It requires a change in process and culture, the adoption of a common lingo, executive buy-in, and a center of excellence to ensure enterprise-wide success. People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? . Finally, shareholders may punish Western Union for moving away from its higher margin core business to focus instead on simpler, lower-cost digital money transfers. In 1861 it sent the first transcontinental telegraph. Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data Officer at Western Union together with Nick Halsey, CEO at Okera talk about the technology that Western Union has adopted to help build new products and Western Union, Chief Data Officer: Digital Transformation Initiatives (Part 3) | Cloud | cdomagazine.tech Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. Our goal was to build a new Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservicesthat would allow us to integratemany different systems quicklyboth internal and external vendors, explains Tom. One moment later, in Shimla, a hill country city in India, close to the ridge of the Himalayan foothills, a cashier at the . We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. For more details about how Western Union went from 34 on-prem data warehouses to pursuing a multi-cloud strategy based on Snowflake, read our case study. We serve all customer segments: from digital natives who are never without their smartphones to the 4 billion people on earth the World Bank estimates arent online yet., Western Union is strongly committed to migrants and to refugees: migration is at the heart of our business. today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile . Part of this agility drive involved Western Union migrating its legacy on-prem IT infrastructure to the Cloud. From the CEO down through his executive team, you see a real commitment to this transformation exercise and a real commitment to finding ways to optimize our processes, to get efficiencies, and to fund those investments that will drive topline revenue growth. To explore this content and receive communications from Google, please sign in with an existing Google account. We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. But you say its about more than technology? Knowledge Institute, Chemical Convera. Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. Western Union. As weve done that, everyone has started to speak the same language, whether its talking about going to huddles, doing process confirmations, conducting one-on-one coaching, or maybe doing floor walks. Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. After exceeding expectations in 2020 despite the outbreak of COVID-19, the world's largest currency exchange service Western Union looks set to exceed US$1 billion in total annual revenues for its digital business segment in 2021 a major milestone for the company and a first in the world of digital cross-border payments.. Western Union's shift toward digital shows little sign of relenting. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Its an ecosystem of complementary platforms that enable a seamless, single customer experience I think thats such a powerful proposition.. Western Union must adapt to an increasingly mobile world: if Western Union doesn't develop low-cost mobile money transfers, Western Union won't be able to compete . Snowflake worked with Longitude to assess what it takes to lead in the data economy. Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. InsurTech & Crypto projects as the world embraces CX, Business Transformation and Digital . your next, Infosys Leadership. So we established a set of what we call market-shaper practices that we wanted to focus on. WU's platform provides seamless cross-border flows, and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. [12]Josh Constine, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, TechCrunch.com, Feb. 4, 2016. The role of CDO needs to encompass more than data management and data governance, more than even enabling the pipeline and managing the environments. Log in to help. Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. The idea is to orient the company around improving these market-shaper practices, really getting the health of our organization strong, and becoming confident that if we can improve the health of the organization, the financial results will follow. Wingspan, Infosys Since 2008, Huawei has offered a wide and expanding range of . Manufacturing, Information Services Youre expected to come up with new ways of innovation to drive revenue growth across the organization. Reliable for over 170 years. (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. COVID-19 has brought countless challenges, but its also caused us to focus all of our efforts around customers and reground ourselves in our mission. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. Automation reduces development toil, were more productive, so we dont need so many developers, and we dont end up with orphaned code when developers leave. Western Union is working alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Partners to transform and expand its business, including the launch of a new digital bank. And if Western Union doesnt embrace and transform along with those technologies, it will fade away just like the telegraph. - Earn My WU points. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Want to learn more about technology and organizations? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press & Distribution, Media and The primary reason we decided to go through with this transformation is that we saw an opportunity to positively impact revenue through our daily operations and behaviors. Theyll be there to help you stay on track or course correct when you have troubles. And that could be at an operation site or it could be more of a frontline thing like a sales executive. Manager of a Team responsible for First Level Support, Event monitoring and Major Incident Management to internal and external clients that affects core processes and clients. Security, Infosys Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. Western Union powers your pursuit. The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. 9-30 (describing four types of innovations incremental, modular, architectural and radical classified by their impact on a business core components and the relationships between those core components). For example, in 2016 Western Union integrated money transfer options with messanging apps WeChat and Viber, allowing users to send small amounts of money through the apps. [12]These kind of digital initiatives are good pursuits for current operational leaders, since they represent incremental or modular innovations to Western Unions existing product offerings. We see ourselves as becoming a FinTech that can move quickly while being sure that our infrastructure and processes allow us to work at scale. When people from different departments do these floor walks together, theyre realizing that they actually have a lot more in common with each other or notice areas where they can collaborate that they didnt realize before. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. And, Fellahi points out, When you look at customer acquisition on our digital channel, 80 percent of the customers we acquired in the past 12 months are new to usnot migrated from our traditional customer base., He expects digital money transfer and mobile technology to be the major driver of overall growth in coming years, adding, In the U.S., over 65 percent of WU.com transactions are initiated on a mobile device, and globally it is nearly 60 percent.. Updated on. At its core is a migration from on-prem to a cloud-based infrastructure, which it believes is key to allowing the organisation to scale and evolve into a company with the clout of an established financial institution combined with the agility and flexibility of a modern FinTech. