Will 2025 be tough, or your finest hour?

It is time for risk management to step forward and unleash business potential…

Good grief!

What just happened?

It seems like yesterday it was wall-to-wall roast turkey and mince pies (guilt free… as you don’t count calories at Christmas). And today we are coming to the end of the first working week (for many) of the New Year and my feet have not touched the ground!

The pace has been relentless. And looking at the Press you can see why.

Myriad press reports spin the British Retail Consortium’s comments about 2025 being a tough prospect for retail generally. And on a more granular level, speculation is already rife about who were the winners and losers on the high street as banks saw cash usage go up, but retailers saw less splashing of it than they had hoped for, with hospitality having a good run.

With government borrowing costs going up and the Pound coming down (making imports more expensive still), I can see a worried frown on the brow of our beloved PM. And for good reason…

The magic dust that powers the rehabilitation of our beleaguered nation is stated by HM Government to be business growth. And yet from where I sit (a ringside seat to the effects of the rising costs of employing people), nothing has been announced that will stimulate growth anytime soon. Yes, government departments can cut waste and we can renege on our promises to keep Johnny Polar Bear alive and well. But this is all about cutting not growing.

Where is the great economic stimulus that makes business want to invest and grow right now? Liz Truss may have been bonkers, but at least business people got excited… if only for a day or so.

So, when Next Plc releases a statement, as have other retailers, explaining that prices will have to go up and employee headcount down, why is anyone surprised? This is being done against an expectation of a flat lining economy that is not going to do anything to produce the increased revenues needed to protect margins and keep shareholders and investors happy. Even HM Government will be unhappy with this, as revenues to the exchequer stagnate or even fall.

In the absence of a commercially coherent government plan to get us out of this mess, yet again business will find itself having to look to its own resources to meet the challenge. And I think we can if we all do our bit…

We all know that businesses are losing billions in shrink. And we also know that the retail industry is facing unprecedented challenges from ORC. And that is not going to change any time soon. As the old management consultant Syd Joynson used to say, “I would cry you a bucket full of tears if it would do any good… but it won’t!” So, the message here is that we all need to recognise the reality of the situation and do something about it.

Joynson’s simple philosophy was that businesses were hampered by management who did not release the potential of their workforces. It seems to me that the simplest way to increase a retailer’s profits is to cut shrink. In times when demand is not growing, many retailers can make more money with less risk by looking afresh at their risk management strategies rather than investing in new store openings or, dare I say it, closures.

From my perspective, there are untapped riches in so many retail businesses if they would just make better use of the way they deploy their people and partners, their talents and insights.

When I took over as MD at ASEL, I spent the majority of my first 4 months in the job soliciting opinions of customers, management, colleagues and business partners about what we do well, what we could do better and how.

This was not only through structured collaborative sessions, but also through ad hoc initiatives to catch people unprepared; getting told what they really thought, not what they thought I wanted to hear.

All of that information, all of those learnings have since been codified into our business plan. And those insights have allowed us in a highly competitive field to grow 16% over 2024 and we have solid plans to more than double that growth in 2025.

We have been able to change the provision of security for our retail customers from a cost to a profit centre. And that’s not just by some accounting chicanery. Real profits!

So, if you too have returned to work and become engulfed by the outpouring of gloom and doom by the Press, don’t buy into it. This year could be your best yet.

Of course, to bring change you can’t carry on doing things as they have been and hoping for a different result. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Instead, why not reach out to me at ASEL about how, specifically for your business, it would be possible to turn your security provision from a cost or overhead to a profit centre.

Great for your business. Great for you too!
“Total hero!”

Dan Hardy

Group MD