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. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities Kong, New The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. 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. Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . 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. 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. 2023 MWC Huawei Digital Leadership Seminar: Connecting Global Wisdom Does it offer a more seamless customer experience? Funds can be picked up in cash at half a million Western Union agent locations worldwide or transferred electronically to the recipients bank account or to a debit card linked to a digital wallet. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. 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. Entertainment, Professional We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. Driving Western Union's tech transformation - Digital Bulletin Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. Harveer Singh Leads Western Union's Digital Transformation - Profile [8]David Thomas, Beyond the Hype: What Blockchain could mean for Africa, African Business Magazine, Feb. 26, 2018. ene. 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. So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Governments pay close attention to cross-border money transfers, and heavily regulate these services to prevent fraud, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. 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 . Digital Bulletin exists to tell the story. They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. 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 EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. The Future of Payments is Invisible | CIO 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 . [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. - Earn My WU points. [1] One hundred years later, Western Union launched the first domestic commercial geostationary satellite (Westar 1). Huawei believes digital talent is a key driver in achieving digital transformation, solid economic growth, and better quality of life. 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. The gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . With OutSystems, we deploy twice every week. be to drive digital transformation and . 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 . . Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . 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. Western Union and Beforepay introduce 'send now, pay later' service That helps us refocus on the particular market-shaper practices that we need to double down on in order to continue improving during our transformation journey. We 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. Western Union Digital Banking 4+ - App Store We do that both in-line, so you as a manager go and visit your own organization, but also visit other functions. 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. In the past five years, theres been a leveling across applications and data. 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. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. January 25, 2019 | Video. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. Western Union. Western Union's digital transformation - Think with Google Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? 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 . This does have privacy implications and hence needs to be vetted out with regulatory authorities around the world. The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Want to learn more about technology and organizations? Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. The role of CDO needs to encompass more than data management and data governance, more than even enabling the pipeline and managing the environments. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. In this video, Shelly Swanback, president of product and platform at Western Union, discusses the three key . Packaged Goods, Engineering Most of the customers for remittance service (e.g. 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. 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. Engaged in problem resolution of complex . Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. Western Union Customer Journey Transformation The OutSystems platforms capabilities were immediately put to the test through 2021, as Western Union and its system integrator started development of its new digital banking app that includes a multicurrency bank account combined with money transfers, and other added benefits such as a Visa Platinum debit card. Guide for Suppliers, Select Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. So we established a set of what we call market-shaper practices that we wanted to focus on. [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. As the centerpiece of Western Unions omnichannel vision, the Western Union App is increasingly the primary touchpoint for customers: today more than 65% of Western Unions digital transactions originate on a mobile device globally. Harare Responsible for . The Western Union Way of digital transformation. 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. Data and insights gave us the ability to make important strategic decisions in the throes of what could have been a panic. Becoming digital first meant we needed to deliver fast, frictionless experiences, especially on mobile. 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. Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. 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. 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. In 2017 SEED supported 20 projects, impacting 5,000 children and youth; we hope to support event more in 2018.. 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. If CDIOs dont have the right culture on their teams, how can they help drive a data-first culture throughout their organization? [5]. When you see those people who are proactive and have aspirations, you are able to almost make them role models and build really effective ecosystems around them.. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. 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. (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. Today customers can commence their journey on our mobile App, pay for their transaction digitally or opt to pay cash from any of our participating Western Union retail locations, use wu.com or go directly to any of the 1,200 agent locations or Western Union-owned locations in Austria[i]. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. . We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. Zealand, South An advantage of Western Unions omnichannel approach is that it includes all customers, whether they are integrated or not in the financial system: the banked, the underbanked, and the unbanked. 2021. 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. 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. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Western Union has had a compound annual growth rate above 25 percent over the past five years, since the launch of the digital division. Seven months after Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group announced they were purchasing Western . If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. 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. Rica, Hong In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. Their bread and butter business is charging hefty fees on remittances and their core advantage was a network of retail outlets and agents across the US and partners around the world to get cash from one family member to another. (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. Teams that may not previously have interacted with each other are now doing floor walks with each other. 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. Having found great success with its Marketing Cloud, Singh outlines his longer-term vision to connect a number of Western Unions central products. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. Western Union Uses AWS to Create Company-Wide Digital Transformation. Policy . Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. Western Union Send Money Now 4+ - App Store Thank you for this great post, Hans. 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). The Western Union Way of digital transformation | McKinsey Hospitality, Waste Finacle, Infosys 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. 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 . 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. This will enable the company to maintain its high . Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. Digital transformation of journalism and media in Serbia: What has gone 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. 2023Western Union Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. And being with the people that are actually doing the work really helps the management get a better sense of where they can use their leadership and influence to make that process easier for the employee and better for the customer. Western Union has innovated before. Open a free Western Union Digital Banking bank account to manage your international finances and make instant, transfer fee-free* money transfers to other Western Union Digital Banking account holders. Anil Santhapuri - Director of Skills Solutions, Global Talent 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. Western Union Software Purchases and Digital Transformation Initiatives Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. We have a lot of great ideas in terms of investments to drive that topline revenue growth, but we needed ways to fund those. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Cole heads the 169-year-old company's digital transformation efforts, including the design and development of the software powering those consumer-facing platforms. My team and I had thought of the future being digital, of course, but the pandemic really forced us to make it a reality for the business. Western Union also opened franchise stores, which offer money transfer services as well as onsite currency exchanges. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. Although retail business declined during . The Western Union Way of digital transformation. But it becomes more self-driven, and that really enables the scale. Thats the high performancewe rely on with OutSystems., Low-Code for Digital Financial Services Delivery. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. "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. Leading fintech, Mambu, provides the platform and engine that drives the core of Western Union's new digital bank. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. The digital transformation is helping Western Union emerge from a challenging two-year era. To accelerate application development, improve agility, and provide great digital experiences, the company chose OutSystems as its high-performance low-code platform. Society Updated: 01-06-2022 - 11:45. 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.. These are seismic factors currently redefining our world, earning their own epochal moniker: The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. 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. 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. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. The company wanted to improve the digital experiences offered to customers and build new digital bankingproducts to extend its relationship with customers. Now its more pull. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . [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. Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. your next, Infosys SEED aims to improve education and employability of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, especially children of refugees, migrants, and local families. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. Western Union (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments and Zain Cash, the award-winning mobile financia . 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 a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, Western Union has to comply with a huge number of financial regulations.