western union digital transformation

Sub-Saharan Africa 3G and 4G mobile broadband coverage stands at 86% and 57% of the population, respectively. The difference with OutSystems is that we can do that fast and at scale, deploying experiences that are fast to load, reliable, and secure. In 2017 SEED supported 20 projects, impacting 5,000 children and youth; we hope to support event more in 2018.. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities The gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . 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. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. 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. Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. How Your Small Business Can Be Managed With The Right Databases, Why Businesses Must Focus on Introducing Technology in the Workplace. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. We recently delivered a similar requirement to a higher standard using one OutSystems developer in just 15 days. Digital transformation in the EU. 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. Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. Singh describes the team he assembled as being super-powerful, and says he often refers to it as his three-in-box strategy, owing to the various areas for which he recruited. Cole heads the 169-year-old company's digital transformation efforts, including the design and development of the software powering those consumer-facing platforms. Finally, shareholders may punish Western Union for moving away from its higher margin core business to focus instead on simpler, lower-cost digital money transfers. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. 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]. In this video, Shelly Swanback, president of product and platform at Western Union, discusses the three key . 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. Sector, Travel and (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. few clicks, you can use OutSystems to bring your visions to life. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. 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. Rapid iteration is a crucial capability for Western Union, especially when designing customer experiencesin over 200 countries with local customer and regulatory requirements. 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.. Society Updated: 01-06-2022 - 11:45. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. My role was to bring all of these different teams together and instil a culture that recognised it wasnt just about how fast we were going, but also about the quality of the product were delivering.. [8]. 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. (PDF-165 KB) The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. So we had to figure out how to continue to show up for customers while also ensuring everyones health and safely. Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. 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. 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. Cookies help us deliver our services. Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. . Thats really enabled a lot more collaboration across groups. 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. 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. Second, Western Unions employees may not have the knowledge or training to effectively lead Western Unions digital transformation, and may resist digital initiatives or operational changes. 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. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. Country/region, Costa Contributed to establishing Quality Assurance, Training and Documentation strategy and processes for AML Operations functions. It works with Talend to streamline data movement in compliance with GDPR across financial, reconciliation, auditing and trading partners. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. According to the terms of the transaction . Security, Infosys Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. Manufacturing, Communication It took six months to do the bare minimum. Swanback said a . Now its more pull. 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. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . 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. 12. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. 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. Jaffin: We engaged with tech partners like Google almost immediately to refine our go-to-market strategy. "As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. 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. If any of these should fit what you're looking for, consider exploring a career with Western Union. We developed the whole front-end for the app in less than four months., Western Union uses OutSystems for customer-facing apps, back office, and workflow solutions. Jaffin: Digital was critical in a few ways. 2023Western Union Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. InsurTech & Crypto projects as the world embraces CX, Business Transformation and Digital . Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? It is our responsibility to enable businesses, problem solvers, regulators and communities to leverage fintech for the betterment of lives. Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. 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. The executive team has done a great job of making it really clear across the company that this is something thats expected of you. Specifically,. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. Analytics, API Economy & Western Union International Bank's CEO Peter Bucher firmly believes you can drive successful, innovative business while creating a better world for the community you live in. Meanwhile, new fintech players like Transferwise are able to offer cash transfer services for a fraction of the price since their operations are 100% online. DENVER-(BUSINESS WIRE)-The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, today announced that the Company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a minority stake in fast growing Saudi Digital Payments Company, or stc pay, a fully owned subsidiary of Saudi Telecom Company. 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 has innovated before. 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. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. 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. I have successfully directed virtual teams working on Mastercard integrations, Western Union and MoneyGram. Heute nutzen bereits rund 150.000 Anwender in Deutschland sowie in Rumnien, Polen und Italien die Western Union Digital Banking App fr ihre finanziellen Angelegenheiten - immer mit dem Ziel . Hospitality, Waste Governments pay close attention to cross-border money transfers, and heavily regulate these services to prevent fraud, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. 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. . Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. 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. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. [1] One hundred years later, Western Union launched the first domestic commercial geostationary satellite (Westar 1). Theyve complemented each other really well and been able to almost mentor each other, as well as building great relationships with the product groups. [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. The resulting report, How to Win in the Data Economy, includes anecdotes from dozens of customers, analysts, and influencers about how to succeed, all in addition to the survey itself, based on feedback from 1,000 senior business, technology, and data managers across five industries and from all over the world. With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. Finance. 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. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. 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. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. Most of the customers for remittance service (e.g. 