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. We also innovated to make our services more inclusive for customers by creating new ways to send funds digitally and offering real-time digital account payouts. The Western Union Way of digital transformation. [1] One hundred years later, Western Union launched the first domestic commercial geostationary satellite (Westar 1). Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. Solutions enabled - Oracle Revenue Management and Billing, Oracle Business Intelligence, Infosys Transaction Reconciliation System, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Solution and Services, Infosys Oracle Services, part of Infosys Cobalt. & Publishing, Logistics
Western Union is working alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Partners to transform and expand its business, including the launch of a new digital bank. Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a
Western Union Uses AWS to Create Company-Wide Digital Transformation. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. . 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. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. It is our responsibility to enable businesses, problem solvers, regulators and communities to leverage fintech for the betterment of lives. Now its more pull. Swanback said a . To address this new competitive landscape, Western Union sought an agility boost to accelerate innovation. For decades, Western Union benefited from network effects as it added density and new geographies. Convera. I have successfully directed virtual teams working on Mastercard integrations, Western Union and MoneyGram. Not satisfied with the idea of incremental change, the company took a start-from-scratch approach, assembling an experienced team and transforming its infrastructure. 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. Hospitality, Waste
The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. And the new business model may require a very different RPP (traditional money transfer process vs. transfer via blockchain). Deep divides in digital connectivity, internet use, and access remain. Today, structured and semi-structured data can easily coincide. Transfers can be delivered in cash or into a digital wallet or a bank account via electronic funds transfer. Governments pay close attention to cross-border money transfers, and heavily regulate these services to prevent fraud, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. 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. 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. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. Markets are perpetually shifting and change is unavoidable, but to keep up with those shifting tides companies need to stay focused on digital transformation. In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. Thats the high performancewe rely on with OutSystems., Low-Code for Digital Financial Services Delivery. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In just 11 months, we delivered a full-service digital banking experience that expands our relationship with customers.. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. You have to recognise that youre taking a massive journey as a company because it has always relied on data centres. Complete your profile for personalized recommendations, Managing Director, U.S. Financial Services at Google. Western Union International Bank is licensed by the Austrian Financial Market Authority. Western Union has innovated before. Second, Western Unions employees may not have the knowledge or training to effectively lead Western Unions digital transformation, and may resist digital initiatives or operational changes. According to the terms of the transaction . Procurement & Construction, Financial
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 Baupost Group is a $31 billion Boston-based investment firm. Leadership Team. As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. Jaffin: Our company mission is to enable financial transfers between people anywhere and everywhere; we had a responsibility to continue to deliver on that. 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. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. This will enable the company to maintain its high . 12. We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital . Because if you dont have the right data, your applications will struggle to provide the right business outcomes and customer experiences. Before OutSystems, we typically released every six weeks. 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. Western Union is renowned for its unparalleled international network, with over 500,000 agent locations spanning 200 countries and territories. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. While Singh and his team have been occupied with the technology transformation taking place at Western Union, the breakneck speed at which the financial services and payments industry is changing means they also have to be planning for the longer-term. These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization. Country/region, Costa
"As a digital enabler and a pioneer in the digital transformation, we aspire to play a vital role in the vision of the Saudi . 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. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Union's chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. The gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . In this video, Shelly Swanback, president of product and platform at Western Union, discusses the three key . Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. 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. As we get the pilots completed, the idea is to turn the WU Way team into more of a center of excellence. 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. 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. Meridian, Infosys
Its been a great combination. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. 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. In 2017 SEED supported 20 projects, impacting 5,000 children and youth; we hope to support event more in 2018.. Huawei believes digital talent is a key driver in achieving digital transformation, solid economic growth, and better quality of life. Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. Some changes that used to take a month, we now deliver in around 48 hours.. 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. 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. It works with Talend to streamline data movement in compliance with GDPR across financial, reconciliation, auditing and trading partners. We teach employees, and then they execute. Profiles, Infosys Knowledge
Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. ene. [7]For a helpful overview of how Blockchain is being used in emerging markets, see Vinay Gupta & Rob Knight, How Blockchain Could Help Emerging Markets Leap Ahead, Harvard Business Review, May 17, 2017. . 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. 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. Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. 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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Its important to understand that business stakeholders are customers of our data. Specifically, how Data, Editors note: This is part of a series of blogs about the data economy. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. Group, Infosys Revenue Management Platform for Banking, About
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We recently delivered a similar requirement to a higher standard using one OutSystems developer in just 15 days. Africa, South
Key takeaways. Recently I talked to him about the companys rapid pivot to digital this past year, his biggest learnings, and what the future holds. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Theyll be there to help you stay on track or course correct when you have troubles. Though its too early for results, the response from consumers has been positive, he says. 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. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work? So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. 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. 35, No. Nov 2011 - Present11 years 5 months. 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. Jaffin: We engaged with tech partners like Google almost immediately to refine our go-to-market strategy. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. In 1861 it sent the first transcontinental telegraph. Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. 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 . And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. 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. So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. 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. [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. Reframe blockchain from a threat to an opportunity, by creating a new autonomous unit. Product Director, United States Money Transfer. Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. So we had to figure out how to continue to show up for customers while also ensuring everyones health and safely. We saw that our revenue and customer base didnt reflect the opportunity and size of the market.. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. Policy . COVID-19 has brought countless challenges, but its also caused us to focus all of our efforts around customers and reground ourselves in our mission. His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. 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. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. Mazzaferro: In the past, the thinking in the industry has often been that applications are king, and that data flows through the applications. Zealand, South
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. So we established a set of what we call market-shaper practices that we wanted to focus on. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. 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. 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. As consumer expectations continue to evolve, digital will play an ongoing role in helping financial services brands deliver value to their customers and drive business growth. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. 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. Kong, New
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Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. 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.