In [] To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. 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. Furthermore, a chain of retail outlets is expensive. 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. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. To address this new competitive landscape, Western Union sought an agility boost to accelerate innovation. The second aspect is our agile work, where we spin up teams that have learned and are now experts in using agile methodologies for product launches or IT development. NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . Log in to help. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. Swanback said a . Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. 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. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. [5] 2017 Annual ReportCEO Letter (noting Western Union has expanded its fund payout network to billions of bank accounts). your next, Infosys How Your Small Business Can Be Managed With The Right Databases, Why Businesses Must Focus on Introducing Technology in the Workplace. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. But you say its about more than technology? Policy . Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Western Union Digital Services Enhanced in the UAE with Mobile App and Online Access; ITFC and Dubai Exports host B2B Forum to Promote Agri-Food Trade between Arab and African Countries under the Arab Africa Trade Bridges Program; GBM and Banfico partner to support the Kingdom's efforts for a more digitalized financial sector Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. s full anLearn more about the data lake, a repository for structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data that provided direct access to raw organizational data. Mazzaferro: In the past, the thinking in the industry has often been that applications are king, and that data flows through the applications. Second, we increased our use of digital media to reach customers and build a feedback loop. Technology, Industrial 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. Here are 4 steps they follow, Why durable solutions are needed to build the future of audiences, A data-privacy team can support your privacy transformation. 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. [12]Josh Constine, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, TechCrunch.com, Feb. 4, 2016. Enterprise Technology Operations Center Manager. Services, Consumer Experts at TCS and Western Union share the trends that are affecting digital transformation in financial services. The development speedand deployment easeprovided by OutSystems accelerates change and feedback cycles, which paves the way for continuous innovation. My mission is to empower people to become economically self-reliant. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. 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. 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. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. 9-30 (describing four types of innovations incremental, modular, architectural and radical classified by their impact on a business core components and the relationships between those core components). Cole heads the 169-year-old company's digital transformation efforts, including the design and development of the software powering those consumer-facing platforms. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. Western Union is working alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Partners to transform and expand its business, including the launch of a new digital bank. Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. Professors from HEC, ESCP business school, and leading carriers shared insights on . Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? We go where our customers go, says Khalid Fellahi, senior vice president and general manager for Western Union Digital, based in San Francisco. Digital transformation in the EU. Africa, South Meridian, Infosys Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. Inclusion, Bloomberg Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. 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. The scale of change this represents for a business like Western Union is not to be underestimated; the company employs around 11,000 people and has more than 550,000 retail agents locations within . And still others want to do it all online.. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. Since 2008, Huawei has offered a wide and expanding range of . Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. Start Time: 16:30 January 1, 0000 5:32 PM ETThe Western Union Company (NYSE:NYSE:WU)Q3 2022 Earnings Conference CallNovember 01, 2022, 16:30 PM ETCompany ParticipantsDevin McGranahan -. Manufacturing, Information Services Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. 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. While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. The digital transformation is helping Western Union emerge from a challenging two-year era. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. 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. 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]. Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. Media, Madison Square 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. Salesforce has been such an important part of the digital experience journey.. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. Experienced and certified (ACAMS) AML and Learning & Development professional with a proven track of records in compliance, people management, learning areas. 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. She has extensive experience in leading strategic marketing and has worked with brands like Myntra, Arrow, and Amante. of Use, Payment Today, structured and semi-structured data can easily coincide. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. People are enthusiastic about the results of the pilot, and they want to see that in their own area. 12. 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. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. When people from different departments do these floor walks together, theyre realizing that they actually have a lot more in common with each other or notice areas where they can collaborate that they didnt realize before. 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. Experience in leading digital products from either the financial services, payment, or fintech industries. These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. Digital Transformation. Navigate 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. We offer consumers the choices they want, both for sending and receiving money, he stresses. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. 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. Procurement & Construction, Financial 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. As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. 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. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Digital is all about how we reach the customer. [8]. 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. Prior to implementing Snowflake in 2021, Western Unions data spanned 34 on-premises data warehouses, resulting in latency and operational burdens. [1] One hundred years later, Western Union launched the first domestic commercial geostationary satellite (Westar 1). 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. Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. "As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? Singh is a proponent for a Central Bank Digital Currency, which he says is significantly different to the digital assets such as BitCoin and Ethereum, which can fluctuate wildly in value over short periods of time. 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. In 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. Rapid iteration is a crucial capability for Western Union, especially when designing customer experiencesin over 200 countries with local customer and regulatory requirements. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. arrow_forward. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. This is just one example of how blockchain could be an opportunity for Western Union. Leadership. 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. To explore this content and receive communications from Google, please sign in with an existing Google account. The Western Union Foundation is a separate charitable corporation that is tax-exempt under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, contributions to which are tax-deductible for US income tax purposes. They essentially sponsor a team and loan the resources that are necessary. Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts OutSystems as its Digital Transformation Platform. Western Union reduced data warehousing costs by 50% and has saved millions through streamlined data engineering and administration after moving more than 30 data stores, including on-premises data, into Snowflake. First, Western Unions third party agents may try to thwart any concerted moves to digital platforms, seeing such a move as a threat to existing commission revenues. 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. This will enable the company to maintain its high . 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 . Western Union powers your pursuit. 2021. 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. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. 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. We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. Western Union International Bank is licensed by the Austrian Financial Market Authority. Its reach is staggering: present in more than 200 countries and territories, transacting in 130+ currencies, with approximately 150 million people having used Western Union to either send or receive funds over the last year. Country/region, Costa So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. Guide for Suppliers, Select 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. OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. When fully realised, he says, it will give Western Union the agility it is seeking, while also having a positive impact on its bottom line. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. We saw that our revenue and customer base didnt reflect the opportunity and size of the market.. The transformation of Western Digital to a Live Enterprise Modernization of legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications provides an opportunity for a technical upgrade as well as a transformation of the core business, according to IDC. Western Union built its platform by assembling a global network of third party agents. The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. Team members were drawn from different continents and operating on different time zones. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. Theyve complemented each other really well and been able to almost mentor each other, as well as building great relationships with the product groups. Western Unions platform provides seamless cross-border flows and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies and 500K partner networks. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. Entertainment, Professional Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. 2023Western Union Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Really understand the business stakeholders problem and how you can fix or enable it. Talends technology was used to bring various sources of data from different locations into a single place in rapid fashion, helping make decisions such as waiving fees for those sending funds to people caught up in the explosion. Western Union is doing that. The author approaches the problem using public. Finance. People who knew how a team or a group worked before can come in and see its night-and-day different. 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. 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. 28+ active Western Union coupons, discount codes & coupon codes for June 2021. We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. 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. This is a powerful tool for our business and one of the key capabilities of our new infrastructure.. W ith the outbreak of a crippling global pandemic and a pronounced global economic slowdown, the last few years have been rather tumultuous for the world. UnionDigital Bank is the trusted bridge between innovation and regulation. Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. If any of these should fit what you're looking for, consider exploring a career with Western Union. Garden, The Economist [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. 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. 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. Zealand, South The Western Union Way of digital transformation. 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. The company considers local preferences, as well, accepting about 10 payment methods, such as Apple Pay in the U.S. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. 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, Singh tells Digital Bulletin. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. In addition to our digital banking app, there are at least 20 internal employee-facing apps that weve delivered that make work easier and more efficient for our employees., Asked what differences he sees in the development team, Tom says, With OutSystems, weve got a more cohesive and multi-talented development team because were using visual low-code development thats self-documenting. One moment later, in Shimla, a hill country city in India, close to the ridge of the Himalayan foothills, a cashier at the . He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. Today customers can commence their journey on our mobile App, pay for their transaction digitally or opt to pay cash from any of our participating Western Union retail locations, use wu.com or go directly to any of the 1,200 agent locations or Western Union-owned locations in Austria[i]. Jaffin: Evolution meant expanding the ways in which customers experience the brand digitally. 35, No. Digital transformation starts with people, which is a useful reminder that . Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Governments pay close attention to cross-border money transfers, and heavily regulate these services to prevent fraud, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? 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. My team and I had thought of the future being digital, of course, but the pandemic really forced us to make it a reality for the business. Automation, Microsoft A hugely significant piece of the transformation has come from rethinking how Western Union communicates with its vast customer base. Manager of a Team responsible for First Level Support, Event monitoring and Major Incident Management to internal and external clients that affects core processes and clients. Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. We see ourselves as becoming a FinTech that can move quickly while being sure that our infrastructure and processes allow us to work at scale.