Western Union
Western Union connects people and businesses around the globe by providing fast, reliable and convenient ways to move money. The 160 years old company has more than 500,000 Western Union Agent locations in more than 200 countries and territories.
“We will continue to be proactive—anticipating, adapting to and addressing the ever-changing needs of our customers, always striving to stay one step ahead.”
– Hikmet Ersek, President and Chief Executive Officer
Business Need
Western Union has built significant scale in the money transfer business with 242 million consumer-to-consumer transactions and 459 million business payments in 2013 alone.
The company faces increasing competitive pressure from emerging technology players.
The company is transforming and focusing on developing an omni-channel approach that includes retail, web and mobile.
Western Union wants to expand into new markets with e-commerce and other digital products with a goal of reaching customers with a more tailored and personalized experience.
Challenges
In 2013, Western Union processed more than 29 transactions per second, on average, which generated a significant amount of structured and unstructured data that must be integrated from diverse sources (legacy, mobile and online data).
The company needs to cost-effectively deal with this data complexity, while simultaneously scaling access, storage, and processing.
Data scientists must rely upon the data platform to conduct statistical modeling and predictive analysis, systematically noting trends in sending and receiving behaviors.
Solutions & Results
Western Union built a data platform based on Hadoop (Cloudera) and Informatica Big Data Edition for Hadoop.
Western Union is one of a handful of very early adopters of Hadoop on such a global scale.
Products & Services
Informatica Big Data Edition
Provides a safe, efficient way to integrate all types of data on Hadoop at any scale without having to learn Hadoop.
Informatica Professional Services
Provides a full range of professional services based on Informatica’s proven implementation methodology.
Informatica Global Customer Support
Provides your organization with the support you need, where and how you need it: choose from Standard, Enterprise or Mission-Critical Support.
Informatica Address Verification
Parses, cleanses, verifies & standardizes global address data and appends country codes for global address validation.
Success Stories
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Informatica empowered scientific and clinical collaboration at this renowned cancer center by turning data into knowledge and facilitating self-service business intelligence
Illinois State University
Illinois State University relies on Informatica to standardize data analytics that enrich students’ experiences and promote academic achievement