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. 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. Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. 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. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? Western Union is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. 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. [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. 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. New-found agility delivers growth and improved Customer Experience for partners and customers. 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.. These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. Our technology platform is founded on a Hadoop big data technology cluster that is used for conversion analysis, risk statistical modeling, payments and risk data processing, Fellahi explains. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 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. 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. Top-down prioritization of digital transformation. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. From the earliest days of the pandemic, innovating the companys services to meet new patterns of consumer demand was an urgent matter. Swanback said a . For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. 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 . There were definitely times I was looking at costs and thinking how I was going to explain to finance, or my CFO, he says. Salesforce has been such an important part of the digital experience journey.. Specifically, how Data, Editors note: This is part of a series of blogs about the data economy. We go where our customers go, says Khalid Fellahi, senior vice president and general manager for Western Union Digital, based in San Francisco. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. 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). Institute, Infosys Innovation 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. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. 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. Manufacturing, Information Services 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. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . . Jaffin: Digital was critical in a few ways. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. 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. There are 13 of these practices, and thats really how were assessing success with the transformation across the organization. What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. 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. To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. 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. The central transformation team helps do the capability building in training those resources up, and then they run their own scaled-out deployment. 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. Leadership. ene. This will enable the company to maintain its high . 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. Talends technology has been used similarly in response to people impacted by floods in Haiti and to Indian citizens at the height of the countrys COVID-19 crisis. Hospitality, Waste Wingspan, Infosys The development speedand deployment easeprovided by OutSystems accelerates change and feedback cycles, which paves the way for continuous innovation. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. It requires a change in process and culture, the adoption of a common lingo, executive buy-in, and a center . Harare Responsible for . In 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. 12. 2021. All of that is dependent on people in the organization putting resources behind this kind of an agile transformation. Media, Madison Square We built the Western Union Way team, or the WU Way team as we call it, with ten high-potential individuals from around the company. Its been a great combination. While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. 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. The role of CDO needs to encompass more than data management and data governance, more than even enabling the pipeline and managing the environments. 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. Thats the high performancewe rely on with OutSystems., Low-Code for Digital Financial Services Delivery. Most popular: Free $20 Amazon.com e-gift code for every friend you refer (earn up to $500). We embrace the white canvas and first principles design, breaking away from legacy systems to create smart . Seven months after Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group announced they were purchasing Western . 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. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. Its not done from the perspective of correction or a negative consequence. Rapid iteration is a crucial capability for Western Union, especially when designing customer experiencesin over 200 countries with local customer and regulatory requirements. Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. 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. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. That created a need to act. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. 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. 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. Top retailers use AI-powered campaigns to engage their most valuable customers. - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. 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. The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. 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. 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. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms, 2023. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. [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. [2]But today, new technologies are threatening Western Unions entire business model. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. Continue to partner with popular digital platforms to provide legacy C2C money transfer services. Leading fintech, Mambu, provides the platform and engine that drives the core of Western Union's new digital bank. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. Data safety. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? Learn about JSON storage. 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. 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. 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. [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. 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. How do you start there and end up with a fully embedded transformation across a company of 12,000 people? When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Provide value consistently every month and deliver new value and capabilities. 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. . Western Union International Banks CEO Peter Bucher firmly believes you can drive successful, innovative business while creating a better world for the community you live in. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. The company considers local preferences, as well, accepting about 10 payment methods, such as Apple Pay in the U.S. 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. The Western Union Way of digital transformation. Whats really nice about that is that its so visually obvious. Network (IIN), Diversity Equity And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). 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.. 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. Deep divides in digital connectivity, internet use, and access remain. 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. As we get the pilots completed, the idea is to turn the WU Way team into more of a center of excellence. Becoming digital first meant we needed to deliver fast, frictionless experiences, especially on mobile. 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. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which dont need CEO oversight. In [] [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. You have to recognise that youre taking a massive journey as a company because it has always relied on data centres. The primary reason we decided to go through with this transformation is that we saw an opportunity to positively impact revenue through our daily operations and behaviors. 2023Western Union Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Salesforce has a value proposition that was immediately interesting because it allows you to build a single omnichannel journey that can be managed really efficiently when I want to make a change I only need to do so in one place. With OutSystems, we deploy twice every week. your next, Infosys Services, Public 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 . 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. 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. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. Data privacy and security practices . Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. The idea is to orient the company around improving these market-shaper practices, really getting the health of our organization strong, and becoming confident that if we can improve the health of the organization, the financial results will follow. Finacle, Infosys What are the biggest lessons you learned? Reliable for over 170 years. Cortex, Infosys Theyve complemented each other really well and been able to almost mentor each other, as well as building great relationships with the product groups.
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