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Fraudsters Beware: Intelligent Automation at Work at John Lewis & Partners
Intelligent automation, coupled with DevOps, has created a safe system of work. This has enabled the delivery team to independently develop, test and deploy code quickly, safely, securely and reliably, while allowing the business to find answers to their questions and insights quickly – through the self serve and automated solutions.”Alec Sutherland Partner & Automation Technical Lead (RPA), John Lewis Partnership
British retailer John Lewis & Partners offers a dizzying array of premium products for sale in stores and online. But not all of the orders placed online are made by honest buyers. The global retail industry loses billions of dollars each year due to fraudulent ordering, so it is imperative that retailers immediately check any orders deemed suspicious.
Challenge
Retailers around the world face many of the same challenges. One distressing trend is fraud. Globally, the retail industry loses billions of dollars each year due to fraudulent ordering. Fraudsters wait behind their computer keyboards, looking for any vulnerability that allows them to sneak in. It is imperative that retailers check any orders deemed suspicious, and they can’t waste any time. The fraud team at John Lewis had no interest in placing their premium products in the hands of thieves.
Solution
When fraud teams suspect that an order might be dishonest, the order is placed on hold. Blue Prism digital workers then pick up the trail and begin to investigate. They create a case in Salesforce and perform a series of cross-checks on the order, via various internal and external systems.
If the order is deemed a fraud, it is cancelled before ever leaving the John Lewis warehouse. Sometimes digital workers have questions about a particular order and will reach back out to their human colleagues for help.
Employees are happy to have their digital colleagues performing these checks. They are now free to focus on more proactive tasks like iterating the fraud detection scoring models and researching the fraud detection market for the latest strategies and tools.
Most importantly, these fraud prevention measures have had a positive impact on customer satisfaction, trust and commitment. During the 2018 Christmas Black Friday week, 10 digital workers performed forensic fraud checks on approximately 20,000 orders, ensuring that valid customer orders were fulfilled quickly.
Read John Lewis & Partners' story and find out how the company’s fraud team deployed a team of Blue Prism intelligent digital workers to stop fraudulent orders before they get shipped from the warehouse.