Lavastorm Analytics Adds Bite to Compass Group Canada's Loss Prevention Program with Data Analysis and Discovery

Compass Group Canada Reduces Shrinkage by Using the Lavastorm Analytics Engine to Uncover and Monitor Metrics and Patterns Correlated to Theft and Policy Breaches.

Lavastorm Analytics, a leading global analytics software company, announced today that Compass Group Canada, its country's leading food service and support services company, which owns and operates 2,300 retail locations for nationally known brands, including Quiznos, Starbucks, Subway, Tim Horton's and Pizza Pizza, as well as hospitals, schools and stadiums across Canada, has chosen the Lavastorm Analytics Engine to improve the accuracy and impact of its retail loss prevention program.

By using Lavastorm Analytics Engine, a powerful, visual and versatile analytic development environment and a key element of the Lavastorm Analytics Platform, Compass Group Canada has been able to uncover metrics and patterns that are reliable indicators of theft and to spot anomalies, which would previously have gone unnoticed, in the massive amount of point-of-sale (POS) data collected by its high-tech cash registers. In initial use, the system has been 100 percent accurate in identifying situations where theft or policy breaches were taking place.

With retailers suffering an average loss due to shrinkage of two percent of sales per year, Compass Group Canada, which had $1.5 billion in revenues in 2012, makes managing shrink a continual priority.

Compass Group Canada's loss prevention program is tasked with the responsibility of monitoring all of its retail locations around the country. It needed a solution that would allow it to combine and analyze data from disparate sources, including its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, five different point-of-sale (POS) systems, inventory and time and attendance systems, to not only find the sources of loss, but to also provide evidence for investigations to resolve issues or build cases that would hold up in court.

The Lavastorm Analytics Engine was chosen for the speed and flexibility it provided Compass Group Canada to quickly unify the POS data, calculate key metrics for each retail location, and identify locations and shifts where metrics were suspiciously high. With this information, it could prioritize cases and determine where best to deploy loss investigators to either take corrective action or gather additional evidence. With the system continuously monitoring vast amounts of data for suspicious activity, Compass Group Canada has been able to reduce shrink, more accurately detect suspicious activity, more efficiently deploy scarce investigative resources, and discourage future theft and policy breaches.

Humza Teherany, VP Business Transformation, brought Lavastorm in to drive innovation in their loss prevention program. "In a very short period of time, the Lavastorm Analytics Engine helped us transform our loss prevention efforts from a manual process to one that's agile and data driven. It gave us the analytic power to pull together the diverse data we needed to study shrinkage across our company, identify key metrics that are leading indicators of theft and policy breaches, and zero in on several major sources. Our new data-driven approach has not only reduced shrinkage immediately, but gives us a comprehensive and scalable loss prevention plan that will prevent more shrinkage from occurring in the future," said Teherany.

Brent Mooney, CFO of Compass Group Canada, added, "Lavastorm's software makes it easy for us to pinpoint exactly where shrinkage is occurring. With its advanced data analysis and discovery features, we have been able to drill down into the data in a way that we were never able to before. The insights that we get from the Lavastorm software drives our entire loss prevention decision-making process."

To read more on how Compass Group Canada has used Lavastorm Analytics award-winning Lavastorm Analytics Engine as an agile approach to analyze and visualize data, visit: http://www.lavastorm.com/assets/Lavastorm-Analytics-Compass-Case-Study.pdf.

Tags: Lavastorm Analytics, Compass Group Canada, Data Analytics, Big Data, Data Discovery, Business Intelligence, BI, Agile, Agile BI, Agile Analytics, Analytics

About Lavastorm Analytics

Lavastorm Analytics transforms how companies tackle data challenges to achieve breakthrough business results. The company's agile data management and analytic software gives analysts new powers to harness explosive data complexity, discover new insights and continuously improve business results. Analytics built in Lavastorm provide analysts with exceptional self-sufficiency, agility, transparency, accuracy, and business control. Lavastorm's solutions have identified business improvements worth billions of dollars for some of the largest corporations in the world. For more information, please visit: www.lavastorm.com.

About Compass Group Canada

Compass Group Canada is the country's leading foodservice and support services company, with 25, 700 associates working throughout the country and annual managed revenues of $1.5 billion in 2012. Employing 500,000 associates worldwide, its parent company, UK-based Compass Group PLC had revenues of £16.9 billion as at September 30, 2012. (We will confirm with compass comms). This is updated from Humzas presentation.

For more information, visit www.compass-canada.com.

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