western union digital transformation

His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. Garden, The Economist Jaffin: We engaged with tech partners like Google almost immediately to refine our go-to-market strategy. If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. Leading fintech, Mambu, provides the platform and engine that drives the core of Western Union's new digital bank. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. 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. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. Security, Infosys 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. The network upgrade will pave the way for Econet to deliver 5G connectivity in more . [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. 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.. [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. 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. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. By John Manning, International Banker. As the transformation gets embedded into the organization, the businesses start to run their own agile deployments. There were definitely times I was looking at costs and thinking how I was going to explain to finance, or my CFO, he says. 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. (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. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. 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. Its been a great combination. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. Swanback said a . A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. Digital Bulletin exists to tell the story. Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. 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. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. The Western Union Way of digital transformation. 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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Analytics, API Economy & In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. 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 . 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. 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. Reliable for over 170 years. 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 . The central transformation team helps do the capability building in training those resources up, and then they run their own scaled-out deployment. 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. Team members were drawn from different continents and operating on different time zones. 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. Thats changing. 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. Everest Group Low-Code Application Development Platforms PEAK Matrix 2022. 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. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Having found great success with its Marketing Cloud, Singh outlines his longer-term vision to connect a number of Western Unions central products. Media, Madison Square Second, we increased our use of digital media to reach customers and build a feedback loop. Thank you for this great post, Hans. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. I want to see those same results in my organization. I think thats an indication of how well its really working across the company. 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 . Jaffin: Evolution meant expanding the ways in which customers experience the brand digitally. Guide for Suppliers, Select Prior to implementing Snowflake in 2021, Western Unions data spanned 34 on-premises data warehouses, resulting in latency and operational burdens. So we had to figure out how to continue to show up for customers while also ensuring everyones health and safely. 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. Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? 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. Sector, Travel and Blockchain is technology that uses an open, distributed ledger to permanently verify and record transactions between two parties. 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. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. 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. Western Union will likely face internal resistance from three sources. 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). The fusion of the digital and the physical, the irrepressible rise of new technologies. Technology or Operations transformation . In the past several years, the Englewood, Colo.-based company has made a point to develop and [] 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. 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. Becoming digital first meant we needed to deliver fast, frictionless experiences, especially on mobile. They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. 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. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. For example, in 2016 Western Union integrated money transfer options with messanging apps WeChat and Viber, allowing users to send small amounts of money through the apps. Cookies help us deliver our services. Inclusion, Bloomberg be to drive digital transformation and . We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital . The way we approached it was to use the central WU Way team for capability building. When we started the transformation project, we came at it from the perspective of this being a cultural transformation just as much as a process transformation. 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.. Please enable Javascript to see this feature. While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . 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. 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. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. 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. People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? To accelerate application development, improve agility, and provide great digital experiences, the company chose OutSystems as its high-performance low-code platform. That support has made it a lot easier to have the influence we need to make the transformation successful. Western Union has had a compound annual growth rate above 25 percent over the past five years, since the launch of the digital division. 12. Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Western Union has innovated before. We recently delivered a similar requirement to a higher standard using one OutSystems developer in just 15 days. And if Western Union doesnt embrace and transform along with those technologies, it will fade away just like the telegraph. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. 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. Western Union's digital transformation efforts may fail to drive earnings growth, but they may be enough to keep earnings steady going forward. 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. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. 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. 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. Salesforce has a value proposition that was immediately interesting because it allows you to build a single omnichannel journey that can be managed really efficiently when I want to make a change I only need to do so in one place. Provide value consistently every month and deliver new value and capabilities. Our goal was to build a new Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservicesthat would allow us to integratemany different systems quicklyboth internal and external vendors, explains Tom. Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. Best practices were also key. Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? 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. [12]These kind of digital initiatives are good pursuits for current operational leaders, since they represent incremental or modular innovations to Western Unions existing product offerings. We have a lot of great ideas in terms of investments to drive that topline revenue growth, but we needed ways to fund those. Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. HELIX, Management That created a need to act. Receive rewards. Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. 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. For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. . Since 2008, Huawei has offered a wide and expanding range of . Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. 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. 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 company, which has been in the money-transfer business since 1871, launched online transfers via WU.com in 2000 and got into mobile money transfers in 2007. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. Wingspan, Infosys For example, we began offering an option for telephone money transfer. Experienced and certified (ACAMS) AML and Learning & Development professional with a proven track of records in compliance, people management, learning areas. Industry experts were also drafted in to create the army that was required for this technology mission. Its one of the most widely used platforms from a data perspective and were expanding our relationship with Talend to start using some of its data quality products as well. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a We teach employees, and then they execute. Weve been able to increase the amount and frequency of relevant data we can share with our agents, and they have started to build new processes based on that. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. [11]See generally Rebecca M. Henderson & Kim B. Clark, Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms, Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Feb 7, 2023. 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. Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. ; Offering combines Deloitte's ConvergePROSPERITY BankingSuite solution and multiple AWS services. What are the biggest lessons you learned? 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. 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. Automation, Microsoft . Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Sub-Saharan Africa 3G and 4G mobile broadband coverage stands at 86% and 57% of the population, respectively. . Entertainment, Professional The company considers local preferences, as well, accepting about 10 payment methods, such as Apple Pay in the U.S. Product Director, United States Money Transfer. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. Arab Emirates. 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.. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. Although retail business declined during . 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. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. 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. This is a powerful tool for our business and one of the key capabilities of our new infrastructure.. Packaged Goods, Engineering Does it offer a more seamless customer experience? 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. Board of Directors. 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. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. Western Union (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments and Zain Cash, the award-winning mobile financia .

Are Davis Derringer Barrels Interchangeable, Find The Angle Between Two Vectors A=5i+j And B=2i+4j, Longhouse Funeral Home, Open Air Artisans Fairs In Chile, Articles W