Using Risk Management Experience to Build Fraud Detection Product: A Career Pivot to Product Management
I always know I love working in e-commerce industry, not only because it’s giving me all the challenges that I need, but also because this industry is quite adaptive towards all condition. I mean, during this pandemic situation, every other industry got beaten heavily, but e-commerce is one of the industries that quite stable and even benefitting from customers shifting behavior in online orders during lockdown. After 3 years working in e-commerce Risk Management Team, an opportunity to be a Product Manager (PM) is calling, a positioned that I always dreamed of.
And now, here I am working as a Product Manager in Blibli, the third company I have joined during my career. As someone with zero hands-on experience in product management, only on textbook level, I knew I will struggle to understand the product development journey at first. I also wondered whether my past experience would help me learned everything faster. Turns out it definitely helps me!
Previously in Risk Management Team, I worked as a second layer of defense, with main job descriptions like reviewing the business or product team flow, identifying the risk possibility, and putting additional control when needed. Now, as a PM, I’m shifting into the first layer of defense as business process owner, as illustrated in below image. I juggle between decisions for the product that we develop so it runs smoothly, also ensuring that our product would not break any regulations or expose more risks.
So, how was my past experience in Risk Management Team help me to become a good Product Manager?
Thankfully, the product that I have to manage in my new role is the Fraud Detection System (FDS), which still aligned with the risk management concept that I know. The main responsibility for FDS Team is to develop a system that could detect fraudulent/abusive behavior as fast as we can, maintain the risk based on management risk appetite and to ensure the loss would be less hurting to the company.
In order to fulfill our purposes, the FDS Team needs to collaborate with another team to integrate their product. But, before we got into the development process, there were several steps that I need to take. These steps could be simplified as identify-assess-mitigate process. Those 3 processes could be repeated to form a cycle.
1. Identify the risk
Previously, as second layer of defense, I need to learn about the product or business flow before I could pin the risk and recommend an applicable solution. Turns out, as a PM, I still need to perform this process to identify the risk and recommend the suitable solutions from FDS product.
The ability to have a fruitful discussion or asking a sharp question to multiple teams was one of the beneficial points of my previous experience. It really helps me as a PM to understand the other team product flow from end-to-end.
The main purposes of this identification process is to discover all the potential risks, unusual pattern, pain points, roadblocks that might affect the product, and customer inputs related to the product. That’s why not only I have to talked to other team’s PM, but I also need to discuss with the front-liners team that facing customers directly, such as Customer Care Team, Seller Team, or Risk Management Team to fully understand the flow of the product and the business.
After all the potential risks, pain points, and roadblocks had been identified, I need to inform all the related stakeholders with the risk’s possibility. One of the ways is by writing a note related to these risks in the Product Requirement Documents (PRD), to make sure it won’t cause any future product issue.
2. Assess the risk
After risk identification process is done, I need to assess how those risks could affect the product. One of the methods that I learn while I’m joining Risk Management Team is by using Risk Assessment Matrix. This matrix could help you to measure:
- Risk impact, which shows how severe the damaged will be if the risk emerges, and
- Risk likelihood or how often the risk will be happened within the product lifetime.
Below is one of the examples of risk assessment matrix which shows the risk score from “less hurting” risk (indicates with green color), up to the severe damage risk (indicates with red color).
Now, as a PM, I am simplifying the assessment process with focus on the risk impact. I work closely with our Data Analyst to retrieve related data to quantify the severity of risks, and how much the uplift if we could perform risk saving from abusive/fraudulent orders.
After that, both team (FDS Team and the other teams) need to consider the effort needed to mitigate the risk, whether if we need to develop a new solution, or if we could optimize the operational process. We certainly do not want the effort spent to be inversely proportional to the existing risk impact.
3. Mitigate the risk
After identifying the risk and assessing the risk impact, I (or we) could decide what is the suitable solution to tackle the risk. The solution might be accepting the risk (for example with corporate management acknowledgement), transfer the risk (for example with integrating to third party), or developing more features to minimize the risk.
In the previous experience, I need to be creative enough to give the applicable recommendations for controlling the risk in product/business process, now I still need those creative thinking to craft the main product journey to tackle the risk. I also need to consider the alternative flow as a “fallback plan”, so when the features did not work as how it should be, I could ensure that my team had a workaround to minimize the friction to the customer.
As a part of my product journey, I also need to consider the communication mechanism used to notify our user. For example, if our FDS block the customer’s order, I need to collaborate with Copywriters to create an informative notification for the customers so they could create a new order or contact Blibli Customer Care Team if needed. So not only focusing on the how much we could save, but I also need to consider the better approach to keep the customer happy.
To ensure the control that we put is sufficient, I could also give input to the testing scenario used by my Quality Assurance Team. The testing scenario adopted will be started with the main scenario, up to the edge scenario which inherited risk usually lies. If all the product/features could pass all the testing scenario, then it means the product will be ready to launch.
4. Repeat the process as a cycle
With our solution to mitigate the risk in place, we might face a new potential risk/inherited risk. So, we also need to monitor the product/features performance after it being released.
To perform the monitoring, I will be working closely with our Data Analyst to monitor the uplift performance, comparing between the result before the features implemented and after the features implemented. If we found some anomalies in the result or found some parts of the features could be optimized more, then we will start the process all over again. Starting with identifying the new risk, assessing the risk, and coming up with a new solution to be implemented. I also need to re-inform the stakeholders and management for the issues found and the solution that we take.
At last, as someone who choose to pivot career from second layer of defense team to Product Manager, this is one of the best decisions that I have ever made. If you’re also thinking about taking a leap in your career, a little tip that I could give is to try become a PM for something that you’re experienced first. For example, if you’re experienced in Marketing Team then maybe you would like to be a PM for a campaign or promotion product. Or if you’re experienced in Finance Team then maybe you would like to try to be a PM in a payment or financial product. Therefore, your pivot journey will be smoother and a bit easier. Good luck!
If you’re interested in applying for a full-time position or intern, Blibli is currently hiring! Send your resume to recruitment@blibli.com and get the chance to work with our PM and UX team and our own unique stories.
