Ward monitors shrinkage so your Home team can act on it early.
Instead of one more dashboard, Ward sends shrinkage findings each morning with the action already recommended.
Why shrinkage matters
in home retail.
Small hardware has the highest per-unit theft rates but lowest dollar impact; power tools have lower frequency but massive loss per incident. Ward segments shrinkage by value tier and department so loss prevention allocates resources where the dollar impact is highest, not just where the unit count is.
Benchmarks. Home improvement shrink runs 1.4-2.6% of sales, with power tools, copper, and high-value building materials accounting for 30-50% of total dollar shrink despite small unit volume. ORC events typically affect a tight geographic cluster of 5-15 stores.
Power tool theft ring detection
Ward flags elevated power tool shrinkage at a geographic cluster of stores, concentrated during weekday afternoons, a pattern consistent with organized retail crime. Ward recommends immediate spider-wrap enforcement and receipt-checking at affected locations. LP investigation confirms a theft ring, and targeted intervention brings shrinkage back toward estate averages within weeks.
Three pitfalls Ward catches
in home shrinkage.
- 01 High-volume small hardware shrink dominates incident counts and pulls LP attention toward unit-level fixes; the bigger dollar exposure is in low-frequency power tool theft.
- 02 Pallet receiving discrepancies on building materials (lumber, drywall, roofing) often don't surface until the next physical because random sampling rarely catches the missing units.
- 03 ORC patterns concentrate geographically; chain-wide LP allocation misses the cluster signal that directs investigative focus.
How Ward runs shrinkage
for home retailers.
-
01
Decompose shrink by value tier and department
Ward separates loss patterns by SKU value tier, department, and store cluster, surfacing where dollar shrink concentrates rather than where unit shrink concentrates.
-
02
Detect geographic clustering for ORC
Cards flag synchronized shrink patterns across nearby stores in high-value categories, the signature of organized theft rings.
-
03
Tighten receiving controls on bulk deliveries
Ward identifies pallet-receiving variance patterns and recommends targeted sampling or 100% verification on flagged SKUs from flagged vendors.
What a Ward card looks like.
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled the spring pre-build against the last three seasons and the weather signal for the 22 Southeast stores.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
seasonal_prebuild | Mulch on-hand hit 61% of plan the week temps broke 70°F |
dc_push | DC push started 9 days after the first-warm-week trigger, LY it was 2 |
attach.project | Soil and edging attach fell 18% at stores that gapped on mulch |
Recommend: tie the push trigger to the 10-day forecast instead of the calendar week, pre-position two truckloads at the 8 stores that gapped, and re-set the attach endcap.
seasonal_prebuild…
Dashboards
Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries.
Sources
Connect external systems to the data lake.
| Name | Type | Last sync |
|---|---|---|
epicor_pos_transactions | import | 2m ago |
epicor_special_orders | import | 2m ago |
netsuite_inventory_snapshot | import | 14m ago |
retail_seasonal_prebuild | import | 1h ago |
retail_sku_velocity | import | 1h ago |
retail_pro_account_sales | import | 1h ago |
retail_weather_daily | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
merch-read-default | permit | Model::* |
pro-team-read-accounts | permit | Model::"pro_account_sales" |
vendor-blocked | forbid | Model::"labor_*" |
supply-read-orders | permit | Model::"special_orders" |
Home shrinkage:
the shift.
- ×Project basket identification
- ×Seasonal pre-positioning
- ×Long-tail inventory
- ✓Cause-level shrinkage attribution
- ✓Store-vs-estate benchmarking
- ✓Receiving dock anomaly detection
Home KPI impact.
Ward requires 6\u201312 months to baseline seasonal categories. Pro vs DIY segment separation is critical for accurate modeling.
Questions about home shrinkage.
Small hardware has the highest per-unit theft rates but lowest dollar impact; power tools have lower frequency but massive loss per incident. Ward segments shrinkage by value tier and department so loss prevention allocates resources where the dollar impact is highest, not just where the unit count is.
Ward flags elevated power tool shrinkage at a geographic cluster of stores, concentrated during weekday afternoons, a pattern consistent with organized retail crime. Ward recommends immediate spider-wrap enforcement and receipt-checking at affected locations.
Ward segments by value tier, tracks geographic clustering for ORC detection, monitors receiving accuracy on bulk/pallet deliveries, and measures POS velocity-to-inventory count gaps.
First shrinkage insight cards arrive within 48 hours. Stable home baselines form within two weeks.
Home shrinkage
by data source.
More Home insight cards.
Home retailers: see what shrinkage problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
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Find out what your data has been hiding.
Tell us about your operation. We’ll show you the problems Ward catches, and the ones your current tools miss.