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 built its platform by assembling a global network of third party agents. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. 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. Its been a great combination. 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. Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. Us, Terms Open a free Western Union Digital Banking bank account to manage your international finances and make instant, transfer fee-free* money transfers to other Western Union Digital Banking account holders. 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). Western Union International Bank is licensed by the Austrian Financial Market Authority. While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . Knowledge Institute, Chemical The author approaches the problem using public. Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. 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. 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 culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. 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. As weve done that, everyone has started to speak the same language, whether its talking about going to huddles, doing process confirmations, conducting one-on-one coaching, or maybe doing floor walks. Data and insights gave us the ability to make important strategic decisions in the throes of what could have been a panic. 8 (Managing the Strategy Development Process). 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. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. Cole heads the 169-year-old company's digital transformation efforts, including the design and development of the software powering those consumer-facing platforms. [1] One hundred years later, Western Union launched the first domestic commercial geostationary satellite (Westar 1). Leading fintech, Mambu, provides the platform and engine that drives the core of Western Union's new digital bank. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. Then think about the products you want to offer and how it can be a data-enabled product, such as being hyper-personalized. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. 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. OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. How Western Union Became a Global Digital Front-Runner for Cross-Border Payments Money By Jay Jaffin, Head of Global Digital, Western Union May 24, 2021. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? The development speedand deployment easeprovided by OutSystems accelerates change and feedback cycles, which paves the way for continuous innovation. So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). So well go from maybe four pilot teams to a plan to scale out across 400 people and maybe 30 teams next year. 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. 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. Seven months after Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group announced they were purchasing Western . 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. This would help Western Union objectively pursue new blockchain opportunities, even if those opportunities eventually cannibalize or destroy its existing C2C business. In 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. Western Union is doing that. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. In Austria our employees have put in place numerous initiatives such as German courses and mentoring programs, and we celebrated in March the first anniversary of SEED, a project supported by the Western Union Foundation in collaboration with the Austrian Ministry of Education and Teach for Austria Alumni Association. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. 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 is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. Board Committees. McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. 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. Microservices, Digital Process 2023Western Union Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Today, structured and semi-structured data can easily coincide. We also innovated to make our services more inclusive for customers by creating new ways to send funds digitally and offering real-time digital account payouts. Packaged Goods, Engineering Media, Madison Square Whats really nice about that is that its so visually obvious. This is a powerful tool for our business and one of the key capabilities of our new infrastructure.. 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. As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. Inclusion, Bloomberg They tend to be younger, they live online and they prefer to do everything there, at the touch of a button, Fellahi observes. Looking ahead, the Sales Cloud will be connected to the Marketing Cloud, which in turn is connected to our Care Cloud, so that whenever something happens across any of those products we are able to react in a way that suits that customer. 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]. We continue to experiment with the technology and time will tell if it offers a better alternative to traditional rails.. However, Western Union doesnt view its established retail business as totally separate from the digital world. Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. Institute, Infosys Innovation Society Updated: 01-06-2022 - 11:45. Here is Swamy Sivasubramaniyan, Head of Financial Services and Settlement Platform for Western Union, discussing the digital transformation experience with Infosys and Oracle. So we had to figure out how to continue to show up for customers while also ensuring everyones health and safely. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. Its time to align your banks digital transformation strategy with the entire customer lifecycle by providing a personalized omnichannel experience. All of that is dependent on people in the organization putting resources behind this kind of an agile transformation. As the transformation gets embedded into the organization, the businesses start to run their own agile deployments. Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. 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. Kong, New 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. 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. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. Furthermore, a chain of retail outlets is expensive. These strategies are paying off. Teams that may not previously have interacted with each other are now doing floor walks with each other. If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. "As users turn to our services in bigger numbers and as many new digital players come to the market, we know we have to change," he says. 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.. Data safety. 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. In 2017 SEED supported 20 projects, impacting 5,000 children and youth; we hope to support event more in 2018.. Western Union also opened franchise stores, which offer money transfer services as well as onsite currency exchanges. . Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. By John Manning, International Banker. 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. Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. [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. 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. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. Western Union. HELIX, Management So we established a set of what we call market-shaper practices that we wanted to focus on. your next, Infosys Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. 