We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. Everest Group Low-Code Application Development Platforms PEAK Matrix 2022. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . Prior to implementing Snowflake in 2021, Western Unions data spanned 34 on-premises data warehouses, resulting in latency and operational burdens. According to the terms of the transaction . [2]But today, new technologies are threatening Western Unions entire business model. Western Union began a mission to transform the settlement platform with streamlined retail and digital cross-border money transfer operations to overcome the challenges and constraints of their legacy settlement systems. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. 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. Arab Emirates. . Talend is our backbone for that work and have really evolved their product to meet our needs.. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Theyve complemented each other really well and been able to almost mentor each other, as well as building great relationships with the product groups. The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. It is our responsibility to enable businesses, problem solvers, regulators and communities to leverage fintech for the betterment of lives. Goldfinch Partners is a private equity firm investing in businesses specialising in digital transformation. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. 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. The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. 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. To explore this content and receive communications from Google, please sign in with an existing Google account. Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts OutSystems as its Digital Transformation Platform. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. 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. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. "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. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. 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.. Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. It requires a change in process and culture, the adoption of a common lingo, executive buy-in, and a center . 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. 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 . Western Union will likely face internal resistance from three sources. 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. Professors from HEC, ESCP business school, and leading carriers shared insights on . Team members were drawn from different continents and operating on different time zones. 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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 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. For decades, Western Union benefited from network effects as it added density and new geographies. Western Union has had a compound annual growth rate above 25 percent over the past five years, since the launch of the digital division. 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. Hospitality, Waste Youre starting to see that happen culturally. 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. They essentially sponsor a team and loan the resources that are necessary. To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. 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. Guide for Suppliers, Select Media, Madison Square 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. Deep divides in digital connectivity, internet use, and access remain. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About It's a physical branding and marketing component that few money-transfer providers can match but one that's of diminishing value in a digital world. Services, Public . Jaffin: We engaged with tech partners like Google almost immediately to refine our go-to-market strategy. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. (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. It took six months to do the bare minimum. 8 (Managing the Strategy Development Process). of Use, Payment 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. But for all its success, Western Union is undoubtedly a legacy player in a market that has been truly disrupted in recent years, with smaller and more agile outfits making waves in the increasingly digitised payments space. 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. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. Commenting on the speed comparison of OutSystems compared to previous traditional development, Tom said, "On an earlier project, we had ten people working on a pricing and UX project. 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. The primary reason we decided to go through with this transformation is that we saw an opportunity to positively impact revenue through our daily operations and behaviors. Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. Thats the high performancewe rely on with OutSystems., Low-Code for Digital Financial Services Delivery. Originally, the capacity of our on-prem environments wasnt projected to hit capacity until 2022, but we could see that point was going to be reached in 2020, so that meant a real acceleration.. The central transformation team helps do the capability building in training those resources up, and then they run their own scaled-out deployment. Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. 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.. 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. Specifically,. We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital . . Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. The digital transformation is helping Western Union emerge from a challenging two-year era. This is just one example of how blockchain could be an opportunity for Western Union. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. 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 . Download the Western Union (WU) money transfer app and quickly start sending cash to Mexico and worldwide, 24/7! Services, Consumer 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. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Data safety. As the transformation gets embedded into the organization, the businesses start to run their own agile deployments. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. My mission is to empower people to become economically self-reliant. The CDO needs to drive digital transformation by enabling data to power product development and the company. Western Union built its platform by assembling a global network of third party agents. There were definitely times I was looking at costs and thinking how I was going to explain to finance, or my CFO, he says. Western Union is doing that. Its time to align your banks digital transformation strategy with the entire customer lifecycle by providing a personalized omnichannel experience. What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. 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. 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. Blockchain is technology that uses an open, distributed ledger to permanently verify and record transactions between two parties. 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. Lastly, how do you see digital continuing to drive your services in the future? His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. Snowflake worked with Longitude to assess what it takes to lead in the data economy. There are 13 of these practices, and thats really how were assessing success with the transformation across the organization. Western Union is the worlds first P2P company. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. Big data has helped Western Union merge data across multiple channels for years, for marketing and promotion, customer lifecycle management, compliance and fraud modeling. 