CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1 - 63

initiatives. By using Hadoop and Cloudera,
we established a robust data ecosystem in just
five months. We've also invested in making
our web architecture more mobile-oriented.
Our CEO recognized that doing these
things would require some new skill sets.
So he established a digital venture team in
San Francisco. It's our customer-focused,
online, and mobile efforts that are helping
to transform our global brand. Now we are
taking a two-pronged approach, inspecting
our legacy systems while embracing new tools
and technologies.
Our traditional platform is pretty robust.
We just needed to turn our legacy capabilities
into consumable APIs or gateway systems
that newer systems can connect with. We also
decided to work with innovative technology
companies and leverage these relationships to
build new processes.

We have been trying
to do smart things, so
we are making some
strategic investments
in transformative
technologies and
business initiatives.

We have invested both in our operational
capabilities and in our technical architecture.
We are now working to be more modular. I am
of the view that you apply core IT capabilitie
s to your key strategic differentiators. In other
words, some of our capabilities and processes
are unique to Western Union and must be

Western Union's Global Reach
(as of December 31, 2013)
* 70 million+ consumers
* 100,000 B2B customers
* 242 million consumer-to-consumer
transactions; 459 million business
payments
* $82 billion of principal moved
between consumers
* 200 countries and territories
* 500,000+ agent locations and more
than 100,000 ATMs
* 120+ currencies
* 75+ language

protected. Outsourcing works well in cases
where design standards have been defined
and you are executing to a well-defined
architecture. We have a combination of both.
We are using some strategic service providers;
HCL is one of them. Especially in the digital
space, I am working closely with HCL,
which is accustomed to building products
for consumers.
Delivery is one area where we are adopting
methods that bring product development and
engineering closer together. Specifically, we
have adopted agile, sprint-based, and scrumbased approaches. That is core to what we do.
We are not 100% there, but we do have the
ability to fast-track that methodology, and we
are rapidly expanding it to other parts of our
tech ecosystem. For it to work, there has to be
tight integration between software product
definition, including business case or gap
analysis, and actual engineering.
CTO Straight Talk - Issue 1

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