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]. Our digital-first crisis response is helping us evolve into the future. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. If you are a new customer: now you can transfer your FIRST money transfer for FREE*. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Cash And Trade Magazine - For Cash and Trade professionals in the What are the biggest lessons you learned? As we get the pilots completed, the idea is to turn the WU Way team into more of a center of excellence. So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. Most popular: Free $20 Amazon.com e-gift code for every friend you refer (earn up to $500). One moment later, in Shimla, a hill country city in India, close to the ridge of the Himalayan foothills, a cashier at the . 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 . 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. We're making content recommendations better for thousands of readers. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. Continue to partner with popular digital platforms to provide legacy C2C money transfer services. But theyve been hugely supportive and as weve hit milestones, such as moving significant infrastructure completely to the cloud or achieving significant savings with the Marketing Cloud, we have built that business case. "As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. She has extensive experience in leading strategic marketing and has worked with brands like Myntra, Arrow, and Amante. We offer consumers the choices they want, both for sending and receiving money, he stresses. 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.. today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile . The network upgrade will pave the way for Econet to deliver 5G connectivity in more . Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. Becoming digital first meant we needed to deliver fast, frictionless experiences, especially on mobile. 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. [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. 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. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which dont need CEO oversight. On May 17, 2018, at the Digital Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria, the European Commission launched the Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans. That system is fine in a cash based economy, but is becoming increasingly cumbersome as digital payments take hold in emerging markets. Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. Then think about the products you want to offer and how it can be a data-enabled product, such as being hyper-personalized. 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. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. Salesforce has been such an important part of the digital experience journey.. Best practices were also key. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. Western Union: New Thought Leadership Status in Digital Cross-border For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. These initiatives will likely change Western Unions operating model, therefore they must be fully supported by CEO Hikmet Ersek and should occupy most of his time. Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts OutSystems as its Digital Transformation Platform. 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. 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. 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. 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. Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? 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. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. And that could be at an operation site or it could be more of a frontline thing like a sales executive. . Business Application Services, Service Experience 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). Board Committees. They essentially sponsor a team and loan the resources that are necessary. While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. Commenting on the advantages of development on OutSystems, Tom says, "We estimate that we're getting new products . Heres how, Customers want control over their data and wont hesitate to switch brands to get it, Global Insights Briefing: Holiday takeaways for marketers, From solar panels to spa days, see how 2022s top searches set the stage for 2023. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. Rapid iteration is a crucial capability for Western Union, especially when designing customer experiencesin over 200 countries with local customer and regulatory requirements. 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. "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. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. [9]Western Union recently dipped its toes into blockchain. Harveer Singh leads Western Union's digital transformation with data & Publishing, Logistics 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. 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. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . The Western Union Way of digital transformation | McKinsey Industry experts were also drafted in to create the army that was required for this technology mission. We go where our customers go, says Khalid Fellahi, senior vice president and general manager for Western Union Digital, based in San Francisco. One trend that has emerged as a result is the growing role of digital money transfers among people who may not otherwise use those services. Dan Nordlander, senior vice president of Western Union Way Operations at Western Union, discusses his companys unique transformation journey with McKinseys Barr Seitz. 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). 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. The fusion of the digital and the physical, the irrepressible rise of new technologies. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. 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. Technology or Operations transformation . Arvie de Vera - LinkedIn Financing Digital Transformation and Bridging Digital Divide: The Case At its core is a migration from on-prem to a cloud-based infrastructure, which it believes is key to allowing the organisation to scale and evolve into a company with the clout of an established financial institution combined with the agility and flexibility of a modern FinTech. 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. of Use, Payment Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. Western Union Partners With MFS Africa to Enable Money Transfers Into Thats changing. 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 . Ein Jahr Western Union Digital Banking in Deutschland: 6 % Zinsen fr The company wanted to improve the digital experiences offered to customers and build new digital bankingproducts to extend its relationship with customers. 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. ", 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. Teams that may not previously have interacted with each other are now doing floor walks with each other. The central transformation team helps do the capability building in training those resources up, and then they run their own scaled-out deployment. Top-down prioritization of digital transformation. What does "digital transformation" mean to Western Union? 