The executive team has done a great job of making it really clear across the company that this is something thats expected of you. In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. 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. We teach employees, and then they execute. Receive rewards. 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. Achieving that is going to give Western Union agility, stability and resilience and allow us to focus on product development, because we know that our technology is going to sit in the cloud and take up a lot less of our time. 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. Goldfinch Partners is a private equity firm investing in businesses specialising in digital transformation. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. This does have privacy implications and hence needs to be vetted out with regulatory authorities around the world. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. Sources for images:Western Union vs. Bitcoin, Bitland,MyWU,Ripple Union. Specifically, how Data, Editors note: This is part of a series of blogs about the data economy. 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. Board of Directors. We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. Meridian, Infosys Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. [7]While cryptocurrencies are an obvious threat to Western Unions cross-border money transfers, Blockchain also can be used in a range of imaginative ways. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. 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. ", Looking back to why Western Union chose OutSystems, Tom says, We serve millions of customers in over 200 countries and territories, and we want to give them the best possible customer experience. By John Manning, International Banker. - Earn My WU points. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. 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. My mission is to empower people to become economically self-reliant. Talends technology was used to bring various sources of data from different locations into a single place in rapid fashion, helping make decisions such as waiving fees for those sending funds to people caught up in the explosion. 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. Analytics, API Economy & Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Western Union, Enterprise-grade scalability and security, Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservices. But theyve been hugely supportive and as weve hit milestones, such as moving significant infrastructure completely to the cloud or achieving significant savings with the Marketing Cloud, we have built that business case. 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. Faced with numerous applications to deliver, the need to rapidly iterate customer experiences, and the steep learning curve for new Cloud DevOps toolchains, Western Union decided to evaluate low-code platforms. Salesforce has been such an important part of the digital experience journey.. Western Union is trying to use Blockchain as an incremental or modular innovation, when in fact it could be an architectural orradical innovation (see chart below) introducing entirely new businesses that fit well into Western Unions existing capabilities. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. 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 aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . 2023Western Union Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. They tend to be younger, they live online and they prefer to do everything there, at the touch of a button, Fellahi observes. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. 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. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. Its been a great combination. Youre expected to come up with new ways of innovation to drive revenue growth across the organization. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. Western Union powers your pursuit. Western Union is to shed its Business Solutions unit, with investment firms Goldfinch and Baupost set to acquire the business for $910 million in cash. In just 11 months, we delivered a full-service digital banking experience that expands our relationship with customers.. Navigate Digital transformation in the EU. Huawei believes digital talent is a key driver in achieving digital transformation, solid economic growth, and better quality of life. Arab Emirates. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. The Transformation Story of Western Digital. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a In 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. 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 . & Distribution, Media and How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? [5] 2017 Annual ReportCEO Letter (noting Western Union has expanded its fund payout network to billions of bank accounts). Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. 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. 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. We are also launching new products into the market, including a pilot for digital banking services in select markets in Europe and a revamped loyalty programme, which require us to capture data from our central warehouses to drive decision making, marketing and customer acquisition. 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. 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 . Whats really nice about that is that its so visually obvious. 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. Cortex, Infosys He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. Rica, Hong 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. Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. Western Union Uses AWS to Create Company-Wide Digital 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. Kong, New The difference with OutSystems is that we can do that fast and at scale, deploying experiences that are fast to load, reliable, and secure. 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. Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. (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. The partnership with Talend has evolved over the last few years and was originally established to provide our business and technology teams a fast and efficient way to build data pipelines. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. 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. Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. Data privacy and security practices . 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. ", Tom adds, In fast-moving customer-facing scenarios, development is never build-once-and-doneyoure always iterating to refine the customer experience. Western Union now has more than 550,000 agent locations in more than 200 countries. (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. Cole heads the 169-year-old company's digital transformation efforts, including the design and development of the software powering those consumer-facing platforms. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. 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. 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. Our digital-first crisis response is helping us evolve into the future. Data and insights gave us the ability to make important strategic decisions in the throes of what could have been a panic. A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. . Digital Bulletin exists to tell the story. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. And that could be at an operation site or it could be more of a frontline thing like a sales executive. Korea, United Institute, Infosys Innovation Western Union. 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 pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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). Digital is all about how we reach the customer. 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 . They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. Seven months after Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group announced they were purchasing Western . Digital Transformation. We saw that our revenue and customer base didnt reflect the opportunity and size of the market.. Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. Lastly, how do you see digital continuing to drive your services in the future? Cookies help us deliver our services. To address this new competitive landscape, Western Union sought an agility boost to accelerate innovation. Not satisfied with the idea of incremental change, the company took a start-from-scratch approach, assembling an experienced team and transforming its infrastructure. [12]These kind of digital initiatives are good pursuits for current operational leaders, since they represent incremental or modular innovations to Western Unions existing product offerings. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. 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. 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. 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. People. Western Union must adapt to an increasingly mobile world: if Western Union doesnt develop low-cost mobile money transfers, Western Union wont be able to compete with new competitors like Ant Financial and Zelle. 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). That support has made it a lot easier to have the influence we need to make the transformation successful. Technology powers the data economy. I also agree with you that the competitive advantage of Western Union is a broad network of retail footprint across the world. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. 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. Specifically,. 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. [12]Josh Constine, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, TechCrunch.com, Feb. 4, 2016. . 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. What Ive tried to do is look at each of the groups and find out who the strong players in each of them are, the leaders that are vocal and very straightforward in conversation. She has extensive experience in leading strategic marketing and has worked with brands like Myntra, Arrow, and Amante. Looking back at the results of our work over the last couple of years across all of our deployments, you see some really impressive gains. 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.. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Western Union's digital transformation efforts may fail to drive earnings growth, but they may be enough to keep earnings steady going forward. 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. However, Western Union would be wise to form a new, separate unit for exploring blockchain services. Inclusion, Bloomberg 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. Management, Digital Workplace In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. 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. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. We embrace the white canvas and first principles design, breaking away from legacy systems to create smart . 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. Created: 05-05-2021 - 17:15. Harare Responsible for . 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. Zealand, South Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . 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. Then think about the products you want to offer and how it can be a data-enabled product, such as being hyper-personalized. 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 . 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.
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