western union digital transformation

It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. Profiles, Infosys Knowledge Arab Emirates. 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 . What are the biggest lessons you learned? While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. 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. Goldfinch Partners is a private equity firm investing in businesses specialising in digital transformation. 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. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. 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. Using OutSystems for customer-facing digital experiences, back office, and workflow solutions, Western Union launched new digital banking services in two countries in just 11 months. 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. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Western Union must adapt to an increasingly mobile world: if Western Union doesn't develop low-cost mobile money transfers, Western Union won't be able to compete . [5] 2017 Annual ReportCEO Letter (noting Western Union has expanded its fund payout network to billions of bank accounts). For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. 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. 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. 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. Digital Transformation. [3], Western Union operates in three segments, with most of its revenues (79%) coming from the C2C segment: [4], Western Union became the dominant player in cross-border C2C money transfers through a platform strategyit connected people who wanted to send money across borders. NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. 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 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. Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. Jaffin: Digital was critical in a few ways. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Please enable Javascript to see this feature. 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. In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. Automation, Microsoft People. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. 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. Solutions enabled - Oracle Revenue Management and Billing, Oracle Business Intelligence, Infosys Transaction Reconciliation System, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Solution and Services, Infosys Oracle Services, part of Infosys Cobalt. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. Some development teams suffer 100 percent attrition in two to three years., "OutSystems helps in many ways. That system is fine in a cash based economy, but is becoming increasingly cumbersome as digital payments take hold in emerging markets. My mission is to empower people to become economically self-reliant. Thats really enabled a lot more collaboration across groups. - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. Western Union is doing that. This does have privacy implications and hence needs to be vetted out with regulatory authorities around the world. January 25, 2019 | Video. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . So we had to figure out how to continue to show up for customers while also ensuring everyones health and safely. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. Harare Responsible for . To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. This seems to be a typical BSSE case in which it is hard for the incumbent to disrupt its business, since the innovation may threaten the current profitable business. After exceeding expectations in 2020 despite the outbreak of COVID-19, the world's largest currency exchange service Western Union looks set to exceed US$1 billion in total annual revenues for its digital business segment in 2021 a major milestone for the company and a first in the world of digital cross-border payments.. Western Union's shift toward digital shows little sign of relenting. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. Packaged Goods, Engineering Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. Since 2008, Huawei has offered a wide and expanding range of . Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. "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. Singh estimates that the project has reduced how much it spends on talking to its customers by a quarter, while markedly improving this critical function. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. [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. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. 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. Western Union's stock price continued to climb the week of April 12 reaching $25.89, compared to a low of $21.66 in January. A hugely significant piece of the transformation has come from rethinking how Western Union communicates with its vast customer base. Data privacy and security practices . But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. 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. Jaffin: Evolution meant expanding the ways in which customers experience the brand digitally. 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. This would help Western Union objectively pursue new blockchain opportunities, even if those opportunities eventually cannibalize or destroy its existing C2C business. 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. 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. He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About Heute nutzen bereits rund 150.000 Anwender in Deutschland sowie in Rumnien, Polen und Italien die Western Union Digital Banking App fr ihre finanziellen Angelegenheiten - immer mit dem Ziel . [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. 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. These are seismic factors currently redefining our world, earning their own epochal moniker: The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Its an ecosystem of complementary platforms that enable a seamless, single customer experience I think thats such a powerful proposition.. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Services, High Policy . But you say its about more than technology? Finally, shareholders may punish Western Union for moving away from its higher margin core business to focus instead on simpler, lower-cost digital money transfers. Our digital-first crisis response is helping us evolve into the future. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. & Distribution, Media and We teach employees, and then they execute. Inclusion, Bloomberg Western Union and Beforepay Offer 'Send Now, Pay Later' Service to Consumers for International Money Transfers ene. . Specifically, how Data, Editors note: This is part of a series of blogs about the data economy. 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 . 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. 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. . 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. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. And, Fellahi points out, When you look at customer acquisition on our digital channel, 80 percent of the customers we acquired in the past 12 months are new to usnot migrated from our traditional customer base., He expects digital money transfer and mobile technology to be the major driver of overall growth in coming years, adding, In the U.S., over 65 percent of WU.com transactions are initiated on a mobile device, and globally it is nearly 60 percent.. 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. Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. Denver, Colorado. People are enthusiastic about the results of the pilot, and they want to see that in their own area. 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. 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. | Learn more about Rokas kudas's work experience, education, connections & more by visiting their profile on . 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. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. In the latest step in its digital journey, Western Union recently launched a bot that enables Facebook Messenger users in the United States to send money to more than 200 countries, across 130 currencies, from within the messaging app. 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). Its more about having the manager understand how the work actually gets done on the floor. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. 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. 35, No. HELIX, Management 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. Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. 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. (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. Manufacturing, Information Services The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. Manufacturing, Communication The partnership will enable funds to be sent from countries around the world to mobile wallets across Africa through the organization's licensed payment rails. Kong, New Western Union Uses AWS to Create Company-Wide Digital Transformation. 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. As we get the pilots completed, the idea is to turn the WU Way team into more of a center of excellence. Improvements that we made to our apps digital customer experience, for example, helped it become one of the most downloaded apps among our peer set in 2020. Western Union powers your pursuit. today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile .

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