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. Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. Us, Terms As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. 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. Women in Marketing: Executives who are building brand narratives Western Union. Western Union and Zain Cash Collaborate to Facilitate Digital Cross By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. 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. Singh also sees huge potential in the use of blockchain for specific use cases within financial services and payments, for example, helping with the Know Your Customer (KYC) process that is important to stopping money laundering and fraud and eliminating many of the checks that currently hold up cross-border payments. 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. But new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. Experts at TCS and Western Union share the trends that are affecting digital transformation in financial services. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. [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. A hugely significant piece of the transformation has come from rethinking how Western Union communicates with its vast customer base. January 25, 2019 | Video. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. arrow_forward. This does have privacy implications and hence needs to be vetted out with regulatory authorities around the world. Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. Hospitality, Waste But its really all about allowing the manager to observe the way their employee works, whats easy about that job and whats hard about that job. 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. Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. Automation reduces development toil, were more productive, so we dont need so many developers, and we dont end up with orphaned code when developers leave. 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. [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. Western Union built its platform by assembling a global network of third party agents. 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. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? 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. Automation, Microsoft 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. Digital transformation of journalism and media in Serbia: What has gone Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. 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. 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). One of the benefits that weve really seen as weve gone through these first two years of our journey is what happens when we get everyone speaking the same language. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. We also innovated to make our services more inclusive for customers by creating new ways to send funds digitally and offering real-time digital account payouts. [7]While cryptocurrencies are an obvious threat to Western Unions cross-border money transfers, Blockchain also can be used in a range of imaginative ways. Sector, Travel and The development speedand deployment easeprovided by OutSystems accelerates change and feedback cycles, which paves the way for continuous innovation. [12]Josh Constine, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, TechCrunch.com, Feb. 4, 2016. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data Officer at Western Union together with Nick Halsey, CEO at Okera talk about the technology that Western Union has adopted to help build new products and Western Union, Chief Data Officer: Digital Transformation Initiatives (Part 3) | Cloud | cdomagazine.tech Western Union's digital transformation sprints to mobile These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . Accelerating Digital Transformation in Western and Central Africa Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Western Union, Enterprise-grade scalability and security, Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservices. 22 Companies Spearheading Digital Innovation in Their Industries in Consumers are less aware that we have transformed ourselves into one of the largest digital money transfer firms in the world, with our digital activity generating well over $400 million revenues in 2017. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a Korea, United 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. 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. Procurement & Construction, Financial The pandemics economic stressors created a situation where more people suddenly needed to send money to family and friends around the world, many of whom rarely use financial services. 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. Engaged in problem resolution of complex . In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . Denver, Colorado. - Earn My WU points. Western Union, MFS Africa Partner to Enable Money Transfers into Garden, The Economist Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. Commenting on the advantages of development on OutSystems, Tom says, We estimate that were getting new products to market at least twice as fast as competitors, and were probably using a tenth of the resources they are on front-end development. 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 author approaches the problem using public. 12. Driving Western Union's tech transformation - Digital Bulletin How Western Union accelerated digital during the pandemic [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. Thats really enabled a lot more collaboration across groups. 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. As consumer expectations continue to evolve, digital will play an ongoing role in helping financial services brands deliver value to their customers and drive business growth. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. Dr. Hosam AbouElDahab on LinkedIn: Western Union and Beforepay Offer We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. 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. ene. Security, Infosys COVID-19 has brought countless challenges, but its also caused us to focus all of our efforts around customers and reground ourselves in our mission. People. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. 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. 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 is to shed its Business Solutions unit, with investment firms Goldfinch and Baupost set to acquire the business for $910 million in cash. 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. 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. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. 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. Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. As a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, Western Union has to comply with a huge number of financial regulations. 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 Transformation Story of Western Digital.