western union digital transformationwestern union digital transformation

[4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. Institute, Infosys Innovation Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. 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. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. Industry experts were also drafted in to create the army that was required for this technology mission. Our digital-first crisis response is helping us evolve into the future. Society Updated: 01-06-2022 - 11:45. 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. . [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. Not satisfied with the idea of incremental change, the company took a start-from-scratch approach, assembling an experienced team and transforming its infrastructure. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. Youre starting to see that happen culturally. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Now its more pull. These are seismic factors currently redefining our world, earning their own epochal moniker: The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Customers can send and receive money in a fast, reliable and convenient manner., We are proud to offer the same omnichannel choice in Austria. 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. Western Union also opened franchise stores, which offer money transfer services as well as onsite currency exchanges. The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. 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. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. 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. Today, structured and semi-structured data can easily coincide. His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. 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. Harare Responsible for . 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. 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. Snowflake worked with Longitude to assess what it takes to lead in the data economy. It took six months to do the bare minimum. And that could be at an operation site or it could be more of a frontline thing like a sales executive. 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. 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. Western Union is the worlds first P2P company. Services, High In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. Africa, South While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. 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. 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 When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. UnionDigital Bank is the trusted bridge between innovation and regulation. Guide for Suppliers, Select Today, WU.com is available in 40 countries, with mobile apps in 18 of them. 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. 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. . Western Union International Bank is licensed by the Austrian Financial Market Authority. 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. Singh also sees huge potential in the use of blockchain for specific use cases within financial services and payments, for example, helping with the Know Your Customer (KYC) process that is important to stopping money laundering and fraud and eliminating many of the checks that currently hold up cross-border payments. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. People are enthusiastic about the results of the pilot, and they want to see that in their own area. Services, Consumer Us, Terms We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. And if Western Union doesnt embrace and transform along with those technologies, it will fade away just like the telegraph. Theyve complemented each other really well and been able to almost mentor each other, as well as building great relationships with the product groups. We continue to experiment with the technology and time will tell if it offers a better alternative to traditional rails.. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . Please enable Javascript to see this feature. 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. . Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. Its an ecosystem of complementary platforms that enable a seamless, single customer experience I think thats such a powerful proposition.. 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. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. The difference with OutSystems is that we can do that fast and at scale, deploying experiences that are fast to load, reliable, and secure. To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. 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.. People who knew how a team or a group worked before can come in and see its night-and-day different. Western Union (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments and Zain Cash, the award-winning mobile financia . Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Garden, The Economist Packaged Goods, Engineering Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. 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 . Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. 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. How would this improve our agility, the need to deliver great digital experiences at scale, and the desire to use low-code across the whole stackfront-end, integration, and back-end core systems., Western Union became an OutSystems customer in November 2020. 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. They tend to be younger, they live online and they prefer to do everything there, at the touch of a button, Fellahi observes. We go where our customers go, says Khalid Fellahi, senior vice president and general manager for Western Union Digital, based in San Francisco. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. 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). The transition from legacy systems to Oracle Solutions was critical to the strategy's success. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. Professors from HEC, ESCP business school, and leading carriers shared insights on . That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. The executive team has done a great job of making it really clear across the company that this is something thats expected of you. But it becomes more self-driven, and that really enables the scale. We do that both in-line, so you as a manager go and visit your own organization, but also visit other functions. The network upgrade will pave the way for Econet to deliver 5G connectivity in more . 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. 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. Some development teams suffer 100 percent attrition in two to three years., "OutSystems helps in many ways. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a 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. However, Western Union would be wise to form a new, separate unit for exploring blockchain services. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. The service, which is set to launch in Madagascar, will see funds from around the world move through payment rails operated by MFS Africa, the continent's largest payment gateway.. MFS Africa's digital payments network connects more than 400 million mobile money wallets, more than 200 million bank accounts across Africa, and more than 200,000 agents in Nigeria, to enable cross-platform and . This seems to be a typical BSSE case in which it is hard for the incumbent to disrupt its business, since the innovation may threaten the current profitable business. . We teach employees, and then they execute. