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A large proportion of Western Unions infrastructure has been migrated to the cloud, and Singh reveals a timeline to complete the programme of work. But Western Union is missing the true potential of blockchain for its business. Its more about having the manager understand how the work actually gets done on the floor. Second, we increased our use of digital media to reach customers and build a feedback loop. 2021. Now its more pull. [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. 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. Digital is all about how we reach the customer. Many CEOs are lured into spending too much time on legacy businesses, which dont need CEO oversight. Each quarter our research team identifies on-prem and cloud applications that are being used by the 11000 Western Union employees from the public (Press Releases, Customer References . Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. Theyve complemented each other really well and been able to almost mentor each other, as well as building great relationships with the product groups. 1 (March 1990), pp. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. 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. As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. . 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. 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. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. Today customers can commence their journey on our mobile App, pay for their transaction digitally or opt to pay cash from any of our participating Western Union retail locations, use wu.com or go directly to any of the 1,200 agent locations or Western Union-owned locations in Austria[i]. 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. As we get the pilots completed, the idea is to turn the WU Way team into more of a center of excellence. Western Unions typical customers are migrants seeking a better life not just for themselves, but for their families back home who rely on fund transfers to meet basic needs. 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 that could be at an operation site or it could be more of a frontline thing like a sales executive. 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. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Africa, South The Western Union Way of digital transformation. Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. We believe in the work we do, why we do it, and who we hire to get it done. Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. 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. Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. Security, Infosys In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. 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. Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. One trend that has emerged as a result is the growing role of digital money transfers among people who may not otherwise use those services. Western Union powers your pursuit. Western Union is the worlds first P2P company. People who knew how a team or a group worked before can come in and see its night-and-day different. 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. "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. Theyll be there to help you stay on track or course correct when you have troubles. January 25, 2019 | Video. Automation, Microsoft Something that is ripe for discussion among many of these discussion groups is the idea of a digital dollar, which could be made transferable all around the world with vendors and partners.. Prior to implementing Snowflake in 2021, Western Unions data spanned 34 on-premises data warehouses, resulting in latency and operational burdens. Whats really nice about that is that its so visually obvious. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. Data safety. [5]. 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. be to drive digital transformation and . Hospitality, Waste "As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. Navigate Kong, New 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. 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 is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. 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. Media, Madison Square arrow_forward. Manufacturing, Information Services The Transformation Story of Western Digital. 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. Everest Group Low-Code Application Development Platforms PEAK Matrix 2022. As weve done that, everyone has started to speak the same language, whether its talking about going to huddles, doing process confirmations, conducting one-on-one coaching, or maybe doing floor walks. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . 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. One moment later, in Shimla, a hill country city in India, close to the ridge of the Himalayan foothills, a cashier at the . Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. 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. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. I want to see those same results in my organization. I think thats an indication of how well its really working across the company. Policy . Data privacy and security practices . There are 13 of these practices, and thats really how were assessing success with the transformation across the organization. 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. 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. While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . Assignment: Driving Digital Transformation, AIG & Cyber Insurance Learning to Insure a Digital World, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, How Blockchain Could Help Emerging Markets Leap Ahead, Beyond the Hype: What Blockchain could mean for Africa, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Western Union Brings Money Transfer and Its Tricky Fees to Chat Apps, Emirates NBD, an almost perfect digital transformation, B2B business solutions (cross-border and cross-currency). The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. If Western Union tries to grow its blockchain capabilities within current operations, internal resistors may directly or indirectly sabotage the initiatives. 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 . 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. Furthermore, a chain of retail outlets is expensive. Western Union also opened franchise stores, which offer money transfer services as well as onsite currency exchanges. Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. 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. 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. Navigating complex land title issues would also leverage Western Unions existing capabilities of dealing with a range of government regulations. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. 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. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . In this video, Shelly Swanback, president of product and platform at Western Union, discusses the three key . The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. Technology powers the data economy. Teams that may not previously have interacted with each other are now doing floor walks with each other. 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. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. 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. 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. 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 . They tend to be younger, they live online and they prefer to do everything there, at the touch of a button, Fellahi observes. 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. These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization.