Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. Jaffin: Our company mission is to enable financial transfers between people anywhere and everywhere; we had a responsibility to continue to deliver on that. So well go from maybe four pilot teams to a plan to scale out across 400 people and maybe 30 teams next year. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. 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. Navigating complex land title issues would also leverage Western Unions existing capabilities of dealing with a range of government regulations. Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. Please enable Javascript to see this feature. Western Union's digital services align with the UAE government's policy to create an economy driven by innovation and technology," said Salma Massoud, head of digital, Middle East and Africa . 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). These agents typically manage retail stores across the world, and offer Western Union money transfer services in exchange for a commission. 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. Provide value consistently every month and deliver new value and capabilities. The CDO needs to drive digital transformation by enabling data to power product development and the company. For example, in 2016 Western Union integrated money transfer options with messanging apps WeChat and Viber, allowing users to send small amounts of money through the apps. Blockchain is technology that uses an open, distributed ledger to permanently verify and record transactions between two parties. [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. [7]For a helpful overview of how Blockchain is being used in emerging markets, see Vinay Gupta & Rob Knight, How Blockchain Could Help Emerging Markets Leap Ahead, Harvard Business Review, May 17, 2017. Thats changing. Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. Thats really enabled a lot more collaboration across groups. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. 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. Similarly, Western Union's ethos is based on empowering the aspiring populations of the world with accessible financial tools to improve the lives of their loved ones and communities. 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. 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. 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.. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. With OutSystems, we deploy twice every week. As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. 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. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. This is a powerful tool for our business and one of the key capabilities of our new infrastructure.. The Western Union Way of 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. Digital Bulletin exists to tell the story. Most popular: Free $20 Amazon.com e-gift code for every friend you refer (earn up to $500). 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. 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). To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. Western Union. Furthermore, a chain of retail outlets is expensive. 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. 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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sector, Travel and We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital transformation at Western Union: Snowflake: Tom, as CDIO you lead the charge on keeping Western Union at the forefront of data economy leadership. Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. 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. Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. That created a need to act. Lean deployments are a big piece of our overall transformation program. It is our responsibility to enable businesses, problem solvers, regulators and communities to leverage fintech for the betterment of lives. Top-down prioritization of digital transformation. Updated on. Sub-Saharan Africa 3G and 4G mobile broadband coverage stands at 86% and 57% of the population, respectively. 8 (Managing the Strategy Development Process). One of our most important tools is the floor walk. This will enable the company to maintain its high . Western Union International Bank's CEO Peter Bucher firmly believes you can drive successful, innovative business while creating a better world for the community you live in. We 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. Cortex, Infosys Guide for Suppliers, Select 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. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. Thank you for this great post, Hans. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. Goldfinch Partners is a private equity firm investing in businesses specialising in digital transformation. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of 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. 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. Board Committees. This is just one example of how blockchain could be an opportunity for Western Union. Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. Navigate 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. Africa, South Western Union has had a compound annual growth rate above 25 percent over the past five years, since the launch of the digital division. 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 . Manufacturing, Information Services 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. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. 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.. 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. Here are 4 steps they follow, Why durable solutions are needed to build the future of audiences, A data-privacy team can support your privacy transformation. OutSystems High-Performance Low-Code Platform Powers Western Union Digital Banking Solution 2 min. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . 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. People. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. The central transformation team helps do the capability building in training those resources up, and then they run their own scaled-out deployment. [6], However, regulators cant keep pace with the wave of new blockchain applications. - Earn My WU points. Analytics, API Economy & As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. 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. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. Professors from HEC, ESCP business school, and leading carriers shared insights on . The map, Barmer and Newman say, is designed to do precisely that turn the western Pennsylvania fish-fry culture into an adventure stamped onto the landscape that fosters community engagement . From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. Big data has helped Western Union merge data across multiple channels for years, for marketing and promotion, customer lifecycle management, compliance and fraud modeling. 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. 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. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Profiles, Infosys Knowledge Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. 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. 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. I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. Singh describes the team he assembled as being super-powerful, and says he often refers to it as his three-in-box strategy, owing to the various areas for which he recruited. 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. Board of Directors. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. Engaged in problem resolution of complex . Its more about having the manager understand how the work actually gets done on the floor. 