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 . Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. Engaged in problem resolution of complex . If CDIOs dont have the right culture on their teams, how can they help drive a data-first culture throughout their organization? His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. So well go from maybe four pilot teams to a plan to scale out across 400 people and maybe 30 teams next year. Services, High OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. Part of this agility drive involved Western Union migrating its legacy on-prem IT infrastructure to the Cloud. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. Western Union is trying to use Blockchain as an incremental or modular innovation, when in fact it could be an architectural orradical innovation (see chart below) introducing entirely new businesses that fit well into Western Unions existing capabilities. 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. Western Union. These agents typically manage retail stores across the world, and offer Western Union money transfer services in exchange for a commission. That created a need to act. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. To accelerate application development, improve agility, and provide great digital experiences, the company chose OutSystems as its high-performance low-code platform. This does have privacy implications and hence needs to be vetted out with regulatory authorities around the world. The primary reason we decided to go through with this transformation is that we saw an opportunity to positively impact revenue through our daily operations and behaviors. Knowledge Institute, Chemical With my work with WEF, I was lucky enough to sit around a table recently with some important people and talk about how we can take this forward. 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. 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. . In the past five years, theres been a leveling across applications and data. Jaffin: Its important for us to continue trying new technology that gets us closer to customers and their changing needs, like advanced analytics and other tools. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. Receive rewards. Goldfinch Partners is a private equity firm investing in businesses specialising in digital transformation. Convera. Key takeaways. Some changes that used to take a month, we now deliver in around 48 hours.. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. Meanwhile, innovators like Ant Financial(China) and M-Pesa(Kenya) are leveraging high mobile penetration rates in emerging markets, and are beginning to experiment with cross-border money transfers. Western Union now has more than 550,000 agent locations in more than 200 countries. Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. Western Union began a mission to transform the settlement platform with streamlined retail and digital cross-border money transfer operations to overcome the challenges and constraints of their legacy settlement systems. 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. Lean deployments are a big piece of our overall transformation program. NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . 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. The map, Barmer and Newman say, is designed to do precisely that turn the western Pennsylvania fish-fry culture into an adventure stamped onto the landscape that fosters community engagement . Services, Public Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. New-found agility delivers growth and improved Customer Experience for partners and customers. your next, Infosys Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Top-down prioritization of digital transformation. We are also launching new products into the market, including a pilot for digital banking services in select markets in Europe and a revamped loyalty programme, which require us to capture data from our central warehouses to drive decision making, marketing and customer acquisition. The way we approached it was to use the central WU Way team for capability building. Professors from HEC, ESCP business school, and leading carriers shared insights on . Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? Today, structured and semi-structured data can easily coincide. Africa's largest payment gateway, MFS Africa, has partnered with Western Union to enable individuals and businesses across the continent to receive money Please enable Javascript to see this feature. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. 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. If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. 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. Western Union is one of the largest digital money firms, uniquely positioned to connect the cash and digital worlds across platforms, devices, borders, and currencies. 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. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts OutSystems as its Digital Transformation Platform. 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, South If you are a new customer: now you can transfer your FIRST money transfer for FREE*. Having got the right people in place, Singh and his team set about building a partner network to supercharge Western Unions technology evolution. 1 (March 1990), pp. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. Improvements that we made to our apps digital customer experience, for example, helped it become one of the most downloaded apps among our peer set in 2020. Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. Whats really nice about that is that its so visually obvious. [12]Josh Constine, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, TechCrunch.com, Feb. 4, 2016. . 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 started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. What Ive tried to do is look at each of the groups and find out who the strong players in each of them are, the leaders that are vocal and very straightforward in conversation. Its in our DNA to think about global operations because Western Union covers the world.. We embrace the white canvas and first principles design, breaking away from legacy systems to create smart . Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which don't need CEO oversight. We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. Furthermore, a chain of retail outlets is expensive. Digital transformation starts with people, which is a useful reminder that . Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. I want to see those same results in my organization. I think thats an indication of how well its really working across the company. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. Now we are on track to achieve those gains and benefits that come with being more agile and being able to grow at scale, we can really begin to look forward and reap the rewards of the transformation.. 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.. Denver, Colorado. Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. The partnership with Talend has evolved over the last few years and was originally established to provide our business and technology teams a fast and efficient way to build data pipelines. From the CEO down through his executive team, you see a real commitment to this transformation exercise and a real commitment to finding ways to optimize our processes, to get efficiencies, and to fund those investments that will drive topline revenue growth. 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). & Distribution, Media and What are the biggest lessons you learned? Created: 05-05-2021 - 17:15. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. 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. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. To address this new competitive landscape, Western Union sought an agility boost to accelerate innovation. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. 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 .

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