western union digital transformation

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. Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. Hearing from customers helped us focus our messaging on two key ideas: digital convenience and staying safe through contactless funds transfer. Mazzaferro: Technology is a critical part of the equation, of course, but technology can never drive culture change. Continue to partner with popular digital platforms to provide legacy C2C money transfer services. Data and insights gave us the ability to make important strategic decisions in the throes of what could have been a panic. What does "digital transformation" mean to Western Union? 28+ active Western Union coupons, discount codes & coupon codes for June 2021. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. Some want to go to a retail store and pay cash. Now its more pull. 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. 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]. Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. Part of this agility drive involved Western Union migrating its legacy on-prem IT infrastructure to the Cloud. Digital Transformation. Thats the high performancewe rely on with OutSystems., Low-Code for Digital Financial Services Delivery. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. Microservices, Digital Process Western Union built its platform by assembling a global network of third party agents. Meanwhile, new fintech players like Transferwise are able to offer cash transfer services for a fraction of the price since their operations are 100% online. 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. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. And that could be at an operation site or it could be more of a frontline thing like a sales executive. How Western Union Became a Global Digital Front-Runner for Cross-Border Payments Money By Jay Jaffin, Head of Global Digital, Western Union May 24, 2021. Deep divides in digital connectivity, internet use, and access remain. While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data Officer at Western Union together with Nick Halsey, CEO at Okera talk about the technology that Western Union has adopted to help build new products and Western Union, Chief Data Officer: Digital Transformation Initiatives (Part 3) | Cloud | cdomagazine.tech Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. Furthermore, a chain of retail outlets is expensive. The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. In 2017, Western Union invested $200 million and 20% of its workforce on compliance functions. Goldfinch Partners is a private equity firm investing in businesses specialising in digital transformation. A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. 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 . We're making content recommendations better for thousands of readers. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Everest Group Low-Code Application Development Platforms PEAK Matrix 2022. 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 . With my work with WEF, I was lucky enough to sit around a table recently with some important people and talk about how we can take this forward. 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. 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. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. Some changes that used to take a month, we now deliver in around 48 hours.. Product Director, United States Money Transfer. Youre expected to come up with new ways of innovation to drive revenue growth across the organization. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. In this video, Shelly Swanback, president of product and platform at Western Union, discusses the three key . And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. 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. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. 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 and Beforepay Offer 'Send Now, Pay Later' Service to Consumers for International Money Transfers Were there tools or technology that were particularly helpful in your transformation? They tend to be younger, they live online and they prefer to do everything there, at the touch of a button, Fellahi observes. In 2017 SEED supported 20 projects, impacting 5,000 children and youth; we hope to support event more in 2018.. Board Committees. 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. Experienced and certified (ACAMS) AML and Learning & Development professional with a proven track of records in compliance, people management, learning areas. Specifically,. That means we can onboard new developers and have them productive much faster, and weve got fewer knowledge silos in the development team., Moreover, low-code development on OutSystems helps Tom fight back in the war for digital talent. 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. This entails a leader or a manager being on the floor with people doing their day-to-day jobs, just observing the way they work. 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. Our leadership team remains true to our vision and values, putting customers' evolving needs at the center of our innovation and holding up trust and convenience as the hallmarks of our business. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. 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.. However, Western Union doesnt view its established retail business as totally separate from the digital world. Leadership. Western Union also is uniquely positioned to explore blockchain applications in emerging markets by leveraging Western Unions retail footprint, regulatory compliance learning, and global brand. You stepped in as CMO just as COVID-19 was emerging, and I cant imagine that a global health crisis was what youd envisioned for your first 100 days. It requires a change in process and culture, the adoption of a common lingo, executive buy-in, and a center . be to drive digital transformation and . Analytics, API Economy & Deloitte announces multi-year collaboration with AWS to co-innovate and engineer solutions that help institutions expedite the launch of digital banking services and modernize their legacy core banking stacks. 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. Kong, New Imagine what we can do if you let us work with your team as well.. [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. Learn about JSON storage. 1 (March 1990), pp. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. Policy . As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. Provide value consistently every month and deliver new value and capabilities. So well go from maybe four pilot teams to a plan to scale out across 400 people and maybe 30 teams next year. 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. Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. HELIX, Management . These agents typically manage retail stores across the world, and offer Western Union money transfer services in exchange for a commission. Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. By John Manning, International Banker. Automation, Microsoft 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. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Now that these pilots are winding down, its been easy to get the support across the organization to find the resources necessary to establish teams that can scale it out in different areas across the company. Prior to implementing Snowflake in 2021, Western Unions data spanned 34 on-premises data warehouses, resulting in latency and operational burdens. Business Application Services, Service Experience . When fully realised, he says, it will give Western Union the agility it is seeking, while also having a positive impact on its bottom line. - Earn My WU points. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. 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. Second, we increased our use of digital media to reach customers and build a feedback loop. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. In [] All of that is dependent on people in the organization putting resources behind this kind of an agile transformation. 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.. 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. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. Manager of a Team responsible for First Level Support, Event monitoring and Major Incident Management to internal and external clients that affects core processes and clients. Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which don't need CEO oversight. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. The organisation was looking for somebody with a fresh perspective who could challenge the norms, bring people together to show them the value of what were doing and basically create an environment thats a little bit different to your usual corporate set-up. Although retail business declined during . 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. 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. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. 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. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. 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). 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 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. 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. The partnership will enable funds to be sent from countries around the world to mobile wallets across Africa through the organization's licensed payment rails. Start Time: 16:30 January 1, 0000 5:32 PM ETThe Western Union Company (NYSE:NYSE:WU)Q3 2022 Earnings Conference CallNovember 01, 2022, 16:30 PM ETCompany ParticipantsDevin McGranahan -. Because if you dont have the right data, your applications will struggle to provide the right business outcomes and customer experiences. Us, Terms One of the benefits that weve really seen as weve gone through these first two years of our journey is what happens when we get everyone speaking the same language. . In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. The author approaches the problem using public. Thats changing. Seven months after Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group announced they were purchasing Western . Having got the right people in place, Singh and his team set about building a partner network to supercharge Western Unions technology evolution. One of these customers is Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data & Innovation Officer of Western Union, which serves more than 100 million global customers through approximately 600,000 retail locations, and via its digital platforms. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. Africa's largest payment gateway, MFS Africa, has partnered with Western Union to enable individuals and businesses across the continent to receive money from over 200 countries and territories. Country/region, Costa Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. Experts at TCS and Western Union share the trends that are affecting digital transformation in financial services. So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. Harare Responsible for . 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. 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. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . 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. We believe in the work we do, why we do it, and who we hire to get it done. Convera. ", 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. A hugely significant piece of the transformation has come from rethinking how Western Union communicates with its vast customer base. Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? 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. Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. Finance. Rica, Hong . 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. . 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. Singh also sees huge potential in the use of blockchain for specific use cases within financial services and payments, for example, helping with the Know Your Customer (KYC) process that is important to stopping money laundering and fraud and eliminating many of the checks that currently hold up cross-border payments. 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. Manufacturing, Communication 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. 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. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. The way we approached it was to use the central WU Way team for capability building. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About Download the Western Union (WU) money transfer app and quickly start sending cash to Mexico and worldwide, 24/7! 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. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. 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. The strategy is also to reduce costs; on-prem infrastructure and people running it is expensive and you need back-ups of everything, especially in financial services. Today, our omnichannel platform places Western Union in a unique position where our physical network and our digital efforts combine to provide customers with a host of options to transfer money, whether in cash, card into billions of bank accounts, online, using our App or one of our 17 mobile wallet partners. Network (IIN), Diversity Equity It works with Talend to streamline data movement in compliance with GDPR across financial, reconciliation, auditing and trading partners. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. If you are a new customer: now you can transfer your FIRST money transfer for FREE*.

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