This week Colin Peacock is joined by Professor Adrian Peacock to explore innovations in retail security and security guards,

They discuss how retailers are rethinking the role of security guards, weighing the benefits of extra store associate hours versus security personnel, and examining ideas like community guards.

Retailers spend millions, and some hundreds of millions on security guards. In our mini benchmark study, 81% of the thirty six retailers who responded shared that their budget for guards will increase and at least, stay the same over the next 12-18 months.

Yet retailers remain agitated about the role security guards play, and troubled by the difficulty in being able to accurately determine their return on investment.

Each year, we get a chance as a working group to hear from the retailers in the group and over 120 registered for this year's meeting to swap notes and hear new ideas from their peers.

This week's podcast summarises those discussions: New thinking when it comes to security guards.

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Retailers are constantly looking for new ways to improve shelf-replenishment routines and reduce out of stocks. At the same time they also want to shorten lead times, remove "waste" and reduce cost.

In this episode, Colin Peacock is joined by Paul Chapman from Oxford University to discuss best practice in reducing out of stocks.

And in particular, they explore what retailers could learn from experts in process-improvement, Toyota.

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Returns are a significant cost of doing business online, especially in sectors such as apparel and shoes where returns rates can be 30% plus.

Our 2018 report highlighted the need for retailers to calculate the TRUE and full cost of returns, proposing a true cost of returns model that retailers could adopt to their business.

In this episode Colin Peacock and Professor Adrian Beck consider how retailers are trying to find the right balance between making it as easy as possible for customers to return items in-store, at the least cost while balancing the increased risk of fraud from some customers who might abuse a self returns system.

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