western union digital transformationwestern union digital transformation

Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. As we get the pilots completed, the idea is to turn the WU Way team into more of a center of excellence. Reliable for over 170 years. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. [6], However, regulators cant keep pace with the wave of new blockchain applications. | Learn more about Rokas kudas's work experience, education, connections & more by visiting their profile on . [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. Continue to partner with popular digital platforms to provide legacy C2C money transfer services. Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. 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. For example, we began offering an option for telephone money transfer. Korea, United Western Union Digital Services Enhanced in the UAE with Mobile App and Online Access; ITFC and Dubai Exports host B2B Forum to Promote Agri-Food Trade between Arab and African Countries under the Arab Africa Trade Bridges Program; GBM and Banfico partner to support the Kingdom's efforts for a more digitalized financial sector Talends technology was used to bring various sources of data from different locations into a single place in rapid fashion, helping make decisions such as waiving fees for those sending funds to people caught up in the explosion. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. Western Union began a mission to transform the settlement platform with streamlined retail and digital cross-border money transfer operations to overcome the challenges and constraints of their legacy settlement systems. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. Blockchain is technology that uses an open, distributed ledger to permanently verify and record transactions between two parties. First, for continuity of services. 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. January 25, 2019 | Video. Feb 7, 2023. Digital transformation in the EU | News | European Parliament In the same way that they say it takes a whole village to raise a child, it takes an army of people with the right skillsets and approaches to undertake a challenge like this. However, Western Union doesnt view its established retail business as totally separate from the digital world. Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. Hospitality, Waste First, Western Unions third party agents may try to thwart any concerted moves to digital platforms, seeing such a move as a threat to existing commission revenues. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. 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. Assignment: Driving Digital Transformation, AIG & Cyber Insurance Learning to Insure a Digital World, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, How Blockchain Could Help Emerging Markets Leap Ahead, Beyond the Hype: What Blockchain could mean for Africa, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, Emirates NBD, an almost perfect digital transformation, B2B business solutions (cross-border and cross-currency). Western Union: Reimagining a Financial Services Leader Western Union digital integrates UAE Pass - Gulf Business There were definitely times I was looking at costs and thinking how I was going to explain to finance, or my CFO, he says. Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. In addition to our digital banking app, there are at least 20 internal employee-facing apps that weve delivered that make work easier and more efficient for our employees., Asked what differences he sees in the development team, Tom says, With OutSystems, weve got a more cohesive and multi-talented development team because were using visual low-code development thats self-documenting. Log in to help. Its been a great combination. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Western Union video | re:Invent 2021 | AWS Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. Need a Lenten fish fry? There's an interactive map for that Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. 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. . Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. When fully realised, he says, it will give Western Union the agility it is seeking, while also having a positive impact on its bottom line. 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. Now its more pull. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. Specifically,. 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 International Banks CEO Peter Bucher firmly believes you can drive successful, innovative business while creating a better world for the community you live in. Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. With a history of more than 170 years, the company has a presence in more than 200 countries and territories, connecting more than 120m people to one another and to the global economy, through cross-border money transfers in approximately 130 currencies. Top-down prioritization of digital transformation. Western Union Promo Codes | 30% Off In March 2023 | Forbes Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. It has become one of the leaders in Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) technology and the majority of the data moving across our ecosystem is now powered by Talend. Africa, South Stephanie Pankau - Product Director, United States Money Transfer 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. Digital Summit WB6 - Prishtina 2022 Product Director, United States Money Transfer. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Western Union Embraces Digital Transformation - BaselineMag.com Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. 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. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. . The resulting report, How to Win in the Data Economy, includes anecdotes from dozens of customers, analysts, and influencers about how to succeed, all in addition to the survey itself, based on feedback from 1,000 senior business, technology, and data managers across five industries and from all over the world. 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. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. Customers can send and receive money in a fast, reliable and convenient manner., We are proud to offer the same omnichannel choice in Austria. 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. Western Union's digital transformation efforts may fail to drive earnings growth, but they may be enough to keep earnings steady going forward. Consumers are less aware that we have transformed ourselves into one of the largest digital money transfer firms in the world, with our digital activity generating well over $400 million revenues in 2017. 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. Knowledge Institute, Chemical And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. Some development teams suffer 100 percent attrition in two to three years., "OutSystems helps in many ways. Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . Contributed to establishing Quality Assurance, Training and Documentation strategy and processes for AML Operations functions. Western Union Advances Its Digital Growth Strategy With Investment in Our digital-first crisis response is helping us evolve into the future. The executive team has done a great job of making it really clear across the company that this is something thats expected of you. According to the terms of the transaction . Western Union and Zain Cash Collaborate to Facilitate Digital Cross Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. Microservices, Digital Process Cambridge: Cambridge University Press The Essential Components of Digital Transformation Western Union could use existing retail outlets as nodes on a land register blockchain, which could bring in new sources of revenue to those retail stores. He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. Digital transformation starts with people, which is a useful reminder that . Western Union's digital transformation sprints to mobile Western Union Uses AWS to Create Company-Wide Digital Transformation. . 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. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. But it becomes more self-driven, and that really enables the scale. 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 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. Improvements that we made to our apps digital customer experience, for example, helped it become one of the most downloaded apps among our peer set in 2020. We know there are certain systems that we cannot just move to the cloud straight away such as the AS400 IBM mainframe, but weve managed to take the ecosystem that surrounds our legacy technology and move it to the cloud and we think we can get everything to the cloud before the end of the year. Similarly, Western Union's ethos is based on empowering the aspiring populations of the world with accessible financial tools to improve the lives of their loved ones and communities. Western Union. 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. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. Alonso Calderon - Enterprise Technology Operations Center Manager Driving Western Union's tech transformation - Digital Bulletin For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. Western Union International Bank is licensed by the Austrian Financial Market Authority. Western Uniona global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and paymentsis driving a company-wide transformation, which includes migrating its infrastructure from on-prem to the Cloud. Western Union uses a central team to build new capabilities across the business. Most of the customers for remittance service (e.g. So we established a set of what we call market-shaper practices that we wanted to focus on. What are the biggest lessons you learned? Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. And that could be at an operation site or it could be more of a frontline thing like a sales executive. These strategies are paying off. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. Cortex, Infosys (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. How Western Union accelerated digital during the pandemic 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. Our research identified 10 attributes of an organizations data infrastructure that enable it to take full advantage of the data economy, the global supply and, Editors note: This is part of a series about the data economy. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. Whats really nice about that is that its so visually obvious. Media, Madison Square (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. Its not done from the perspective of correction or a negative consequence. Packaged Goods, Engineering They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. In order to fund the investments, we decided that it was really important to do a transformation exercise, look for ways to gain efficiencies and effectiveness across our processes and procedures, and then use those efficiencies to fund the growth investments. Companies like Venmo(PayPal) and Zelle(joint venture by several large U.S. banks) have deep pockets, but so far are mostly competing in domestic payment markets. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. Dan Nordlander is senior vice president of Western Union Way Operations at Western Union, and Barr Seitz is senior manager of editorial and digital communications in McKinseys New York office. The way we approached it was to use the central WU Way team for capability building. The Baupost Group is a $31 billion Boston-based investment firm. 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. Western Unions platform provides seamless cross-border flows and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies and 500K partner networks. Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Western Union, Enterprise-grade scalability and security, Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservices. During its February 2018 earnings call, CEO Hikmet Ersek announced that Western Union is experimenting with Ripple for settling transactions and for capital optimization, and is also testing Ripples native currency (XRP).[10]. The role of CDO needs to encompass more than data management and data governance, more than even enabling the pipeline and managing the environments. McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . This would help Western Union objectively pursue new blockchain opportunities, even if those opportunities eventually cannibalize or destroy its existing C2C business. Jaffin: Western Union has a culture of innovating to meet customer needs, and the past 12 months have shown us that quick pivots can drive lasting change. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. 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. Start Time: 16:30 January 1, 0000 5:32 PM ETThe Western Union Company (NYSE:NYSE:WU)Q3 2022 Earnings Conference CallNovember 01, 2022, 16:30 PM ETCompany ParticipantsDevin McGranahan -. Please enable Javascript to see this feature. In the past several years, the Englewood, Colo.-based company has made a point to develop and [] Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. 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. Prior to implementing Snowflake in 2021, Western Unions data spanned 34 on-premises data warehouses, resulting in latency and operational burdens. Western Union has had a compound annual growth rate above 25 percent over the past five years, since the launch of the digital division. Key takeaways. Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. Rokas kudas - Quality Assurance Manager - Western Union | LinkedIn Inclusion, Bloomberg Business Application Services, Service Experience By John Manning, International Banker. Management, Digital Workplace If you are a new customer: now you can transfer your FIRST money transfer for FREE*. People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? 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. The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. If any of these should fit what you're looking for, consider exploring a career with Western Union. 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.. 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. 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. Services, Consumer 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. 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. 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 gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . 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 . Migrants, who typically are the link between cash economies underserved by financial institutions, and highly bancarized, digital economies, benefit from Western Unions unique ability to combine the physical and the digital. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. Lastly, how do you see digital continuing to drive your services in the future? He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. 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. Western Union is trying to use Blockchain as an incremental or modular innovation, when in fact it could be an architectural orradical innovation (see chart below) introducing entirely new businesses that fit well into Western Unions existing capabilities. Western Union powers your pursuit. 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. 35, No. 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 . They essentially sponsor a team and loan the resources that are necessary. Cookies help us deliver our services. All of that is dependent on people in the organization putting resources behind this kind of an agile transformation. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. Having found great success with its Marketing Cloud, Singh outlines his longer-term vision to connect a number of Western Unions central products. Society Updated: 01-06-2022 - 11:45. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. My Career Summary Anil Santhapuri is a values-based and results-oriented Talent professional, with 20 years of professional experience in the areas of talent management, learning & leadership development. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. 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. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. [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. Western Union built its platform by assembling a global network of third party agents. We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. Western Union Announces Agreement to Sell Western Union Business Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. Today, WU.com is available in 40 countries, with mobile apps in 18 of them. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. Financing Digital Transformation and Bridging Digital Divide: The Case Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. Really understand the business stakeholders problem and how you can fix or enable it. Today customers can commence their journey on our mobile App, pay for their transaction digitally or opt to pay cash from any of our participating Western Union retail locations, use wu.com or go directly to any of the 1,200 agent locations or Western Union-owned locations in Austria[i]. But you say its about more than technology? Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. & Distribution, Media and But theyve been hugely supportive and as weve hit milestones, such as moving significant infrastructure completely to the cloud or achieving significant savings with the Marketing Cloud, we have built that business case.
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