western union digital transformation

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Jaffin: Our company mission is to enable financial transfers between people anywhere and everywhere; we had a responsibility to continue to deliver on that. Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. Business Application Services, Service Experience Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. He praises the vendor support and namechecks first AWS for enabling the organisation to quicken the pace of its procurement process and spin up workloads to the cloud faster than had originally been anticipated. . How did you navigate those early moments? & Distribution, Media and And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. Commenting on the speed comparison of OutSystems compared to previous traditional development, Tom said, "On an earlier project, we had ten people working on a pricing and UX project. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle But new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. Western Union is the worlds first P2P company. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. (PDF-165 KB) The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. be to drive digital transformation and . As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. Western Union Customer Journey Transformation Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. It is our responsibility to enable businesses, problem solvers, regulators and communities to leverage fintech for the betterment of lives. An advantage of Western Unions omnichannel approach is that it includes all customers, whether they are integrated or not in the financial system: the banked, the underbanked, and the unbanked. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. Achieving that is going to give Western Union agility, stability and resilience and allow us to focus on product development, because we know that our technology is going to sit in the cloud and take up a lot less of our time. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. Originally, the capacity of our on-prem environments wasnt projected to hit capacity until 2022, but we could see that point was going to be reached in 2020, so that meant a real acceleration.. Western Union must adapt to an increasingly mobile world: if Western Union doesnt develop low-cost mobile money transfers, Western Union wont be able to compete with new competitors like Ant Financial and Zelle. Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. 2023 Snowflake Inc. All Rights Reserved | If youd rather not receive future emails from Snowflake, unsubscribe here or customize your communication preferences, Snowflake for Advertising, Media, & Entertainment, unsubscribe here or customize your communication preferences. . Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. First, for continuity of services. Its reach is staggering: present in more than 200 countries and territories, transacting in 130+ currencies, with approximately 150 million people having used Western Union to either send or receive funds over the last year. What does "digital transformation" mean to Western Union? [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. & Publishing, Logistics Mazzaferro: In the past, the thinking in the industry has often been that applications are king, and that data flows through the applications. Western Union hiring Global Head, Customer Experience & Design in 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. Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. Its been a great combination. Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. Created: 05-05-2021 - 17:15. Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. 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 . Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. W ith the outbreak of a crippling global pandemic and a pronounced global economic slowdown, the last few years have been rather tumultuous for the world. Filipino workers abroad), they need to bring physical money somewhere, and most of the fintech companies in remittance space dont have their own channels (they often partner with local kiosks). Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. An undisputed leader in the global payments space, Western Union is driving a company-wide technology transformation, underpinned by migrating its infrastructure from on-prem to the cloud. 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 . While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . InsurTech & Crypto projects as the world embraces CX, Business Transformation and Digital . Kong, New We developed the whole front-end for the app in less than four months., Western Union uses OutSystems for customer-facing apps, back office, and workflow solutions. Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile . Western Union's Customer Journey Digital Transformation Fueled by NICE That created a need to act. Packaged Goods, Engineering The center of excellence keeps things on track and makes sure we follow a framework and are tracking the results, so that we can measure the impact of the transformation across the whole organization. Harveer Singh Leads Western Union's Digital Transformation - Profile Leadership Team. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. With a strong base of over 4 million customers and an established regional brand in the fast-growing digital wallet market, Western Union believes that stc pay is poised to experience strong growth in the future. 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. This is just one example of how blockchain could be an opportunity for Western Union. Its in our DNA to think about global operations because Western Union covers the world.. Jaffin: Its important for us to continue trying new technology that gets us closer to customers and their changing needs, like advanced analytics and other tools. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. Western Union's digital transformation sprints to mobile Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. She also has worked with ad agencies like Ogilvy and McCann. Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. 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. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. The Foundation is supported by the Western Union Company, its employees, Agents, and business partners, working to support education and disaster relief efforts as pathways toward a better future. Faced with numerous applications to deliver, the need to rapidly iterate customer experiences, and the steep learning curve for new Cloud DevOps toolchains, Western Union decided to evaluate low-code platforms. Snowflake worked with Longitude to assess what it takes to lead in the data economy. Second, we increased our use of digital media to reach customers and build a feedback loop. The Baupost Group is a $31 billion Boston-based investment firm. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. Funds can be picked up in cash at half a million Western Union agent locations worldwide or transferred electronically to the recipients bank account or to a debit card linked to a digital wallet. Finance. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. Talend is our backbone for that work and have really evolved their product to meet our needs.. Having found great success with its Marketing Cloud, Singh outlines his longer-term vision to connect a number of Western Unions central products. 35, No. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. Garden, The Economist Arab Emirates. Security, Infosys So well go from maybe four pilot teams to a plan to scale out across 400 people and maybe 30 teams next year. In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. Society Updated: 01-06-2022 - 11:45. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. You stepped in as CMO just as COVID-19 was emerging, and I cant imagine that a global health crisis was what youd envisioned for your first 100 days. Alonso Calderon - Enterprise Technology Operations Center Manager 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. 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. By John Manning, International Banker. Really understand the business stakeholders problem and how you can fix or enable it. Commenting on the advantages of development on OutSystems, Tom says, We estimate that were getting new products to market at least twice as fast as competitors, and were probably using a tenth of the resources they are on front-end development. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. [9]Western Union recently dipped its toes into blockchain. This would help Western Union objectively pursue new blockchain opportunities, even if those opportunities eventually cannibalize or destroy its existing C2C business. We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. Hospitality, Waste According to the terms of the transaction . Solutions enabled - Oracle Revenue Management and Billing, Oracle Business Intelligence, Infosys Transaction Reconciliation System, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Solution and Services, Infosys Oracle Services, part of Infosys Cobalt. