Security Honor Roll

Sep 1, 1998 12:00 PM, GEORGE PARTINGTON

           

Pete Blizniak of CVS Pharmacy faces challenges of growth through acquisition Pete Blizniak enjoys difficult challenges. The more difficult, the better. As the director of field loss prevention for CVS Pharmacy, Blizniak doesn't have to go looking for challenges; they come to him. After all, it's no easy task managing a loss prevention department for a company that has quickly grown into the largest drug store chain in the country. The acquisition of Revco stores last year more than doubled the size of the Woonsocket, R.I.-based retailer and catapulted the chain into the country's number one position by number of units. To integrate the operations of some 2,000 Revcos was a monumental task. A problem solver by nature, Blizniak has the perfect temperament for the job. He lives by the adage, "never give up; never give up; never ever ever give up." Doug Rodgers, CVS regional loss prevention representative, says Blizniak's leadership allowed for a smooth transition and the development of a strong loss prevention team. The Revco acquisition was a good fit for CVS, because Revco had operated mostly in states without a CVS presence. But it also meant a lot of retraining for Blizniak and a team of upper management personnel, who brought their "road show" to Revco's major markets, including Atlanta, the Carolinas, Ohio and the Midwest corridor south from Indianapolis. At each stop they did presentations that included everything from CVS as a company and its philosophy, down to the loss prevention approach. Blizniak's team trained former Revco personnel on shrinkage programs, performance standards, policies and procedures, compensation reviews and how to complete investigative reports. "We spent summer and fall of last year on the road in the three major markets, and by spring we felt pretty good," recalls Blizniak.

A start in the military Blizniak entered the security world through the military, working with a coast guard intelligence unit as a criminal investigator. Upon leaving the service in 1983 he headed immediately for the loss prevention field and came to CVS in 1984 as a regional loss prevention representative. "At the time, the loss prevention department was just beginning to grow," he recalls. "I believe there were five field people." Blizniak now has responsibility for all regional loss prevention representatives. To attain those heights in his profession, Blizniak proved himself as the market manager for the tough Washington, D.C., area, which CVS had just entered with the acquisition of People's Drug Stores. "I probably grew up professionally in that position," he says. For Blizniak, a core of about 40 of the 180 former People's stores represented a new challenge. Never before had the company operated so many stores in an urban environment. "It was kind of a baptism under fire," says Blizniak. "I walked into a situation where we had a significant amount of theft in every facet imaginable - burglaries, robberies, internal theft, external theft - and theft to a level that I had not experienced in the past. " Blizniak says he is forever grateful for the opportunity. "It enabled me to stretch the scope of my learning," he says. With internal and external theft at levels unheard of at CVS stores, Blizniak was not alone in his concern. "It got the attention of senior management and as a result there was a lot of attention placed on the Washington market," he says. The company brought in core CVS people at all levels of field management. Tremendous support was given to the transition team, and Blizniak notes, "If you are looking to sustain an acceptable level of shrinkage, you have to have the support of the field operations people. They are the people who have control over the stores; that's who the managers work for." Initially, Blizniak had to adjust to a new philosophy. People's hired directly out of college, but Blizniak was accustomed to managing people with more expertise. Here, people were still learning, and Blizniak had to bring them up to speed.

A question of safety Looking beyond reducing financial losses, Blizniak and his co-workers knew they needed to create a safer environment for store employees and customers. They asked, "What can we do differently?" One of the first steps was to identify the stores most prone to robberies, which they did by comparing their studies to crime statistics gathered by local agencies. They targeted those stores for a number of physical security measures, adding or enhancing CCTV systems, introducing time-lock and time-delay safes and mandating strict adherence to the use of cash-drop boxes. The team tested a new, interactive CCTV system with central station monitoring at three of the stores. The test proved successful. It gave significantly faster police response times and the impetus to rethink the use of uniformed guards. At core stores, they began using uniformed guards in a roving patrol approach, rather than at dedicated posts. "That enabled us to bring more stores in the area of coverage," says Blizniak. "We also tied these people into the central station by way of cell phone." Although the guards patrol according to a set pattern, they cover a relatively small area and can respond quickly to a distress call. "That has proved successful, because we were able to cover stores that wouldn't have had guard coverage, " notes Blizniak. They are now rolling out the system to 35 stores in the Washington area. Blizniak also began a signage program to let would-be robbers know the stores use time-delay safes and have little available money. Also, Blizniak wants to ensure that CVS personnel know the safest methods for dealing with a potentially deadly situation. "We are in the process of introducing a training program that covers robbery reaction and robbery prevention to not only store management but down to the crew level as well," he says.

The big picture Today, Blizniak focuses on the big picture: analyzing budgets, monitoring results, directing resources and solving problems as they crop up. Beyond time behind a desk, he travels about three days a week. Customer service is a CVS hallmark, says Blizniak, and his customers are the field loss prevention professionals. "You can't get a good read on where we are by sitting in a corporate office," he notes. "You find a lot of issues surface that might not otherwise or might take a lot longer to surface. Hopefully, the troubleshooting is quicker and more direct with this approach." When he's back home in Centreville, Va., Blizniak devotes time to his wife, Deborah, and three school-age children, coaching the basketball teams of two of his children.

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