", Tom adds, In fast-moving customer-facing scenarios, development is never build-once-and-doneyoure always iterating to refine the customer experience. . Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. 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. Country/region, Costa Experienced and certified (ACAMS) AML and Learning & Development professional with a proven track of records in compliance, people management, learning areas. The digital transformation is helping Western Union emerge from a challenging two-year era. In the past, JSON storage and analysis required specific JSON databases. 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. 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. Rica, Hong We're making content recommendations better for thousands of readers. OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. 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. Heute nutzen bereits rund 150.000 Anwender in Deutschland sowie in Rumnien, Polen und Italien die Western Union Digital Banking App fr ihre finanziellen Angelegenheiten - immer mit dem Ziel . Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. Were talking 30 percent, 40 percent, and, in some cases, deployments with a 70 percent return on capacity. Board Committees. On May 17, 2018, at the Digital Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria, the European Commission launched the Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans. [2]But today, new technologies are threatening Western Unions entire business model. We wanted plug-and-play convenience to integrate any technology.. Media, Madison Square In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. Deep divides in digital connectivity, internet use, and access remain. McKinsey's Kausik Rajgopal and Lang Davison recently sat down with Western Union's CEO to talk about its multicultural customer base (and . How Western Union achieved Digital Transformation with Infosys and Oracle. Because if you dont have the right data, your applications will struggle to provide the right business outcomes and customer experiences. 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. Jaffin: Our company mission is to enable financial transfers between people anywhere and everywhere; we had a responsibility to continue to deliver on that. You have to recognise that youre taking a massive journey as a company because it has always relied on data centres. 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. It works with Talend to streamline data movement in compliance with GDPR across financial, reconciliation, auditing and trading partners. Entertainment, Professional Convera. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. The reason for that is due to the huge increase in demand for our digital services as lockdowns were implemented across many different geographies. Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. 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. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. Almost immediately, it was clear that with retail stores temporarily closed, digital would need to play a larger role in delivering service to customers. Western Union also opened franchise stores, which offer money transfer services as well as onsite currency exchanges. (2013) Comparing Media Systems beyond the Western World. 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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press In 1861 it sent the first transcontinental telegraph. Reliable for over 170 years. 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. DENVER-(BUSINESS WIRE)-The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, today announced that the Company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a minority stake in fast growing Saudi Digital Payments Company, or stc pay, a fully owned subsidiary of Saudi Telecom Company. 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. The transition from legacy systems to Oracle Solutions was critical to the strategy's success. Profiles, Infosys Knowledge We continue to experiment with the technology and time will tell if it offers a better alternative to traditional rails.. Analytics, API Economy & Security, Infosys 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. your next, Infosys The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Want to learn more about technology and organizations? Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue . That system is fine in a cash based economy, but is becoming increasingly cumbersome as digital payments take hold in emerging markets. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. "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. 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. 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. 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.. Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. 1 (March 1990), pp. Western Union is trying to use Blockchain as an incremental or modular innovation, when in fact it could be an architectural orradical innovation (see chart below) introducing entirely new businesses that fit well into Western Unions existing capabilities. Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Western Union, Enterprise-grade scalability and security, Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservices. According to the terms of the transaction . We are also launching new products into the market, including a pilot for digital banking services in select markets in Europe and a revamped loyalty programme, which require us to capture data from our central warehouses to drive decision making, marketing and customer acquisition. [2] Westar 1, Wikipedia, accessed April 2018. Services, Public New-found agility delivers growth and improved Customer Experience for partners and customers. So youre really talking about game-changing differences between how processes worked before and after. The Western Union Way of digital transformation. Its time to align your banks digital transformation strategy with the entire customer lifecycle by providing a personalized omnichannel experience. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Theyve complemented each other really well and been able to almost mentor each other, as well as building great relationships with the product groups. And when that happens, they start to see further opportunities for continuous improvement, leading them to new ideas about things they can do to improve efficiency or effectiveness. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. Digital transformation in the EU. Cloud services such as cloud data platforms have become cost-efficient, high performance calling cards for any business that leverages big data. Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. Prior to implementing Snowflake in 2021, Western Unions data spanned 34 on-premises data warehouses, resulting in latency and operational burdens. That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. To explore this content and receive communications from Google, please sign in with an existing Google account. Theyll be there to help you stay on track or course correct when you have troubles. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. Mohua is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building and leading brands across industries. 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. It is our responsibility to enable businesses, problem solvers, regulators and communities to leverage fintech for the betterment of lives. 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. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. Cookies help us deliver our services. January 25, 2019 | Video. Western Union powers your pursuit. Really understand the business stakeholders problem and how you can fix or enable it. Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. 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. few clicks, you can use OutSystems to bring your visions to life. We embrace the white canvas and first principles design, breaking away from legacy systems to create smart . But new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. A lot of our big data environment is still on-prem and the mission is to move that completely to the cloud by the end of the year. Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration.