Convera. Updated on. Hiring experienced developers was already hard, and the skills drought got even worse with the great resignation. Head of Information Technology & Digital Transformation Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Oct 2015 - Present 7 years 6 months. Some changes that used to take a month, we now deliver in around 48 hours.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Maybe it started out as more of a push, where we were looking to come in and work with a team. The pilots help get buy-in across the organization, and then once we have that buy-in, it provides the resources necessary to scale. Western Union offers digital transactions in 70 countries to move money around the world. Huawei believes digital talent is a key driver in achieving digital transformation, solid economic growth, and better quality of life. This would help Western Union objectively pursue new blockchain opportunities, even if those opportunities eventually cannibalize or destroy its existing C2C business. Western Union has innovated before. Western Union's investment in India is part of a broader fintech and innovation strategy that is driving the company's digital transformation. Their bread and butter business is charging hefty fees on remittances and their core advantage was a network of retail outlets and agents across the US and partners around the world to get cash from one family member to another. 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. Digital Transformation. 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. Faced with numerous applications to deliver, the need to rapidly iterate customer experiences, and the steep learning curve for new Cloud DevOps toolchains, Western Union decided to evaluate low-code platforms. Industry experts were also drafted in to create the army that was required for this technology mission. Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. Finance. Mazzaferro: In the past, the thinking in the industry has often been that applications are king, and that data flows through the applications. Seven months after Goldfinch Partners and The Baupost Group announced they were purchasing Western . (PDF-165 KB) The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. 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. We started function by function, looking at individual deployments across our different groups in the company. . Specifically, how Data, Editors note: This is part of a series of blogs about the data economy. Although retail business declined during . So, constant iteration and rapid delivery are crucial. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. From apps that save lives to those that process loans in a Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. And still others want to do it all online.. 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. Snowflake enables us to centralize our data and enable application and business processes to leverage it across the organization. Western Union Digital Services Enhanced in the UAE with Mobile App and Online Access; ITFC and Dubai Exports host B2B Forum to Promote Agri-Food Trade between Arab and African Countries under the Arab Africa Trade Bridges Program; GBM and Banfico partner to support the Kingdom's efforts for a more digitalized financial sector Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. Many of its 150 million customers worldwide depend on money transfers to pay for food, electricity, medication, and other necessities. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. Its reach is staggering: present in more than 200 countries and territories, transacting in 130+ currencies, with approximately 150 million people having used Western Union to either send or receive funds over the last year. I want to see those same results in my organization. I think thats an indication of how well its really working across the company. . We have a lot of great ideas in terms of investments to drive that topline revenue growth, but we needed ways to fund those. We believe in the work we do, why we do it, and who we hire to get it done. Guide for Suppliers, Select 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. We teach employees, and then they execute. Western Union is the worlds first P2P company. 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. be to drive digital transformation and . 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. Looking back at the results of our work over the last couple of years across all of our deployments, you see some really impressive gains. - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. Services, High A hugely significant piece of the transformation has come from rethinking how Western Union communicates with its vast customer base. Because if you dont have the right data, your applications will struggle to provide the right business outcomes and customer experiences. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. Here is Swamy Sivasubramaniyan, Head of Financial Services and Settlement Platform for Western Union, discussing the digital transformation experience with Infosys and Oracle. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. 2023 Snowflake Inc. All Rights Reserved | If youd rather not receive future emails from Snowflake, unsubscribe here or customize your communication preferences, Snowflake for Advertising, Media, & Entertainment, unsubscribe here or customize your communication preferences. - Earn My WU points. Analytics, API Economy & They essentially sponsor a team and loan the resources that are necessary. These agents typically manage retail stores across the world, and offer Western Union money transfer services in exchange for a commission. Board of Directors. Build customized, secure, and scalable mobile banking apps. 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. Introducing the next-generation operating model, Winning with your talent-management strategy. 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. The fusion of the digital and the physical, the irrepressible rise of new technologies. Management, Digital Workplace Now its more pull. The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. 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. 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). Open a free Western Union Digital Banking bank account to manage your international finances and make instant, transfer fee-free* money transfers to other Western Union Digital Banking account holders. Navigating complex land title issues would also leverage Western Unions existing capabilities of dealing with a range of government regulations. Complete your profile for personalized recommendations, Managing Director, U.S. Financial Services at Google. Not satisfied with the idea of incremental change, the company took a start-from-scratch approach, assembling an experienced team and transforming its infrastructure. Blockchain is technology that uses an open, distributed ledger to permanently verify and record transactions between two parties. They can include creating strategy placemats (one-page strategy overviews that are easily shared), frequent team huddles, one-on-one coaching, and process confirmation. Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. Services, Data 28+ active Western Union coupons, discount codes & coupon codes for June 2021. . And being with the people that are actually doing the work really helps the management get a better sense of where they can use their leadership and influence to make that process easier for the employee and better for the customer. We embrace the white canvas and first principles design, breaking away from legacy systems to create smart . [3] Shelly Freierman, Telegram Falls Silent Stop Era Ends Stop, NY Times, Feb. 6, 2006. UnionDigital Bank is the trusted bridge between innovation and regulation. Country/region, Costa For example, helping African countries develop official land registers could eliminate a huge barrier to investment and capital inflows (e.g., by resolving uncertain and disputed land titles). Youre expected to find ways to optimize your processes and drive value. Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities That system is fine in a cash based economy, but is becoming increasingly cumbersome as digital payments take hold in emerging markets. 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. NICE have announced Western Union, a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement, has advanced customer experience through improved . First, Western Unions third party agents may try to thwart any concerted moves to digital platforms, seeing such a move as a threat to existing commission revenues. 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. Join us to learn how your organization can become a leader in the Data Economy and the business benefits that result. And its not something you can achieve really quickly, its a multiple-year process. Western Union (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments and Zain Cash, the award-winning mobile financia . 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. Learn what is a data platform, which encompass a range of elements required to support the data management cycle. 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. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. Western Union has the infrastructure to help make that a reality. Arab Emirates. 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. Learn about JSON storage. 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 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. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. Youre now a year into your role as CMO and leading through a prolonged global crisis. Some development teams suffer 100 percent attrition in two to three years., "OutSystems helps in many ways. Not just front-end, but back office and our contact center. 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. As an iconic brand for over 150 years, Western Union is constantly striving to innovate for their customers. Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new digital business models. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. Contributed to establishing Quality Assurance, Training and Documentation strategy and processes for AML Operations functions. Engaged in problem resolution of complex . People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? The company, which has been in the money-transfer business since 1871, launched online transfers via WU.com in 2000 and got into mobile money transfers in 2007. Digital transformation in Western Union must be driven from the top-down. In the past five years, theres been a leveling across applications and data. Snowflake: What do you see changing now that your organization is better able to share data? 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. 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. Looking ahead, the Sales Cloud will be connected to the Marketing Cloud, which in turn is connected to our Care Cloud, so that whenever something happens across any of those products we are able to react in a way that suits that customer. Unless they can feasibly use technology to improve their cost structure, Im super bearish on Western Union. [11] Western Unions footprint of retail locations gives it a worldwide laboratory for experimenting with blockchain applications. 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. Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. 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. 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. 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. Experience in leading digital products from either the financial services, payment, or fintech industries. But new innovators are highlighting a problem for Western Union: multi-homing is high with money transfers. Transformation, Cyber Reliable for over 170 years. Union Pacific, the railroad company that transports chemicals, coal, food, minerals and automobiles in and around 23 Western U.S. states, has had two workhorses that toiled tirelessly for the past . Marketing tactics evolved to attract digital customers, who have a different profile from traditional retail customers. Manufacturing, Communication . For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. 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. For example, De Beers is trying to create a diamond blockchain for registration and authentication, to prevent the spread of conflict diamonds. Harare Responsible for . Leadership Team. Meeting the moment with solutions required Western Union to accelerate its own digital transformation. In order to fund the investments, we decided that it was really important to do a transformation exercise, look for ways to gain efficiencies and effectiveness across our processes and procedures, and then use those efficiencies to fund the growth investments. 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. 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. Its not done from the perspective of correction or a negative consequence. 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. 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. We saw that our revenue and customer base didnt reflect the opportunity and size of the market.. Our research identified 10 attributes of an organizations data infrastructure that enable it to take full advantage of the data economy, the global supply and, Editors note: This is part of a series about the data economy. Western Union's platform provides seamless cross-border flows and its leading global financial network bridges more than 200 countries and territories and over 130 currencies . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Want to learn more about technology and organizations? Last year, the global-payment services giant completed 268 million consumer-to-consumer transactions worldwide, for a total of $80 billion. Its created a need for financial sector brands to step up and help by democratizing access to their services via mobile phones. 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. A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. For example, in 2016 Western Union integrated money transfer options with messanging apps WeChat and Viber, allowing users to send small amounts of money through the apps. 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. Us, Terms 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 . 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. As such, when Western Union embarked on its technology transformation, it was keen to recruit personnel who could help achieve its vision. 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. The culture change has to be driven across teams to show how technology has enabled different and better outcomes. Western Union's digital services align with the UAE government's policy to create an economy driven by innovation and technology," said Salma Massoud, head of digital, Middle East and Africa . Discover the latest data, insights, and inspiration from Think with Google. Finacle, Infosys With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. 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. [1] One hundred years later, Western Union launched the first domestic commercial geostationary satellite (Westar 1). Jaffin: Digital was critical in a few ways. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. of Use, Payment We're making content recommendations better for thousands of readers. Sector, Travel and OutSystems provides the innovation and agility to accelerate the digital transformation of Western Union. Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . In the latest step in its digital journey, Western Union recently launched a bot that enables Facebook Messenger users in the United States to send money to more than 200 countries, across 130 currencies, from within the messaging app. 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.