western union digital transformation

Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Africa's largest payment gateway, MFS Africa, has partnered with Western Union to enable individuals and businesses across the continent to receive money Convera. Financing Digital Transformation and Bridging Digital Divide: The Case 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. 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.. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities Women in Marketing: Executives who are building brand narratives 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. 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. Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. 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 its global financial network, as well as a global online presence. 2021. Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. [12]Josh Constine, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, TechCrunch.com, Feb. 4, 2016. 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. Having got the right people in place, Singh and his team set about building a partner network to supercharge Western Unions technology evolution. 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. Western Union Google Pay Integration: Interview With Vice - Monito 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. His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. The central transformation team helps do the capability building in training those resources up, and then they run their own scaled-out deployment. 1 (March 1990), pp. Lastly, how do you see digital continuing to drive your services in the future? Jaffin: Evolution meant expanding the ways in which customers experience the brand digitally. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. 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. Western Union's digital transformation sprints to mobile few clicks, you can use OutSystems to bring your visions to life. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. Western Union Send Money Now 4+ - App Store How Western Union Became a Global Digital Front-Runner for Cross-Border Payments Money By Jay Jaffin, Head of Global Digital, Western Union May 24, 2021. ", Looking back to why Western Union chose OutSystems, Tom says, We serve millions of customers in over 200 countries and territories, and we want to give them the best possible customer experience. . 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. Data quality is so important to us, we need to know who we are marketing to and that means our data has to be of the highest quality.. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. Jaffin: We engaged with tech partners like Google almost immediately to refine our go-to-market strategy. However, Western Union doesnt view its established retail business as totally separate from the digital world. New-found agility delivers growth and improved Customer Experience for partners and customers. Some changes that used to take a month, we now deliver in around 48 hours.. Services, Public The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. Inclusion, Bloomberg ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . 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. 22 Companies Spearheading Digital Innovation in Their Industries in 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 Union now has more than 550,000 agent locations in more than 200 countries. Reliable for over 170 years. 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. 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. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. Western Union: Leading or Lagging Digital Transformation? Log in to help. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? 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 Union hiring Global Head, Customer Experience & Design in Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. "As users turn to our services in bigger numbers and as many new digital players come to the market, we know we have to change," he says. Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. The Western Union Company - Western Union Fintech Expansion: Opens New ; Offering combines Deloitte's ConvergePROSPERITY BankingSuite solution and multiple AWS services. 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. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. Western Union and Beforepay Offer 'Send Now, Pay Later' Service to Consumers for International Money Transfers [6], However, regulators cant keep pace with the wave of new blockchain applications. 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. Us, Terms 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. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. Specifically,. Western Union Announces Agreement to Sell Western Union Business The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. Filipino workers abroad), they need to bring physical money somewhere, and most of the fintech companies in remittance space dont have their own channels (they often partner with local kiosks). 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. Digital Summit WB6 - Prishtina 2022 Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. 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. Salesforce has been such an important part of the digital experience journey.. Nduduzo Tshuma - Head of Information Technology & Digital Western Union. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. According to the terms of the transaction . 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. Thats really enabled a lot more collaboration across groups. Today, WU.com is available in 40 countries, with mobile apps in 18 of them. Product Director, United States Money Transfer. Navigating complex land title issues would also leverage Western Unions existing capabilities of dealing with a range of government regulations. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. As the transformation gets embedded into the organization, the businesses start to run their own agile deployments. Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. The gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . Driving Western Union's Tech Transformation | by Digital Bulletin Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. 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 Customer Journey Digital Transformation Fueled by NICE So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. In order to fund the investments, we decided that it was really important to do a transformation exercise, look for ways to gain efficiencies and effectiveness across our processes and procedures, and then use those efficiencies to fund the growth investments. Business Application Services, Service Experience For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. 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. Africa, South Its important to understand that business stakeholders are customers of our data. [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. Dan Nordlander, senior vice president of Western Union Way Operations at Western Union, discusses his companys unique transformation journey with McKinseys Barr Seitz. To accelerate application development, improve agility, and provide great digital experiences, the company chose OutSystems as its high-performance low-code platform. 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. These strategies are paying off. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. Convera's Next Steps: Western Union Business Solutions - Forbes Cash And Trade Magazine - For Cash and Trade professionals in the . Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? Meridian, Infosys There were definitely times I was looking at costs and thinking how I was going to explain to finance, or my CFO, he says. Something that is ripe for discussion among many of these discussion groups is the idea of a digital dollar, which could be made transferable all around the world with vendors and partners.. [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. Sub-Saharan Africa 3G and 4G mobile broadband coverage stands at 86% and 57% of the population, respectively. Deloitte Collaborates With AWS to Put Enterprise-Class Banking 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. Youre starting to see that happen culturally. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. Network (IIN), Diversity Equity Stephanie Pankau - Product Director, United States Money Transfer 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. 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. 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. Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? [5] 2017 Annual ReportCEO Letter (noting Western Union has expanded its fund payout network to billions of bank accounts). Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. In just 11 months, we delivered a full-service digital banking experience that expands our relationship with customers.. This would help Western Union objectively pursue new blockchain opportunities, even if those opportunities eventually cannibalize or destroy its existing C2C business. They have also triggered profound changes within global banking, demanding that lenders remain flexible, nimble, and innovative in their digital-banking strategies to meet customers' rapidly . 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. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. Data safety. 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. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. 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. Deloitte announces multi-year collaboration with AWS to co-innovate and engineer solutions that help institutions expedite the launch of digital banking services and modernize their legacy core banking stacks. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. Our research identified 10 attributes of an organizations data infrastructure that enable it to take full advantage of the data economy, the global supply and, Editors note: This is part of a series about the data economy. Kong, New 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 uses a central team to build new capabilities across the business. Analytics, API Economy & Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. 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. 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. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . It&#39;s a physical branding and marketing component that few money-transfer providers can match but one that&#39;s of diminishing value in a digital world. 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. 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. We do that both in-line, so you as a manager go and visit your own organization, but also visit other functions. Wingspan, Infosys UnionBank: Blazing Digital Trails in the Philippines and Beyond <br><br>My Leadership Philosophy<br><br>I am an . Finacle, Infosys - Earn My WU points. So we established a set of what we call market-shaper practices that we wanted to focus on. 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. Powering Digital Transformation: How Western Union Leverages the Data The Foundation is supported by the Western Union Company, its employees, Agents, and business partners, working to support education and disaster relief efforts as pathways toward a better future. 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. Key takeaways. 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. InsurTech & Crypto projects as the world embraces CX, Business Transformation and Digital . Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. 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. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. Working across many cultures at Western Union | McKinsey Our digital-first crisis response is helping us evolve into the future. As an iconic brand for over 150 years, Western Union is constantly striving to innovate for their customers. 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. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. 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. We serve all customer segments: from digital natives who are never without their smartphones to the 4 billion people on earth the World Bank estimates arent online yet., Western Union is strongly committed to migrants and to refugees: migration is at the heart of our business. And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). For example, helping African countries develop official land registers could eliminate a huge barrier to investment and capital inflows (e.g., by resolving uncertain and disputed land titles). 2023 MWC Huawei Digital Leadership Seminar: Connecting Global Wisdom We set up virtual war rooms, met with our executive team daily to strategize, and spoke to customers every week to keep a pulse on their needs.

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