Appriss Retail has a strong relationship with Myer, aiding the retailer’s ability to directly reduce shrink inside its organisation. The two companies have been partners against retail crime and abuse for more than five years.
Online fraud was a specific target for Myer in 2024. The annual report from Myer Holding Limited, released on Nov. 7, reported that online sales increased by 2%. Appriss Retail worked directly with Myer to reduce losses online, helping the retailer see a year-over-year increase in online sales. The annual report showed overall shrinkage dropped 3.3% from 2023 to 2024.
Across Australia, fraudsters have shifted heavily towards online platforms, matching the increase in online shopping during COVID lockdowns. Australians spent AUD 62.3 billion online in 2021, making ecommerce a major target for fraud, and nearly two-thirds of Australian retailers believe they’re seeing a rise in returns fraud, according to Loop.
The same study reported that nearly half of Australian retailers struggle with cases of wardrobing, too, where customers buy items for temporary use (often with tags still attached) and return them after use, impacting inventory and resale value. Myer does its best to quell fraud and abuse by collaborating directly with a technology partner like Appriss Retail instead of enforcing strict returns policies, which can alienate their most loyal and profitable customers.
Appriss Retail collaborates seamlessly with Myer on projects of all sizes. Myer recently implemented a new POS software solution as part of a major project and Appriss Retail has played a key role in its success. In fact, Myer and Appriss Retail hold fortnightly calls to collaborate on best practices and address any issues, further strengthening their already successful partnership.
At the forefront of this collaboration is Myer’s embrace of AI-powered solutions like Appriss Retail’s Secure and Incident solutions. Appriss Retail works directly with Myer’s loss prevention team to offer them tools that enable investigators to sift through the retailer’s massive data logs and get automated, immediate views of the business, identifying internal and external fraud that need immediate attention.
Appriss Retail’s advanced technology also connects disparate incidents of organised retail crime, helping retailers to recognise broader crime patterns. Cases get linked within Myer’s history, allowing the chain to understand the scope and impact of criminal activities impacting the business. Most importantly, the Appriss Retail solutions can only perform at the highest level because Myer collaborates closely throughout the process. This is not a set it and forget it software solution.
Appriss Retail also collaborates with other teams at Myer beyond the Profit Protection team, including operations, IT, and product management teams. The relationships across job functions have been instrumental in ensuring that Myer always achieves the highest level of performance and data integrity for both stores and online. Appriss Retail continues to develop relevant modifications to the data to enhance fraud detection throughout all channels of the business.
Myer firmly believes in shrinkage management as a tool to protect overall profits and has made it a key priority, according to the company’s annual report. Myer’s work with Appriss Retail complements the company’s overall fraud strategy, including:
• Minimising the manual effort involved in detecting fraud
• Enhancing the identification of transactions that impact profitability and violate policies
• Increasing frequency of internal and external investigation referrals to the police
• Elevating the detection of potentially troublesome transactions and improving the identification of those that affect both the company’s profitability and compliance
Appriss Retail continues to innovate to help Myer, recently implementing a retail-specific generative AI, natural language model called SecureGPT inside its Secure solution. Myer can access the solution to query its deep transaction data and receive conversational insights on cases. The capability democratises access to complex transactional data, speeding up how Myer’s loss prevention specialists write and develop cases.
Appriss Retail’s modernized generative AI capabilities are cutting-edge examples of how the company innovates with collaboration in mind. Appriss Retail plays an important, necessary, and collaborative role in how Myer attacks shrink.