BFA #003 | "There's No Budget"

Hey hey Fraud Fighters! - Brian here

In today's edition, we break down the great debate of budget.

What's a budget? Does budget even exist?

Read Time: ~3 Minutes

"There's no budget for fraud"

If mo money equals mo problems, then less money should equal less problems.

Nope not in our world.

Less money means more problems, more work, and more burnout.

Which of these can you check off?

• Lack of tools that would make your job easier

• Lack of training

• Overburdened fraud fighters

• Stalled career growth

• Missing fraud because of lack of visibility

• Sourcing together investigations with 13 tabs open

Lack of budget can really put different types of stress on you and your team that are hard to calculate.

A quick mind shift can change a lot.

A quick mind shift can lead to budget.

The Problem

The CEO's perspective:

"We need to prioritize our resources and allocate funds where they can have the biggest impact on the bottom line. Right now, the fraud team isn't generating enough return on investment, so we need to redirect their budget to other areas that are more pressing."

The CFO's perspective:

"Budget constraints are a reality that we all need to face. We simply don't have the funds to support the fraud team right now. We need to focus on cutting costs and reducing expenses, and unfortunately, that means the fraud team has to take a hit."

The Fraud Fighters' perspective:

"The fraud team is critical to protecting our company and ensuring the safety of our users. Without a budget, we won't be able to do our job effectively, and the risks to the company will only increase. We need to find a way to secure funding for our team, even if it means making some tough decisions elsewhere."

So who's wrong in this situation? It's tough when they're all valid.

Ready to become Fraud Influencer?

And without taking selfies?

In order to get any budget, you need to have some sort of influence.

It doesn't always happen overnight, and it most cases it takes time.

It takes deliberate effort to position yourself.

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Here's a framework I have used typically over 90 days

...and can be a great way to kickoff a new role.

Onboard horizontally: Get to know your peers, what they're good at, what they care about, what they know about fraud and abuse. This is just a starting point to give you an idea of individual team goals and what level of understanding they have of your role.

Assess the organization: Business goals, direction, challenges, opportunities. Learn them. Know them.

Align fraud goals with business and stakeholders: The last two steps help you start to figure out how to make sure you keep your personal and team goals connected with others within the business and most importantly the business as a whole. Not every goal will be completely connected and that's ok.

Assess communication flows and styles with stakeholders: Different teams communicate differently, and the same goes for individuals on that team. You're probably going to translate fraud differently to the engineering team as compared to the marketing team.

Create and implement your strategy: Show off that brain of yours. It's your time to shine.

Begin the education tour: Simplify what you do and make it easy to understand how everyone can work together. This may be difficult for some people at first. This is a skill of it's own and takes time to craft. I'm introverted, and it took me years to get better at this. Still working on it today...

Rally for change: You weren't hired to keep doing things the same way.

Bring people into your world: Now is the fun part! Show people how your team works and operates. Maybe some tips and tricks of working better together. Obviously, there are some parts that can't be shown, but find entertaining, engaging, or informational ways to bring people into your day-to-day.

Provide ongoing transparency: The work isn't done. It's not an easy task to gain influence - let alone keep it. You'll need consistency and persistence.

If you have been at a company longer than 90 days but haven’t done the things above…
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It’s not too late.
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Go back.
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Make them happen.

It'll only be time until they find budget they swore they didn't have...

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See you again next Friday in your inbox.

​Brian