35, No. Swanback said a . Services, Public There are 13 of these practices, and thats really how were assessing success with the transformation across the organization. But it becomes more self-driven, and that really enables the scale. 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. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. Looking ahead, the Sales Cloud will be connected to the Marketing Cloud, which in turn is connected to our Care Cloud, so that whenever something happens across any of those products we are able to react in a way that suits that customer. & Distribution, Media and A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. However, Western Union doesnt view its established retail business as totally separate from the digital world. (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. "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. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which dont need CEO oversight. 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 . Procurement & Construction, Financial 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. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. I have successfully directed virtual teams working on Mastercard integrations, Western Union and MoneyGram. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. That support has made it a lot easier to have the influence we need to make the transformation successful. My mission is to empower people to become economically self-reliant. Teams that may not previously have interacted with each other are now doing floor walks with each other. Entertainment, Professional Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. 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. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. arrow_forward. Data privacy and security practices . Feb 7, 2023. In just 11 months, we delivered a full-service digital banking experience that expands our relationship with customers.. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. 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.. Western Union powers your pursuit. 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. UnionDigital Bank is the trusted bridge between innovation and regulation. . 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. 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. Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Western Union, Enterprise-grade scalability and security, Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservices. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. Receive rewards. 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. From the CEO down through his executive team, you see a real commitment to this transformation exercise and a real commitment to finding ways to optimize our processes, to get efficiencies, and to fund those investments that will drive topline revenue growth. Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? Youre starting to see that happen culturally. [5]. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. 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. Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. Its reach is staggering: present in more than 200 countries and territories, transacting in 130+ currencies, with approximately 150 million people having used Western Union to either send or receive funds over the last year. In Austria our employees have put in place numerous initiatives such as German courses and mentoring programs, and we celebrated in March the first anniversary of SEED, a project supported by the Western Union Foundation in collaboration with the Austrian Ministry of Education and Teach for Austria Alumni Association. Specifically,. Denver, Colorado. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. 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. Experienced and certified (ACAMS) AML and Learning & Development professional with a proven track of records in compliance, people management, learning areas. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. January 25, 2019 | Video. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Digital Transformation. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. 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 can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. People are enthusiastic about the results of the pilot, and they want to see that in their own area. Policy . 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. 2021. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. We teach employees, and then they execute. The role of CDO needs to encompass more than data management and data governance, more than even enabling the pipeline and managing the environments. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. After the catastrophic explosion in Lebanon in 2020, the two companies worked together to build data pipelines to help those affected by the incident and provide support to agents in the area. 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. Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. 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). How Your Small Business Can Be Managed With The Right Databases, Why Businesses Must Focus on Introducing Technology in the Workplace. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which don't need CEO oversight. The difference with OutSystems is that we can do that fast and at scale, deploying experiences that are fast to load, reliable, and secure. 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. Enterprise Technology Operations Center Manager. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. 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. Security, Infosys When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Western Union's digital transformation efforts may fail to drive earnings growth, but they may be enough to keep earnings steady going forward. And when that happens, they start to see further opportunities for continuous improvement, leading them to new ideas about things they can do to improve efficiency or effectiveness. The transformation of Western Digital to a Live Enterprise Modernization of legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications provides an opportunity for a technical upgrade as well as a transformation of the core business, according to IDC. Harare Responsible for . 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. Snowflake worked with Longitude to assess what it takes to lead in the data economy. We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. That means we can onboard new developers and have them productive much faster, and weve got fewer knowledge silos in the development team., Moreover, low-code development on OutSystems helps Tom fight back in the war for digital talent. 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. 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. Western Union's Customer Journey Digital Transformation Fueled by NICE - Innovative NICE Nexidia Customer Journey Optimisation provides powerful analytics to enhance customer experience. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. The author approaches the problem using public. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. 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. 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. Commenting on the advantages of development on OutSystems, Tom says, "We estimate that we're getting new products . They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. We go where our customers go, says Khalid Fellahi, senior vice president and general manager for Western Union Digital, based in San Francisco. ene. Western Uniona global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and paymentsis driving a company-wide transformation, which includes migrating its infrastructure from on-prem to the Cloud. 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.
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