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. So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. We do that both in-line, so you as a manager go and visit your own organization, but also visit other functions. Top-down prioritization of digital transformation. In 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. Packaged Goods, Engineering Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. 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. Most of the customers for remittance service (e.g. 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. Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. Western Union's Customer Journey Digital Transformation Fueled by NICE - Innovative NICE Nexidia Customer Journey Optimisation provides powerful analytics to enhance customer experience. In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. Experience in leading digital products from either the financial services, payment, or fintech industries. Navigate If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. New-found agility delivers growth and improved Customer Experience for partners and customers. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Most popular: Free $20 Amazon.com e-gift code for every friend you refer (earn up to $500). These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization. In 1861 it sent the first transcontinental telegraph. Because if you dont have the right data, your applications will struggle to provide the right business outcomes and customer experiences. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. 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 . Convera. We have a lot of great ideas in terms of investments to drive that topline revenue growth, but we needed ways to fund those. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. The service, which is set to launch in Madagascar, will see funds from around the world move through payment rails operated by MFS Africa, the continent's largest payment gateway.. MFS Africa's digital payments network connects more than 400 million mobile money wallets, more than 200 million bank accounts across Africa, and more than 200,000 agents in Nigeria, to enable cross-platform and . To accelerate application development, improve agility, and provide great digital experiences, the company chose OutSystems as its high-performance low-code platform. 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. 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. Singh was brought in to help facilitate that leap, drawing on his expertise with business transformations, technology management, data architecture and collaborative working, backed up by various consulting roles at Deloitte, IBM and Accenture. Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which dont need CEO oversight. Receive rewards. By John Manning, International Banker. Security, Infosys But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. 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. How Your Small Business Can Be Managed With The Right Databases, Why Businesses Must Focus on Introducing Technology in the Workplace. Garden, The Economist What are the biggest lessons you learned? . In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. Best practices were also key. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. Finacle, Infosys Harare Responsible for . 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. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. 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. Provide value consistently every month and deliver new value and capabilities. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. Dan Nordlander is senior vice president of Western Union Way Operations at Western Union, and Barr Seitz is senior manager of editorial and digital communications in McKinseys New York office. 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. Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. Services, Data Meridian, Infosys <br><br>My Leadership Philosophy<br><br>I am an . 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. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. With OutSystems, we deploy twice every week. What does "digital transformation" mean to Western Union? The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. Western Union. 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 Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. [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. Product Director, United States Money Transfer. Having to maintain two sets of procedures on-prem and cloud for 18 months to ensure business continuity is chief among them, while teams have had to escalate a company-wide transformation during a pandemic. The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. Microservices, Digital Process 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 author approaches the problem using public. The company wanted to improve the digital experiences offered to customers and build new digital bankingproducts to extend its relationship with customers. Thats really enabled a lot more collaboration across groups. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. Infosys accelerated Western Union's digital transformation by harmonizing agent operations, implementing billing and collection standards, enabling modular growth, accelerating new product launches, enabling digital on-demand procedures, designing global accounting solutions based on one single template, supporting highly complex pricing and multiple business models, and massive management processes as a strategic technology partner. 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. 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. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Its important to understand that business stakeholders are customers of our data. 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. 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. Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. Some development teams suffer 100 percent attrition in two to three years., "OutSystems helps in many ways. We believe in the work we do, why we do it, and who we hire to get it done. Thank you for this great post, Hans. Digital Transformation. [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. 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. Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. However, Western Union would be wise to form a new, separate unit for exploring blockchain services. 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. arrow_forward. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. We go where our customers go, says Khalid Fellahi, senior vice president and general manager for Western Union Digital, based in San Francisco. 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. NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . And when you have that, it becomes easier to have a stronger level of influence than you might otherwise expect with a small team, because everyone in the organization is clear that, whether youre working directly with the WU Way team or not, your job is to find ways for continuous improvement. Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. Though its too early for results, the response from consumers has been positive, he says. Western Union and Beforepay Offer 'Send Now, Pay Later' Service to Consumers for International Money Transfers 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. Policy . Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. How did you navigate those early moments? Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. Customers can send and receive money in a fast, reliable and convenient manner., We are proud to offer the same omnichannel choice in Austria.
