western union digital transformationwestern union digital transformation
But new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. Digital transformation starts with people, which is a useful reminder that . 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.. That means we can onboard new developers and have them productive much faster, and weve got fewer knowledge silos in the development team., Moreover, low-code development on OutSystems helps Tom fight back in the war for digital talent. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Africa, South Driving Western Union's tech transformation - Digital Bulletin ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . 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.. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. My mission is to empower people to become economically self-reliant. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. Business Application Services, Service Experience Talends technology has been used similarly in response to people impacted by floods in Haiti and to Indian citizens at the height of the countrys COVID-19 crisis. McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . HELIX, Management The CDO needs to drive digital transformation by enabling data to power product development and the company. Western Union is the worlds first P2P company. Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. 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. 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. 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.. Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. On March 1, Huawei held a "Digital Leadership Seminar" during Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in Barcelona, Spain, attended by more than 60 high-level customers from global carriers, government enterprises, and KOL. Download the Western Union (WU) money transfer app and quickly start sending cash to Mexico and worldwide, 24/7! Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. 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. Nov 2011 - Present11 years 5 months. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. The pandemics economic stressors created a situation where more people suddenly needed to send money to family and friends around the world, many of whom rarely use financial services. After the catastrophic explosion in Lebanon in 2020, the two companies worked together to build data pipelines to help those affected by the incident and provide support to agents in the area. Rapid iteration is a crucial capability for Western Union, especially when designing customer experiencesin over 200 countries with local customer and regulatory requirements. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Cookies help us deliver our services. Wingspan, Infosys Western Union and Zain Cash Collaborate to Facilitate Digital Cross 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. 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. Board of Directors. Western Union uses a central team to build new capabilities across the business. And if Western Union doesnt embrace and transform along with those technologies, it will fade away just like the telegraph. It requires a change in process and culture, the adoption of a common lingo, executive buy-in, and a center . Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. ", Looking back to why Western Union chose OutSystems, Tom says, We serve millions of customers in over 200 countries and territories, and we want to give them the best possible customer experience. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. ene. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. Arvie de Vera - LinkedIn of Use, Payment . [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. Big data has helped Western Union merge data across multiple channels for years, for marketing and promotion, customer lifecycle management, compliance and fraud modeling. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which don't need CEO oversight. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. 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. 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. Cash And Trade Magazine - For Cash and Trade professionals in the While Singh and his team have been occupied with the technology transformation taking place at Western Union, the breakneck speed at which the financial services and payments industry is changing means they also have to be planning for the longer-term. The Western Union Company (WU) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile . 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. 35, No. Packaged Goods, Engineering Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. The central transformation team helps do the capability building in training those resources up, and then they run their own scaled-out deployment. 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. Western Union video | re:Invent 2021 | AWS Africa's largest payment gateway, MFS Africa, has partnered with Western Union to enable individuals and businesses across the continent to receive money Convera. Services, Data 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). Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. How Your Small Business Can Be Managed With The Right Databases, Why Businesses Must Focus on Introducing Technology in the Workplace. Western Union has innovated before. 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. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. Thats the high performancewe rely on with OutSystems., Low-Code for Digital Financial Services Delivery. 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. Jaffin: We engaged with tech partners like Google almost immediately to refine our go-to-market strategy. How do you start there and end up with a fully embedded transformation across a company of 12,000 people? . Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. 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. Recipients can choose to pick up the sent money at a Western Union location, or send the money to a digital wallet or bank account. The Western Union Way of digital transformation. 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. Western Union International Bank GmbH is regulated by the Financial Markets Authority in Austria, [i] Agent location count valid as of 31 December 2017. 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. 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. 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. 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. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. Experience in leading digital products from either the financial services, payment, or fintech industries. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. Sub-Saharan Africa 3G and 4G mobile broadband coverage stands at 86% and 57% of the population, respectively. [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 digital transformation is helping Western Union emerge from a challenging two-year era. She has extensive experience in leading strategic marketing and has worked with brands like Myntra, Arrow, and Amante. Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. Now that these pilots are winding down, its been easy to get the support across the organization to find the resources necessary to establish teams that can scale it out in different areas across the company. NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . Western Union digital integrates UAE Pass - Gulf Business We teach employees, and then they execute. Pay for your transfer instantly with a debit or credit card** or start a money transfer and complete the payment in cash at a nearby agent location. [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. Transformation, Cyber Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. Western Union Software Purchases and Digital Transformation Initiatives The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. 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. Provide value consistently every month and deliver new value and capabilities. 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 organisation was looking for somebody with a fresh perspective who could challenge the norms, bring people together to show them the value of what were doing and basically create an environment thats a little bit different to your usual corporate set-up. [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. Need a Lenten fish fry? There's an interactive map for that All of that is dependent on people in the organization putting resources behind this kind of an agile transformation. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. 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. . few clicks, you can use OutSystems to bring your visions to life. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. 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. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. Here is Swamy Sivasubramaniyan, Head of Financial Services and Settlement Platform for Western Union, discussing the digital transformation experience with Infosys and Oracle. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. Western Union Announces Agreement to Sell Western Union Business 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. We offer consumers the choices they want, both for sending and receiving money, he stresses. . 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. SEED aims to improve education and employability of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, especially children of refugees, migrants, and local families. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. To address this new competitive landscape, Western Union sought an agility boost to accelerate innovation. Technology powers the data economy. 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. arrow_forward. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. 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. Country/region, Costa 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. 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. Cortex, Infosys [8]. Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? Technology or Operations transformation . ", Tom adds, In fast-moving customer-facing scenarios, development is never build-once-and-doneyoure always iterating to refine the customer experience. How Western Union Became a Global Digital Front-Runner for Cross-Border Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Hospitality, Waste Knowledge Institute, Chemical Policy . 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 . People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. According to the terms of the transaction . In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. Leadership. The company considers local preferences, as well, accepting about 10 payment methods, such as Apple Pay in the U.S. What is the Best High-Yield Dividend Stock to Buy Now? Our 7 Top Picks Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. The paper analyzes the issues of digital transformation in the European Union in such key dimensions as financing digitalization and implementing public policy to bridge the digital divide in the EU member countries. 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. 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. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage.