Retail theft is surging: shoplifting offences in England and Wales rose by 20% to reach a two-decade high in the year ending March 2025, and similar trends are being seen around the world. This dramatic increase puts pressure on retailers to enhance store security to reduce shrinkage and protect customers and staff.
Retail stores also carry a duty of care to keep employees and customers safe and to comply with health and safety regulations.
Reducing crime and improving safety depend on clear visibility of store security and safety assets, which becomes challenging when data is scattered across disparate systems. We've been working with retailers on this exact issue. Here's how improved asset management store is transforming security at a global high-street retailer.
Tracking security assets in one place
We were approached by the global asset protection manager at the brand. They are responsible for all security and safety assets across hundreds of stores worldwide, including cameras, motion alarms, fire alarms, extinguishers, and access controls. Their initial method of tracking? Spreadsheets.
But spreadsheets are static, fragmented, and quickly outdated. Sharing them across a global security team naturally introduces issues. Either someone can edit everything, which leads to mistakes, or can view only, which is not workable. When inconsistencies were discovered, it became nearly impossible to determine the correct information or understand how discrepancies occurred.
Real-time updates from store security assets
Knowing what assets exist and where they are is necessary, but not sufficient. Static information does not support timely responses to live events. This retailer’s camera systems can generate real-time API-triggered alerts, such as “camera offline”, “camera tampered with”, “crowd detection” or “vehicle detection”. Yet the device-location mapping lives in spreadsheets causing delays in reaction to time critical events.
What they needed was a unified system that consolidates live event data with store-specific asset information from all locations worldwide. This would allow a store manager to be alerted instantly, reducing exposure to risk.
A unified solution for store security asset tracking
The first step is to aggregate all asset data into a single platform. Asset data can be imported into Starhive so teams can instantly see what assets are deployed, their in-store location, and upcoming inspection or maintenance requirements. Starhive also facilitates task and work-order management so tasks can be created, tied to assets, assigned to individuals, and tracked from start to finish.
This not only streamlines operations by removing the need to dig through spreadsheets to find which assets need to be worked on, but it also helps them with their compliance activities. Retailers can store their security and safety compliance frameworks (for example OSHA) in Starhive and link them to relevant assets for full visibility.
Integrating live data
The next step is to connect manufacturer APIs to Starhive so it can listen for critical events. When an alert comes in, such as a camera going offline, the system can trigger notifications to store or security personnel, update the asset’s status (for example, from online to offline), and raise a maintenance request. This brings real-time clarity to store security.
The result is the ability to act in seconds instead of minutes or hours. This is a major advantage in reducing the risk of theft, damage, and safety incidents.
Unified data tracking means greater insight
Beyond real-time control, Starhive provides the data to surface macro-level insights. The history of assets and all associated tasks and alerts can help identify high-incident stores or regions, highlight the most reliable manufacturers for future equipment purchases, and enable targeted operational or training plans where alerts are abnormally frequent. This turns data into strategy and further reduces the risk to the retailer.
Final thoughts
By unifying static and live data within one platform, Starhive enables real-time visibility and tracking of security assets across all stores. This improves compliance, speeds response to incidents, and empowers strategic, data-driven decision making.
If you are facing similar challenges, whether in high-street stores or another environment, do not let fragmented asset data increase your risk. Get in touch today and let us explore how we can help with your store security tracking.