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. Western Union also is uniquely positioned to explore blockchain applications in emerging markets by leveraging Western Unions retail footprint, regulatory compliance learning, and global brand. Though its too early for results, the response from consumers has been positive, he says. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. Digital Transformation. Our App has grown to become one of the industrys most widely used international money transfer apps and a Top 20 finance app in the App Store., Not at all. But its really all about allowing the manager to observe the way their employee works, whats easy about that job and whats hard about that job. [9]Western Union recently dipped its toes into blockchain. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a The partnership with Talend has evolved over the last few years and was originally established to provide our business and technology teams a fast and efficient way to build data pipelines. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. It's a physical branding and marketing component that few money-transfer providers can match - but one that's of diminishing value in a digital world. Thats not to say cloud is always cheap, it can be expensive but we have a very stringent Review Board to keep our costs in check, so cost reduction is something about which we are confident.. Weve been able to increase the amount and frequency of relevant data we can share with our agents, and they have started to build new processes based on that. Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. arrow_forward. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . . Heres how, Customers want control over their data and wont hesitate to switch brands to get it, Global Insights Briefing: Holiday takeaways for marketers, From solar panels to spa days, see how 2022s top searches set the stage for 2023. Although retail business declined during . How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. Everest Group Low-Code Application Development Platforms PEAK Matrix 2022. Cookies help us deliver our services. Having found great success with its Marketing Cloud, Singh outlines his longer-term vision to connect a number of Western Unions central products. In the past several years, the Englewood, Colo.-based company has made a point to develop and [] We are also launching new products into the market, including a pilot for digital banking services in select markets in Europe and a revamped loyalty programme, which require us to capture data from our central warehouses to drive decision making, marketing and customer acquisition. Digital is all about how we reach the customer. Western Union also opened franchise stores, which offer money transfer services as well as onsite currency exchanges. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Packaged Goods, Engineering People are enthusiastic about the results of the pilot, and they want to see that in their own area. Management, Digital Workplace - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. 8 (Managing the Strategy Development Process). The Baupost Group is a $31 billion Boston-based investment firm. [7]While cryptocurrencies are an obvious threat to Western Unions cross-border money transfers, Blockchain also can be used in a range of imaginative ways. The gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . The author approaches the problem using public. So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. You have to recognise that youre taking a massive journey as a company because it has always relied on data centres. Infosys accelerated Western Union's digital transformation by harmonizing agent operations, implementing billing and collection standards, enabling modular growth, accelerating new product launches, enabling digital on-demand procedures, designing global accounting solutions based on one single template, supporting highly complex pricing and multiple business models, and massive management processes as a strategic technology partner. The OutSystems platforms capabilities were immediately put to the test through 2021, as Western Union and its system integrator started development of its new digital banking app that includes a multicurrency bank account combined with money transfers, and other added benefits such as a Visa Platinum debit card. Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. Western Union International Banks CEO Peter Bucher firmly believes you can drive successful, innovative business while creating a better world for the community you live in. Services, High Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. A lot of our big data environment is still on-prem and the mission is to move that completely to the cloud by the end of the year. Something that is ripe for discussion among many of these discussion groups is the idea of a digital dollar, which could be made transferable all around the world with vendors and partners.. Specifically,. . Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. <br><br>My Leadership Philosophy<br><br>I am an . [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. Singh estimates that the project has reduced how much it spends on talking to its customers by a quarter, while markedly improving this critical function. Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. People who knew how a team or a group worked before can come in and see its night-and-day different. With OutSystems, we deploy twice every week. The transformation of Western Digital to a Live Enterprise Modernization of legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications provides an opportunity for a technical upgrade as well as a transformation of the core business, according to IDC. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . Deloitte announces multi-year collaboration with AWS to co-innovate and engineer solutions that help institutions expedite the launch of digital banking services and modernize their legacy core banking stacks. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. Cole heads the 169-year-old company's digital transformation efforts, including the design and development of the software powering those consumer-facing platforms. Western Union has innovated before. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. My team and I had thought of the future being digital, of course, but the pandemic really forced us to make it a reality for the business. Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. Our leadership team remains true to our vision and values, putting customers' evolving needs at the center of our innovation and holding up trust and convenience as the hallmarks of our business. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. For example, we began offering an option for telephone money transfer. Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? And being with the people that are actually doing the work really helps the management get a better sense of where they can use their leadership and influence to make that process easier for the employee and better for the customer. She also has worked with ad agencies like Ogilvy and McCann. Hospitality, Waste This does have privacy implications and hence needs to be vetted out with regulatory authorities around the world. Western Union's stock price continued to climb the week of April 12 reaching $25.89, compared to a low of $21.66 in January. In Austria our employees have put in place numerous initiatives such as German courses and mentoring programs, and we celebrated in March the first anniversary of SEED, a project supported by the Western Union Foundation in collaboration with the Austrian Ministry of Education and Teach for Austria Alumni Association. Its in our DNA to think about global operations because Western Union covers the world.. Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. This will enable the company to maintain its high . Western Union is to shed its Business Solutions unit, with investment firms Goldfinch and Baupost set to acquire the business for $910 million in cash. Looking ahead, the Sales Cloud will be connected to the Marketing Cloud, which in turn is connected to our Care Cloud, so that whenever something happens across any of those products we are able to react in a way that suits that customer. However, Western Union would be wise to form a new, separate unit for exploring blockchain services. What are the biggest lessons you learned? The Western Union Way of digital transformation. The map, Barmer and Newman say, is designed to do precisely that turn the western Pennsylvania fish-fry culture into an adventure stamped onto the landscape that fosters community engagement . Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. Experience in leading digital products from either the financial services, payment, or fintech industries. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. Enterprise Technology Operations Center Manager. As we get the pilots completed, the idea is to turn the WU Way team into more of a center of excellence. Inclusion, Bloomberg Finance. The scale of change this represents for a business like Western Union is not to be underestimated; the company employs around 11,000 people and has more than 550,000 retail agents locations within its global financial network, as well as a global online presence. Western Union's digital services align with the UAE government's policy to create an economy driven by innovation and technology," said Salma Massoud, head of digital, Middle East and Africa . Some development teams suffer 100 percent attrition in two to three years., "OutSystems helps in many ways. In the latest step in its digital journey, Western Union recently launched a bot that enables Facebook Messenger users in the United States to send money to more than 200 countries, across 130 currencies, from within the messaging app. Second, Western Unions employees may not have the knowledge or training to effectively lead Western Unions digital transformation, and may resist digital initiatives or operational changes. We continue to experiment with the technology and time will tell if it offers a better alternative to traditional rails.. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. As mobile payments and blockchain tech challenge the status quo of cross-border money transfers, Western Union must digitally transform itself at the right pace or risk going the way of the telegraph. January 25, 2019 | Video. [2]But today, new technologies are threatening Western Unions entire business model. Western Union's platform provides seamless cross-border flows and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies . By John Manning, International Banker. Now its more pull. So we had to figure out how to continue to show up for customers while also ensuring everyones health and safely. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Rica, Hong [3], Western Union operates in three segments, with most of its revenues (79%) coming from the C2C segment: [4], Western Union became the dominant player in cross-border C2C money transfers through a platform strategyit connected people who wanted to send money across borders. Please enable Javascript to see this feature. Country/region, Costa DENVER-(BUSINESS WIRE)-The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, today announced that the Company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a minority stake in fast growing Saudi Digital Payments Company, or stc pay, a fully owned subsidiary of Saudi Telecom Company. As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. [6], However, regulators cant keep pace with the wave of new blockchain applications. In just 11 months, we delivered a full-service digital banking experience that expands our relationship with customers.. Africa, South All of that is dependent on people in the organization putting resources behind this kind of an agile transformation. What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. Here are 4 steps they follow, Why durable solutions are needed to build the future of audiences, A data-privacy team can support your privacy transformation. For more details about how Western Union went from 34 on-prem data warehouses to pursuing a multi-cloud strategy based on Snowflake, read our case study. Data safety. ; Offering combines Deloitte's ConvergePROSPERITY BankingSuite solution and multiple AWS services. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. Most popular: Free $20 Amazon.com e-gift code for every friend you refer (earn up to $500). OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. The executive team has done a great job of making it really clear across the company that this is something thats expected of you. When you see those people who are proactive and have aspirations, you are able to almost make them role models and build really effective ecosystems around them.. [11]See generally Rebecca M. Henderson & Kim B. Clark, Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms, Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. A lot of our big data environment is still on-prem and the mission is to move that completely to the cloud by the end of the year. Each quarter our research team identifies on-prem and cloud applications that are being used by the 11000 Western Union employees from the public (Press Releases, Customer References . Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Thank you for this great post, Hans. Product Director, United States Money Transfer. Western Union is a partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is a leading voice in the conversation of how to build a global payments ecosystem, which is stable and where remittances can be made much faster. Its time to align your banks digital transformation strategy with the entire customer lifecycle by providing a personalized omnichannel experience. The development speedand deployment easeprovided by OutSystems accelerates change and feedback cycles, which paves the way for continuous innovation. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. Its one of the most widely used platforms from a data perspective and were expanding our relationship with Talend to start using some of its data quality products as well. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. The scale of change this represents for a business like Western Union is not to be underestimated; the company employs around 11,000 people and has more than 550,000 retail agents locations within . Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. What Ive tried to do is look at each of the groups and find out who the strong players in each of them are, the leaders that are vocal and very straightforward in conversation.
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