Data and insights gave us the ability to make important strategic decisions in the throes of what could have been a panic. In 1861 it sent the first transcontinental telegraph. Packaged Goods, Engineering How Western Union accelerated digital during the pandemic By John Manning, International Banker. 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. A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. Anil Santhapuri - Director of Skills Solutions, Global Talent That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. Meridian, Infosys 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.. 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. Really understand the business stakeholders problem and how you can fix or enable it. The fusion of the digital and the physical, the irrepressible rise of new technologies. Here is Swamy Sivasubramaniyan, Head of Financial Services and Settlement Platform for Western Union, discussing the digital transformation experience with Infosys and Oracle. For more details about how Western Union went from 34 on-prem data warehouses to pursuing a multi-cloud strategy based on Snowflake, read our case study. We teach employees, and then they execute. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. 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.. 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. We have a lot of great ideas in terms of investments to drive that topline revenue growth, but we needed ways to fund those. In a report on ERP modernization, the global market intelligence firm highlights how Western Digital . 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 . It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. . [5]. Western Union Advances Its Digital Growth Strategy With Investment in 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 . So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. The pandemics economic stressors created a situation where more people suddenly needed to send money to family and friends around the world, many of whom rarely use financial services. Western Union and Zain Cash Collaborate to Facilitate Digital Cross We scored ourselves as an organization on these market-shaper practices when we started the transformation in 2016. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. Data safety. Transformation, Cyber The Western Union Way of digital transformation. 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. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. To accelerate application development, improve agility, and provide great digital experiences, the company chose OutSystems as its high-performance low-code platform. Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. 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 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. We believe in the work we do, why we do it, and who we hire to get it done. Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About Western Union Uses AWS to Create Company-Wide Digital Transformation. People who knew how a team or a group worked before can come in and see its night-and-day different. Western Union. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . Key takeaways. [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. 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. We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. 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. Having got the right people in place, Singh and his team set about building a partner network to supercharge Western Unions technology evolution. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . She also has worked with ad agencies like Ogilvy and McCann. The relationship with Talend has enabled Western Union to help its global customer base in times of real need. Engaged in problem resolution of complex . New-found agility delivers growth and improved Customer Experience for partners and customers. 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. Theyll be there to help you stay on track or course correct when you have troubles. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Western Union. 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. 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. And when you have that, it becomes easier to have a stronger level of influence than you might otherwise expect with a small team, because everyone in the organization is clear that, whether youre working directly with the WU Way team or not, your job is to find ways for continuous improvement. He reveals that Western Union was using multiple companies for each of its email, in-app and SMS communication channels. Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. Lastly, how do you see digital continuing to drive your services in the future? 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. Top-down prioritization of digital transformation. 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. 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. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. 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. Thats changing. What we are talking about is not cryptocurrency, it is not something that has to be mined. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. In 2016, Western Union completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions and 523 million business payments world-wide, moving more than $150 billion of principal for consumers and businesses. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. 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. Financing Digital Transformation and Bridging Digital Divide: The Case Western Union's digital transformation sprints to mobile 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 digital-first crisis response is helping us evolve into the future. 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. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. [9]Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor,The Innovators Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2003), Ch. Western Union hiring Global Head, Customer Experience & Design in Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. To explore this content and receive communications from Google, please sign in with an existing Google account. Western Union has innovated before. - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts OutSystems as its Digital Transformation Platform. 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. Western Union's Customer Journey Digital Transformation Fueled by NICE - Innovative NICE Nexidia Customer Journey Optimisation provides powerful analytics to enhance customer experience. On May 17, 2018, at the Digital Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria, the European Commission launched the Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans. 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. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. This is just one example of how blockchain could be an opportunity for Western Union. 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. How do you start there and end up with a fully embedded transformation across a company of 12,000 people? Sector, Travel and Board of Directors. The digital transformation is helping Western Union emerge from a challenging two-year era. Digital transformation & economic opportunities - Blog - Western Union She has extensive experience in leading strategic marketing and has worked with brands like Myntra, Arrow, and Amante. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. "As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . In this video, Shelly Swanback, president of product and platform at Western Union, discusses the three key . Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. Nov 2011 - Present11 years 5 months. 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. . And if Western Union doesnt embrace and transform along with those technologies, it will fade away just like the telegraph.

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