Leadership. Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. If you are a new customer: now you can transfer your FIRST money transfer for FREE*. One moment later, in Shimla, a hill country city in India, close to the ridge of the Himalayan foothills, a cashier at the . Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activists, Sign up for the Digital Initiative Newsletter. 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. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. Once a customer notarises their documents, they can be stored in a safe location and distributed across the blockchain network, so any regulatory authority or government can access that information. 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. Funds can be picked up in cash at half a million Western Union agent locations worldwide or transferred electronically to the recipients bank account or to a debit card linked to a digital wallet. Learn about JSON storage. We continue to experiment with the technology and time will tell if it offers a better alternative to traditional rails.. Thank you for this great post, Hans. Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. . Its important to understand that business stakeholders are customers of our data. Continue to partner with popular digital platforms to provide legacy C2C money transfer services. 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. We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital . The transformation of Western Digital to a Live Enterprise Modernization of legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications provides an opportunity for a technical upgrade as well as a transformation of the core business, according to IDC. InsurTech & Crypto projects as the world embraces CX, Business Transformation and Digital . That support has made it a lot easier to have the influence we need to make the transformation successful. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. The OutSystems platforms capabilities were immediately put to the test through 2021, as Western Union and its system integrator started development of its new digital banking app that includes a multicurrency bank account combined with money transfers, and other added benefits such as a Visa Platinum debit card. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. 12. [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. 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. 35, No. Second, we increased our use of digital media to reach customers and build a feedback loop. 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. Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. 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 author approaches the problem using public. She also has worked with ad agencies like Ogilvy and McCann. One of our most important tools is the floor walk. These agents typically manage retail stores across the world, and offer Western Union money transfer services in exchange for a commission. Mazzaferro: In the past, the thinking in the industry has often been that applications are king, and that data flows through the applications. The executive team has done a great job of making it really clear across the company that this is something thats expected of you. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. After exceeding expectations in 2020 despite the outbreak of COVID-19, the world's largest currency exchange service Western Union looks set to exceed US$1 billion in total annual revenues for its digital business segment in 2021 a major milestone for the company and a first in the world of digital cross-border payments.. Western Union's shift toward digital shows little sign of relenting. (2017) Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Application of the Media Pluralism Monitor 2016 in the European Union, Montenegro and Turkey. Companies like Venmo(PayPal) and Zelle(joint venture by several large U.S. banks) have deep pockets, but so far are mostly competing in domestic payment markets. 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. Western Union. Jay Jaffin was just starting his role as Western Unions chief marketing officer when the pandemic arrived. 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. For decades, Western Union has defended its global position by investing in regulatory compliance. Most popular: Free $20 Amazon.com e-gift code for every friend you refer (earn up to $500). How did you navigate those early moments? 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. To that end, Singh has built on an existing relationship to forge a highly valuable partnership with Salesforce and oversee the roll-out of its industry-leading Marketing Cloud. UnionDigital Bank is the trusted bridge between innovation and regulation. Fellahi sees the Messenger bot as a promising tool. [10]Jeff John Roberts, Western Union is Testing Ripple and XRP for Money Transfers, Fortune, Feb. 14, 2018. The role of CDO needs to encompass more than data management and data governance, more than even enabling the pipeline and managing the environments. Sub-Saharan Africa 3G and 4G mobile broadband coverage stands at 86% and 57% of the population, respectively. Theyll be there to help you stay on track or course correct when you have troubles. Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile . Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. People are enthusiastic about the results of the pilot, and they want to see that in their own area. . Behind those market-shaper practices are the lean tools and behaviors we develop and encourage. If CDIOs dont have the right culture on their teams, how can they help drive a data-first culture throughout their organization? This will enable the company to maintain its high . Part of this agility drive involved Western Union migrating its legacy on-prem IT infrastructure to the Cloud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. How did you evolve for digital convenience and safety? Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. Western Union (WU) is a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments. How Your Small Business Can Be Managed With The Right Databases, Why Businesses Must Focus on Introducing Technology in the Workplace. Automation reduces development toil, were more productive, so we dont need so many developers, and we dont end up with orphaned code when developers leave. 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.. The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. 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. Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. Beyond the public health crisis, COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on personal finances, causing poverty levels and inequality to rise globally. Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. 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. ; Offering combines Deloitte's ConvergePROSPERITY BankingSuite solution and multiple AWS services. 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 new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. We will expand our Messenger bot to other countries and add other languages, he adds. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Manufacturing, Communication He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. As a company, Western Union is in the middle of a transformational moment. 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. W ith the outbreak of a crippling global pandemic and a pronounced global economic slowdown, the last few years have been rather tumultuous for the world. The way we approached it was to use the central WU Way team for capability building. Digital is all about how we reach the customer. 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. Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. Really understand the business stakeholders problem and how you can fix or enable it. 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. 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 . 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. Every year or two we rescore ourselves in a company-wide exercise to see where were making progress and where were falling behind. 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. The fusion of the digital and the physical, the irrepressible rise of new technologies. Download the Western Union (WU) money transfer app and quickly start sending cash to Mexico and worldwide, 24/7! Increasingly, digital technology and mobile devices play a key role in these transactions. Pay for your transfer instantly with a debit or credit card** or start a money transfer and complete the payment in cash at a nearby agent location. People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? Board Committees. So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. Deep divides in digital connectivity, internet use, and access remain. Western Union. 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. Western Union has innovated before. Updated on. Digital Transformation. . Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. Western Union reduced data warehousing costs by 50% and has saved millions through streamlined data engineering and administration after moving more than 30 data stores, including on-premises data, into Snowflake. Network (IIN), Diversity Equity Engaged in problem resolution of complex . ", Tom adds, In fast-moving customer-facing scenarios, development is never build-once-and-doneyoure always iterating to refine the customer experience. 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. Secure, touchless, digital money transfers were a safe, reliable way for people to send funds where they needed to, so we leaned in there. When people send money to friends or family across the country or around the world, chances are good that Western Union is involved. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Singh is a proponent for a Central Bank Digital Currency, which he says is significantly different to the digital assets such as BitCoin and Ethereum, which can fluctuate wildly in value over short periods of time. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. Strategic partnerships working with platforms like Google is a critical piece of that. Complete your profile for personalized recommendations, Managing Director, U.S. Financial Services at Google. Becoming digital first meant we needed to deliver fast, frictionless experiences, especially on mobile. de 2007 - actualidad16 aos 3 meses. Transformation, Cyber 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. A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. Over the last two years, Singh has been accelerating Western Union's tech plan.