To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. Security, Infosys 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. few clicks, you can use OutSystems to bring your visions to life. In 1861 it sent the first transcontinental telegraph. Seven months after Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group announced they were purchasing Western . And if Western Union doesnt embrace and transform along with those technologies, it will fade away just like the telegraph. The company wanted to improve the digital experiences offered to customers and build new digital bankingproducts to extend its relationship with customers. Jaffin: Western Union has a culture of innovating to meet customer needs, and the past 12 months have shown us that quick pivots can drive lasting change. Business Application Services, Service Experience Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. Its important to understand that business stakeholders are customers of our data. 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). Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. 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. Second, Western Unions employees may not have the knowledge or training to effectively lead Western Unions digital transformation, and may resist digital initiatives or operational changes. He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. 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.. Meridian, Infosys Convera. Western Union's platform provides seamless cross-border flows and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies . 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. Customers can send and receive money in a fast, reliable and convenient manner., We are proud to offer the same omnichannel choice in Austria. be to drive digital transformation and . Digital Transformation. 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.. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. 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.. While Singh and his team have been occupied with the technology transformation taking place at Western Union, the breakneck speed at which the financial services and payments industry is changing means they also have to be planning for the longer-term. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. Becoming digital first meant we needed to deliver fast, frictionless experiences, especially on mobile. As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. Professors from HEC, ESCP business school, and leading carriers shared insights on . It took six months to do the bare minimum. Knowledge Institute, Chemical There were definitely times I was looking at costs and thinking how I was going to explain to finance, or my CFO, he says. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Want to learn more about technology and organizations? Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. Best practices were also key. . Snowflake: What are a few highlights of how Snowflake is helping with digital transformation? Key takeaways. The fusion of the digital and the physical, the irrepressible rise of new technologies. Board of Directors. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. 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 . 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. 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. Singh was given autonomy to mould his teams, combining the skills already at Western Union with external talent, many of which were from a consulting background, resulting in a diverse and varied team, which he says proved invaluable. 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. 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. As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. 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. Heres how, Customers want control over their data and wont hesitate to switch brands to get it, Global Insights Briefing: Holiday takeaways for marketers, From solar panels to spa days, see how 2022s top searches set the stage for 2023. 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. Big data has helped Western Union merge data across multiple channels for years, for marketing and promotion, customer lifecycle management, compliance and fraud modeling. Leadership Team. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. your next, Infosys Having got the right people in place, Singh and his team set about building a partner network to supercharge Western Unions technology evolution. We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. The CDO needs to drive digital transformation by enabling data to power product development and the company. And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). The difference with OutSystems is that we can do that fast and at scale, deploying experiences that are fast to load, reliable, and secure. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. Please enable Javascript to see this feature. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. Country/region, Costa Services, Consumer Some development teams suffer 100 percent attrition in two to three years., "OutSystems helps in many ways. "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. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. January 25, 2019 | Video. When we started the transformation project, we came at it from the perspective of this being a cultural transformation just as much as a process transformation. 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. These are seismic factors currently redefining our world, earning their own epochal moniker: The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Snowflake worked with Longitude to assess what it takes to lead in the data economy. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which dont need CEO oversight. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . If CDIOs dont have the right culture on their teams, how can they help drive a data-first culture throughout their organization? In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. According to the terms of the transaction . Africa, South But new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. Institute, Infosys Innovation 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. While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . 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. SEED aims to improve education and employability of students from low socio-economic backgrounds, especially children of refugees, migrants, and local families. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. With OutSystems, we deploy twice every week. de 2007 - actualidad16 aos 3 meses. Packaged Goods, Engineering On March 1, Huawei held a "Digital Leadership Seminar" during Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in Barcelona, Spain, attended by more than 60 high-level customers from global carriers, government enterprises, and KOL. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. 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. That support has made it a lot easier to have the influence we need to make the transformation successful. Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. Does it offer a more seamless customer experience? To that end, Singh has built on an existing relationship to forge a highly valuable partnership with Salesforce and oversee the roll-out of its industry-leading Marketing Cloud. Network (IIN), Diversity Equity Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. 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. To address this new competitive landscape, Western Union sought an agility boost to accelerate innovation. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. Sector, Travel and Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? 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. Talend is our backbone for that work and have really evolved their product to meet our needs.. Western Union. 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. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. 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. 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 . 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. 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. People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . 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. Its not done from the perspective of correction or a negative consequence. Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. We recently delivered a similar requirement to a higher standard using one OutSystems developer in just 15 days. Learn about JSON storage. With a history of more than 170 years, the company has a presence in more than 200 countries and territories, connecting more than 120m people to one another and to the global economy, through cross-border money transfers in approximately 130 currencies. A hugely significant piece of the transformation has come from rethinking how Western Union communicates with its vast customer base. . 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. As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. 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. 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. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. Contributed to establishing Quality Assurance, Training and Documentation strategy and processes for AML Operations functions. 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. Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. 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, Singh tells Digital Bulletin. Digital is all about how we reach the customer. Thats really enabled a lot more collaboration across groups. 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. Once a customer notarises their documents, they can be stored in a safe location and distributed across the blockchain network, so any regulatory authority or government can access that information. One of its most high-profile hires was Harveer Singh, who was appointed as Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering and previously co-led EYs Next Generation architecture & solutions for Financial Services. 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. Its more about having the manager understand how the work actually gets done on the floor. During its February 2018 earnings call, CEO Hikmet Ersek announced that Western Union is experimenting with Ripple for settling transactions and for capital optimization, and is also testing Ripples native currency (XRP).[10]. 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. You have to recognise that youre taking a massive journey as a company because it has always relied on data centres. 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. Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. Rica, Hong For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. Western Union has had a compound annual growth rate above 25 percent over the past five years, since the launch of the digital division. Because if you dont have the right data, your applications will struggle to provide the right business outcomes and customer experiences. Not satisfied with the idea of incremental change, the company took a start-from-scratch approach, assembling an experienced team and transforming its infrastructure. With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. 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. Wingspan, Infosys Feb 7, 2023. And still others want to do it all online.. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. - Earn My WU points. Entertainment, Professional Western Union is a partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is a leading voice in the conversation of how to build a global payments ecosystem, which is stable and where remittances can be made much faster. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. 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. & Publishing, Logistics . Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. New-found agility delivers growth and improved Customer Experience for partners and customers. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. 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. 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. They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. These strategies are paying off. These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization. Western Union powers your pursuit.
March 14, 2023