There’s No Business Like “Know” Business!!
People of a certain “vintage” will remember well the speech by former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld when questioned on the lack of evidence linking the Iraqi government with the supply of chemical weapons to terrorists. For many of us it took a second hearing to fully appreciate the difference between our “known knowns” and our “known unknowns”, and if you are anything like me then the concept of ‘unknown unknowns’ – well that took a little bit longer!
The speech has been the source of much discussion through the years and the basic principle has been applied to many situations and domains, including Fraud Management. However, one of the most interesting parts of the speech has largely been overlooked in all of the focus on the “knowns” and “unknowns”. In responding to the question Rumsfeld’s first sentence was;
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me”.
Fraud management, as with most other operational functions, is largely focused on something happening, whether that is in relation to configuring rules in the Fraud Management System or in working out the effectiveness of your business function (people & process). The emergence of certain fraud types through the years has started us on the track of reaping the benefits from looking at things that have not happened as a detection method but for many organizations the principle has not been fully embraced.
Most organizations are now looking into more detailed analytics, but within these analytics programs, how much emphasis is put on things that didn’t happen? Additionally, in a dynamic environment such as Telecoms Fraud Management even what we “think” we know (“known knowns”) may be rapidly out-dated or superseded.
In the “Big Data” era things are likely to be even more challenging for Fraud Professionals as the haystack just got a lot bigger, so even trying to keep on top of what we think we know is going to be a challenge. To start trying to uncover our “Known Unknowns” and “Unknown unknowns”, – that will take INSIGHT.
To get more information about Subex Insight please click here.
Product Manager for Fraud & Credit Risk Products in Subex. – John has more than 35 years’ experience in the telecoms industry working in a variety of different roles and activities from engineering to Product Management via Project Management, Marketing, Programme Management, Presales and more….
He is a well-respected Subject Matter Expert in the area of fraud management and operations with a wealth of experience to draw on.
John is also a qualified Project Manager with accreditation from International Project Management Association (IPMA) and is an active participant in the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum (www.tuff.co.uk) – having been accredited by TUFF with Distinction as a Telecommunications Fraud Professional.
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