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. "As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which don't need CEO oversight. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. Harveer Singh leads Western Union's digital transformation with data [1] One hundred years later, Western Union launched the first domestic commercial geostationary satellite (Westar 1). 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. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. [5] 2017 Annual ReportCEO Letter (noting Western Union has expanded its fund payout network to billions of bank accounts). Transformation, Cyber This does have privacy implications and hence needs to be vetted out with regulatory authorities around the world. Digital Transformation. The Data Cloud is increasingly becoming a facilitator for digital transformation initiatives, and while there are many facets to that story, our customers often tell us how three critical elements play a central role: being able to access and share live data; being able to share data without having to move it; and the ability to securely access third-party data. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, together with Goldfinch Partners, LLC ("Goldfinch"), a private equity firm investing in . 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. Board Committees. The top challenge for businesses with digital transformation goals in 2023 is determining where their companies should direct spending on technologies, according to a BCG X report. 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 The pandemic really accelerated the digital transformation journey; the plan was for it to be rolled out in three years but that timeframe became 18 months. The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. Most of the customers for remittance service (e.g. Services, Public Automation, Microsoft Goldfinch Partners is a private equity firm investing in businesses specialising in digital transformation. . It took six months to do the bare minimum. Instead, Western Union should fund and fully staff a separate unit that has preferential access to Western Unions resources, but is not restricted by legacy operators within Western Union. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. 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. But for all its success, Western Union is undoubtedly a legacy player in a market that has been truly disrupted in recent years, with smaller and more agile outfits making waves in the increasingly digitised payments space. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . That helps us refocus on the particular market-shaper practices that we need to double down on in order to continue improving during our transformation journey. Western Union: Leading or Lagging Digital Transformation? But it becomes more self-driven, and that really enables the scale. Western Union has innovated before. Digital is all about how we reach the customer. We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital . To learn more about the data economy, what your organization stands to gain from using data effectively, and how to become a Data Economy Leader, download the report overview, How to Win in Todays Data Economy. Guide for Suppliers, Select Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. As the centerpiece of Western Unions omnichannel vision, the Western Union App is increasingly the primary touchpoint for customers: today more than 65% of Western Unions digital transactions originate on a mobile device globally. How Western Union accelerated digital during the pandemic Manufacturing, Information Services The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. Once a customer notarises their documents, they can be stored in a safe location and distributed across the blockchain network, so any regulatory authority or government can access that information. Ein Jahr Western Union Digital Banking in Deutschland: 6 % Zinsen fr UnionBank: Blazing Digital Trails in the Philippines and Beyond Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. In 2017 SEED supported 20 projects, impacting 5,000 children and youth; we hope to support event more in 2018.. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. Singh was brought in to help facilitate that leap, drawing on his expertise with business transformations, technology management, data architecture and collaborative working, backed up by various consulting roles at Deloitte, IBM and Accenture. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. HELIX, Management Cash And Trade Magazine - For Cash and Trade professionals in the Experts at TCS and Western Union share the trends that are affecting digital transformation in financial services. If you are a new customer: now you can transfer your FIRST money transfer for FREE*. Western Union is one of the largest digital money firms, uniquely positioned to connect the cash and digital worlds across platforms, devices, borders, and currencies. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities We teach employees, and then they execute. That support has made it a lot easier to have the influence we need to make the transformation successful. We offer consumers the choices they want, both for sending and receiving money, he stresses. Africa's largest payment gateway, MFS Africa, has partnered with Western Union to enable individuals and businesses across the continent to receive money - Earn My WU points. In the past several years, the Englewood, Colo.-based company has made a point to develop and [] Technology powers the data economy. Navigate Their bread and butter business is charging hefty fees on remittances and their core advantage was a network of retail outlets and agents across the US and partners around the world to get cash from one family member to another. When we started the transformation project, we came at it from the perspective of this being a cultural transformation just as much as a process transformation. Inclusion, Bloomberg The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? Technology or Operations transformation . Its important to understand that business stakeholders are customers of our data. The network upgrade will pave the way for Econet to deliver 5G connectivity in more . Zealand, South Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. Western Union. Though its too early for results, the response from consumers has been positive, he says. And if Western Union doesnt embrace and transform along with those technologies, it will fade away just like the telegraph. Africa, South Western Union. With my work with WEF, I was lucky enough to sit around a table recently with some important people and talk about how we can take this forward. Then think about the products you want to offer and how it can be a data-enabled product, such as being hyper-personalized. 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. Digital Summit WB6 - Prishtina 2022 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. Some changes that used to take a month, we now deliver in around 48 hours.. Rica, Hong Western Union reduced data warehousing costs by 50% and has saved millions through streamlined data engineering and administration after moving more than 30 data stores, including on-premises data, into Snowflake. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Western Union Launches Two Digital Banking apps in 11 Months - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. Western Union and Beforepay introduce 'send now, pay later' service What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. 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). Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. Services, Consumer Western Union's digital transformation - Think with Google [8]. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. 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. 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. 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. 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. As the transformation gets embedded into the organization, the businesses start to run their own agile deployments. These initiatives will likely change Western Unions operating model, therefore they must be fully supported by CEO Hikmet Ersek and should occupy most of his time. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. Accelerating Digital Transformation in Western and Central Africa As a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, Western Union has to comply with a huge number of financial regulations. Although retail business declined during . This aims to support the transition of the region into a digital economy and bring the benefits of digital transformation, such as faster economic growth, more jobs, and better services. Reliable for over 170 years. 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. Youre expected to come up with new ways of innovation to drive revenue growth across the organization. Western Union Advances Its Digital Growth Strategy With Investment in