people in this
overnight increased his client base more than 150 years on. It guards its kind of role who are ex-policemen
so that by the time he died in 1931 reputation as the UK’s leading and there is a perception in other
there were nearly 1,000 stores pharmacy-led health and beauty businesses that shrink is simply a
across the UK with the name Boots retailer, an objective that attracts security issue. Loss prevention is a
above the door. more than 10 million customers per cross-discipline function because
But even Sir Jesse Boot, or Lord week, but also less welcome callers everyone has responsibility for the
Trent of Nottingham as he became – the opportunistic thieves and profit and loss (P&L). We cannot sit
in his twilight years, would not determined fraudsters who prey on in a silo and must engage with all
necessarily have foreseen that the the High Street’s seemingly rich colleagues to rise to the challenge
business he founded with his pickings and cost British retailers of managing shrink downwards.”
parents would require a city within £4.1 billion last year alone. Consequently, all management
a city to house the nerve centre of Over the last seven years, Boots employees, whatever their function,
its global reach. has built a formidable reputation have to spend time on the shop
Boots UK Support Office in for putting in the checks and floor in order to understand the
Nottingham houses back-up office balances of reducing shrink across issues facing store personnel.
functions and distribution, employs its vast estate, a job that recently Jennings includes an army of
more than 8,000 people and, almost doubled following the multi- suppliers and vendors as part of his
spanning 300 acres, is more than billion pound merger with Alliance cross-discipline approach because he
two thirds the size of Monaco with UniChem. accepts that he does not have all
its manicured lawns and glass and Robert Jennings and his team of the answers.
steel edifices stretching over two 100 loss prevention managers, used “It is like CCTV, it can work well,
districts of Nottingham. to look after 1,530 stores but now but not on its own. It needs to be
Taking a stand has continued to has approximately 2,600 stores part of an integrated cross-
30 • RETAIL FRAUD
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