A Changing Landscape Drives a New Strategy For Western Union
Challenge:
Western Union is a global Fortune 500 financial company and the largest money transfer company in the world with over 500,000 agent locations worldwide. The 160-year-old company has reinvented itself through the decades, each time focusing on the growing trends of its customer-base and fulfilling their needs for fast, convenient services and most of all peace of mind. By the early 2000’s the company began noticing a growing trend of its customers transferring money using online services and increasingly through mobile technologies. This new trend had begun squeezing the profit margins of many of the agents who had been used to cash-to-cash transfers as a main profit center. The challenge confronting Western Union is to begin preparing their agents for an increasingly digital business model where clients rely heavily on technology and mobile platforms to conduct their wire transfer.
Solution:
Gilead Sanders was asked to provide a strategic foresight workshop to over 150 Western Union agents from the Caribbean and Canada and provide an overview of the growing trends in wire transfers and the virtualization of money. Gilead Sanders’s team provided participants with a clear roadmap of coming trends and the growing use of mobility by their customer base for everyday tasks through the rise of connectivity, The Blockchain, and the Internet of Things. The Gilead Sanders team also provided an overview on how to develop a digital ecosystem that would allow Western Union agents to develop a seamless delivery platform of services while allowing strategic partners to participate with them in providing value-added services.
Impact:
Thanks to Gilead Sanders’ strategic foresight retreat, Western Union began focusing its efforts on upgrading technologies for its agents worldwide and how to shift their business strategy. With a growing mobile consumer base, Western Union has begun the shift of helping its agents become knowledge portals for their customers’ financial needs for both short-term and long-term goals. As information becomes readily available and the option to use mobile devices to perform transactions in seconds anytime, anywhere, Western Union agents now focus on creating a unique experience for their customers by developing and integrating a cohesive and seamless digital ecosystem with key strategic partners that can provide a one-of-a-kind interaction during transfers. The company and its agents are now positioned to tackle the future head on no matter where it goes by focusing strategically on where its customers will need them most.