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). Talend is our backbone for that work and have really evolved their product to meet our needs.. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. It requires a change in process and culture, the adoption of a common lingo, executive buy-in, and a center . The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. 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. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? 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. Although retail business declined during . 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 . 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 . Country/region, Costa I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. 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. Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. Transformation, Cyber Please enable Javascript to see this feature. For example, helping African countries develop official land registers could eliminate a huge barrier to investment and capital inflows (e.g., by resolving uncertain and disputed land titles). So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. The way we approached it was to use the central WU Way team for capability building. 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 launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. 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. 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. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . Jaffin: Our company mission is to enable financial transfers between people anywhere and everywhere; we had a responsibility to continue to deliver on that. 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. Youre starting to see that happen culturally. Singh was given autonomy to mould his teams, combining the skills already at Western Union with external talent, many of which were from a consulting background, resulting in a diverse and varied team, which he says proved invaluable. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which dont need CEO oversight. That system is fine in a cash based economy, but is becoming increasingly cumbersome as digital payments take hold in emerging markets. 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. Swanback said a . The Baupost Group is a $31 billion Boston-based investment firm. ", Tom adds, In fast-moving customer-facing scenarios, development is never build-once-and-doneyoure always iterating to refine the customer experience. The CDO needs to drive digital transformation by enabling data to power product development and the company. Leadership. Western Union's stock price continued to climb the week of April 12 reaching $25.89, compared to a low of $21.66 in January. In 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. today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile . Technology or Operations transformation . Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. 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. 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. 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. With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. 28+ active Western Union coupons, discount codes & coupon codes for June 2021. . In the past five years, theres been a leveling across applications and data. 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. How do you start there and end up with a fully embedded transformation across a company of 12,000 people? For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. be to drive digital transformation and . Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. We have a lot of great ideas in terms of investments to drive that topline revenue growth, but we needed ways to fund those. Manufacturing, Information Services Having got the right people in place, Singh and his team set about building a partner network to supercharge Western Unions technology evolution. Its not done from the perspective of correction or a negative consequence. It took six months to do the bare minimum. Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. 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. Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. Professors from HEC, ESCP business school, and leading carriers shared insights on . There were definitely times I was looking at costs and thinking how I was going to explain to finance, or my CFO, he says. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which don't need CEO oversight. Western Union's Customer Journey Digital Transformation Fueled by NICE - Innovative NICE Nexidia Customer Journey Optimisation provides powerful analytics to enhance customer experience. And still others want to do it all online.. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. ", 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. 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. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. She also has worked with ad agencies like Ogilvy and McCann. 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. And when that happens, they start to see further opportunities for continuous improvement, leading them to new ideas about things they can do to improve efficiency or effectiveness. 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. Specifically,. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. 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. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. 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. Team members were drawn from different continents and operating on different time zones. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. Western Unions typical customers are migrants seeking a better life not just for themselves, but for their families back home who rely on fund transfers to meet basic needs. Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. . Navigate 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. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. 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. Everest Group Low-Code Application Development Platforms PEAK Matrix 2022. 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. Feb 7, 2023. SEED aims to improve education and employability of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, especially children of refugees, migrants, and local families. 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. That support has made it a lot easier to have the influence we need to make the transformation successful. 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. Profiles, Infosys Knowledge 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. Digital transformation starts with people, which is a useful reminder that . The company wanted to improve the digital experiences offered to customers and build new digital bankingproducts to extend its relationship with customers. 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. 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. Not satisfied with the idea of incremental change, the company took a start-from-scratch approach, assembling an experienced team and transforming its infrastructure. 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. Rapid iteration is a crucial capability for Western Union, especially when designing customer experiencesin over 200 countries with local customer and regulatory requirements. Second, we increased our use of digital media to reach customers and build a feedback loop. Western Union and Beforepay Offer 'Send Now, Pay Later' Service to Consumers for International Money Transfers
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