western union digital transformation western union digital transformation

. These agents typically manage retail stores across the world, and offer Western Union money transfer services in exchange for a commission. We do that both in-line, so you as a manager go and visit your own organization, but also visit other functions. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. 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. So we had to figure out how to continue to show up for customers while also ensuring everyones health and safely. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. Key takeaways. Today, our omnichannel platform places Western Union in a unique position where our physical network and our digital efforts combine to provide customers with a host of options to transfer money, whether in cash, card into billions of bank accounts, online, using our App or one of our 17 mobile wallet partners. 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. His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Customers can send and receive money in a fast, reliable and convenient manner., We are proud to offer the same omnichannel choice in Austria. Management, Digital Workplace Navigating complex land title issues would also leverage Western Unions existing capabilities of dealing with a range of government regulations. Finacle, Infosys 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 . of Use, Payment 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. Western Union is doing that. 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. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. 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. What does "digital transformation" mean to Western Union? 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. Western Union International Bank GmbH is regulated by the Financial Markets Authority in Austria, [i] Agent location count valid as of 31 December 2017. And still others want to do it all online.. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. Union Pacific, the railroad company that transports chemicals, coal, food, minerals and automobiles in and around 23 Western U.S. states, has had two workhorses that toiled tirelessly for the past . We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. 8 (Managing the Strategy Development Process). Western Union has innovated before. Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. Not satisfied with the idea of incremental change, the company took a start-from-scratch approach, assembling an experienced team and transforming its infrastructure. 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. Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . Lastly, how do you see digital continuing to drive your services in the future? Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . The idea is to orient the company around improving these market-shaper practices, really getting the health of our organization strong, and becoming confident that if we can improve the health of the organization, the financial results will follow. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. Though its too early for results, the response from consumers has been positive, he says. Looking back at the results of our work over the last couple of years across all of our deployments, you see some really impressive gains. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. It works with Talend to streamline data movement in compliance with GDPR across financial, reconciliation, auditing and trading partners. So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. & Distribution, Media and Swanback said a . We recently delivered a similar requirement to a higher standard using one OutSystems developer in just 15 days. 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. 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. Youre expected to come up with new ways of innovation to drive revenue growth across the organization. We believe in the work we do, why we do it, and who we hire to get it done. Receive rewards. 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 . Finance. 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. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? The pandemic really accelerated the digital transformation journey; the plan was for it to be rolled out in three years but that timeframe became 18 months. The 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. Western Union's Customer Journey Digital Transformation Fueled by NICE - Innovative NICE Nexidia Customer Journey Optimisation provides powerful analytics to enhance customer experience. In the past five years, theres been a leveling across applications and data. We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital transformation at Western Union: Snowflake: Tom, as CDIO you lead the charge on keeping Western Union at the forefront of data economy leadership. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. However, Western Union would be wise to form a new, separate unit for exploring blockchain services. Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. Western Union's digital transformation efforts may fail to drive earnings growth, but they may be enough to keep earnings steady going forward. In just 11 months, we delivered a full-service digital banking experience that expands our relationship with customers.. A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. . All of that is dependent on people in the organization putting resources behind this kind of an agile transformation. 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]. 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. Western Union's digital services align with the UAE government's policy to create an economy driven by innovation and technology," said Salma Massoud, head of digital, Middle East and Africa . So we established a set of what we call market-shaper practices that we wanted to focus on. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. But new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. As an iconic brand for over 150 years, Western Union is constantly striving to innovate for their customers. And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. Board of Directors. Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. Country/region, Costa Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. 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. This entails a leader or a manager being on the floor with people doing their day-to-day jobs, just observing the way they work. One of its most high-profile hires was Harveer Singh, who was appointed as Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering and previously co-led EYs Next Generation architecture & solutions for Financial Services. These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. 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. OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. Nov 2011 - Present11 years 5 months. Leading fintech, Mambu, provides the platform and engine that drives the core of Western Union's new digital bank. As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. Contributed to establishing Quality Assurance, Training and Documentation strategy and processes for AML Operations functions. your next, Infosys 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. Snowflake worked with Longitude to assess what it takes to lead in the data economy. On May 17, 2018, at the Digital Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria, the European Commission launched the Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About Our technology platform is founded on a Hadoop big data technology cluster that is used for conversion analysis, risk statistical modeling, payments and risk data processing, Fellahi explains. Reliable for over 170 years. Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. 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. Jaffin: Evolution meant expanding the ways in which customers experience the brand digitally. In 2016, Western Union completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions and 523 million business payments world-wide, moving more than $150 billion of principal for consumers and businesses. 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. Its time to align your banks digital transformation strategy with the entire customer lifecycle by providing a personalized omnichannel experience. Log in to help. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. The transition from legacy systems to Oracle Solutions was critical to the strategy's success. As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. In 1861 it sent the first transcontinental telegraph. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). 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.. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. An advantage of Western Unions omnichannel approach is that it includes all customers, whether they are integrated or not in the financial system: the banked, the underbanked, and the unbanked. 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. "As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Digital transformation starts with people, which is a useful reminder that . 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. Western Union built its platform by assembling a global network of third party agents. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. But it becomes more self-driven, and that really enables the scale. 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. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. 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. 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 . 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. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and .