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. Country/region, Costa We built the Western Union Way team, or the WU Way team as we call it, with ten high-potential individuals from around the company. 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. ene. Blockchain is technology that uses an open, distributed ledger to permanently verify and record transactions between two parties. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . If any of these should fit what you're looking for, consider exploring a career with Western Union. 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. 8 (Managing the Strategy Development Process). Log in to help. They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. Board of Directors. Western Union. 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. Reliable for over 170 years. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. 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. Its time to align your banks digital transformation strategy with the entire customer lifecycle by providing a personalized omnichannel experience. Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. Board Committees. 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 . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Want to learn more about technology and organizations? The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. A hugely significant piece of the transformation has come from rethinking how Western Union communicates with its vast customer base. Convera. In 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. [8]David Thomas, Beyond the Hype: What Blockchain could mean for Africa, African Business Magazine, Feb. 26, 2018. Really understand the business stakeholders problem and how you can fix or enable it. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. 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. 2021. Complete your profile for personalized recommendations, Managing Director, U.S. Financial Services at Google. 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. A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. Big data has helped Western Union merge data across multiple channels for years, for marketing and promotion, customer lifecycle management, compliance and fraud modeling. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . One trend that has emerged as a result is the growing role of digital money transfers among people who may not otherwise use those services. It works with Talend to streamline data movement in compliance with GDPR across financial, reconciliation, auditing and trading partners. That created a need to act. He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. As consumer expectations continue to evolve, digital will play an ongoing role in helping financial services brands deliver value to their customers and drive business growth. These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. 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. Africa's largest payment gateway, MFS Africa, has partnered with Western Union to enable individuals and businesses across the continent to receive money from over 200 countries and territories. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. 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. Procurement & Construction, Financial 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. Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. Digital transformation in the EU. . Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. 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. 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]. 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. 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. 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. We set up virtual war rooms, met with our executive team daily to strategize, and spoke to customers every week to keep a pulse on their needs. Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. Navigating complex land title issues would also leverage Western Unions existing capabilities of dealing with a range of government regulations. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. Its in our DNA to think about global operations because Western Union covers the world.. 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. Security, Infosys Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. 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.. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. 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. That system is fine in a cash based economy, but is becoming increasingly cumbersome as digital payments take hold in emerging markets. 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. 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 . Receive rewards. McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . 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. 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. To that end, Singh has built on an existing relationship to forge a highly valuable partnership with Salesforce and oversee the roll-out of its industry-leading Marketing Cloud. 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. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own 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. Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts OutSystems as its Digital Transformation Platform. 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. And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. That allowed us to go from ten people to about 50 change agents in the first wave, which will be able to support 2,500 employees and 4,000 vendor full-time employees within two years. Having got the right people in place, Singh and his team set about building a partner network to supercharge Western Unions technology evolution. Having found great success with its Marketing Cloud, Singh outlines his longer-term vision to connect a number of Western Unions central products. Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. 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. [5] 2017 Annual ReportCEO Letter (noting Western Union has expanded its fund payout network to billions of bank accounts). Western Union is doing that. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. be to drive digital transformation and . Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. Thats the high performancewe rely on with OutSystems., Low-Code for Digital Financial Services Delivery. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. 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). So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. Thank you for this great post, Hans. 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. The strategy is also to reduce costs; on-prem infrastructure and people running it is expensive and you need back-ups of everything, especially in financial services. Services, Public [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. Western Union now has more than 550,000 agent locations in more than 200 countries. Cole heads the 169-year-old company's digital transformation efforts, including the design and development of the software powering those consumer-facing platforms. Nov 2011 - Present11 years 5 months. Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems.
Nano Needling Protocol, Leila Cavett Has She Been Found, Can A Handyman Install A Ceiling Fan In Texas, Articles W