Getting ready for the holidays can feel like a mad scramble. After all, it feels like they start earlier and earlier every year, and that means you need to start ordering inventory sooner, hiring earlier, and merchandising even faster than usual. And in the frenzy, something inevitably falls through the cracks.

That something might cause a hiccup — or it might cause serious loss of revenue. To ensure your stores don't experience the same thing, we've put together a step-by-step list of holiday prep items you can do well in advance. Follow these steps, and your associates will be less stressed and your stores will be more efficient.

No, it's not too early to start hiring seasonal associates. In fact, it may never be too early to start that process, considering there are almost 12,000 seasonal retail gigs already on job board Indeed.com. While these are a fraction of the seasonal hires made by the likes of big box stores, keep in mind that large retailers have been known to start their seasonal hiring push as early as mid-summer — so starting early may help you scoop up talent ahead of the competition.

But that's not the only reason: Starting early not only gives you more time to interview and vet candidates, it also gives you more time to train and onboard. Speaking of…

It's a retail tale that's as old as time: At some point during the holiday season, a seasonal associate is going to have to fill in to cover some specialized task. It may be on a system they haven't been trained on or a task they've never done before. And it'll probably happen on your busiest day of the year.

While this may not be 100% avoidable, it can be 95% avoidable with the right amount of cross-training, especially if you ensure seasonal staff are just as fluent on omnichannel fulfillment and inventory management systems and processes as they are on your POS. And while they probably won't be asked to pitch in with data management or supply chain issues, you should consider making sure they're adequately trained on:

• Cash handling
• POS operation
• Detaching and removing hard tags and safers, deactivating labels
• Customer service and consultative selling
• Omnichannel order fulfillment
• Stocking and replenishing physical inventory

There are two things every retailer today can agree on:

• Good associates are hard to find.
• Every unnecessary hour of labor allocated eats into already tight profit margins.

With this in mind, you obviously want to maximize your associates' time with high-value tasks like customer service, value-added selling, and fulfilling buy online, pick-up in store (BOPIS) and buy online, pick-up at curbside (BOPAC) orders. One easy way to make that a reality is by deploying a source tagging program for your merchandise. Source tagging solutions simply mean products are tagged by the manufacturer and arrive at your stores already protected with anti-theft labels and hard tags to help get them on the sales floor faster, enable secure open merchandising, and increase throughput at the point-of-sale — all leading to a better customer experience. This way, your associates can devote their time to higher-value tasks, rather than tagging every item before it lands on your shelves.

While we're on the subject of inventory, why not use this time to review your loss prevention program and plug any gaps that might exist? Quick wins can range from adjusting camera angles to installing public view monitors that can help deter theft. And be sure to protect those frequently targeted and most-stolen holiday items with hard tags, labels, safers and wraps that are proven to do the job so you can avoid theft-driven out-of-stocks, reduce shrink, and protect your holiday profits. To take your holiday — and year round — loss prevention strategy to the next level, consider using Computer Vision, RFID-powered loss prevention technologies, or even a cloud-based shrink analytics platform. These solutions empower your loss prevention team to act proactively through real-time alerts, easy-to-use dashboards, and the capability to spot common theft behavior as it happens.

No shopper wants to visit your stores, only to find the items they want are out of stock. Worse yet, no one wants to purchase an item via BOPIS/BOPAC, only to arrive and discover that not only is it not ready for pick up, it's not even in the store.

That's why it pays to invest in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology that can help you achieve highly accurate item-level inventory from supply chain to storefront. When coupled with a leading inventory analytics platform, you'll not only gain maximum inventory accuracy, you'll also maximize on-floor availability, reduce out-of-stocks, and gain insight into your omnichannel fulfillment rates. All of that adds up to better customer experiences, no matter if they're in your stores or shopping online.

If you've finally moved away from traditional "sales-per-hour" method and adopted more insightful and outcome-based metrics like sales per shopper (SPS) and shopper to associate ratio (STAR), make sure you have the right tools in place to measure them effectively. Start by measuring your actual traffic for each store with a leading-edge people counting solution that counts visitors at entrances and throughout the store to deliver deep and accurate insights on in-store shopper behaviors.

Then, take your retail analytics to the next level with advanced traffic analytics, which not only helps you measure real-world shopper traffic, it also leverages people-counting devices, Wi-Fi, mobile, and video technology to help you understand how shoppers behave and where they go inside your stores. In addition to helping you measure STAR and SPS, it can help you understand shopper preferences, build more accurate personas, and deliver better experiences that lead to more revenue.

With the right preparation, the right technologies and the right partners, you can ensure your holiday season is merry, bright — and maximally profitable. Just be sure to start hiring early, cross-train your staff, leverage today's leading inventory and loss prevention technologies to protect your profits and deliver exceptional customer experiences, all while using metrics like SPS and STAR to understand how your stores are really performing.

But don't stop there: Download Sensormatic Solutions' Holiday Gift Guide to see all the solutions and technologies retailers are wishing for in order to have a great holiday season. It'll give you the full picture of the leading solutions that are available and how they deliver ROI for leaders and functions throughout the retail enterprise. Get your copy today.