Scaling Up RPA at the

Enterprise to 100 Bots

and lessons learned of
the first two years
implementation at
Western Union

PRESENTED BY

Ricardo Badillo
Director, Business Process Management & Automation
Western Union
WESTERN UNION:
To be the leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement

550K+ 200+ 150M

Agent Countries &
Territories Customers
Locations

Western Union is a global company with

11,500 employees around the globe
with USD$ 5.5BB Revenue 130+ 1B+ 32
Currencies Bank Accounts Transactions
It is supported by two regional operating Transacted Reached Each Second
centers in Costa Rica (20 Years) and
Lithuania (8 Years) representing 30%
of the total Western Union employee
population responsible for a number of Western Union was founded in 1851 and is a leader in global payments
transactional, financial and regulatory services.
processes Serving small businesses and global corporations, families near and far, and
NGOs in the most remote communities on Earth.
OUR CHALLENGE:
We are most often engaging with customers when something has not
worked. Our customers’ unique situations and the complex ecosystem
create a challenging environment.

CUSTOMERS Urgent Emotional Sensitive Personal

are sending money are regularly we are dealing with they are sharing
for emergencies like sending money to THEIR money their personal data
a loved one who has support family and and at times,
been injured loved ones personal situations

ECOSYSTEM • Customer goes through retail with agents where we don’t control the experience
• We operate within a strict and complex regulatory environment
• Small # of fraudulent people creates tension when handling the majority of “good” customers
OUR MISSION:
TO DELIGHT CUSTOMERS,
AGENTS AND PARTNERS BY
DELIVERING GREAT
EXPERIENCES THAT DRIVE
WESTERN UNION GROWTH
TO MAINTAIN OUR FOCUS ON
CUSTOMERS WE MUST HELP
OUR EMPLOYEES RELATE TO
THEM BY HUMANIZING AND
CREATING EMPATHY FOR THEM
TO DELIGHT CUSTOMERS:
IN ORDER TO DELIGHT CUSTOMERS,
EMPLOYEES MUST…

Be free of the more

robotic manual work
Have the right
processes and tools
Understand firsthand what
the customer goes through
when they transact with us
Be delighted
themselves
THREE CORE GOALS:

1 2 3

Create a Take away Walk in

great work non value-added the customer’s
environment work shoes
THREE CORE GOALS:
TODAY WE’RE HERE TO TALK ABOUT ONE OF THESE
GOALS… ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION

1 2 3

Create a Take away Walk in

great work non value-added the customer’s
environment work shoes
THE BENEFITS OF RPA:
EMPLOYEE BENEFITS OPERATIONAL BENEFITS
at Western Union at Western Union

• Allows employees to be part of something that is • Increases operational efficiencies

exciting, innovative and “cool”
o Reduced transaction errors
• Frees up employees to focus on the customer
o Faster transaction processing
• Provides employees with more meaningful work that o Improved accuracy and reduced risk
keeps them satisfied and engaged
• Western Union can grow without adding headcount
• Provides employees the time to spend on more
customer value added work
• Gives some of our employees the opportunity to
actually work on RPA and new technology
HOW WE STARTED:
FORMED CENTER OF EXCELLENCE RESPONSIBLE FOR…

Identify the boring & Pilot with small empowered teams

repetitive tasks not requiring a corporate business
case

Develop criteria for RPA

Understand much of the project acceptance
problem stems from
inflexible legacy systems • Repetitive tasks • Governed by
business rules
• High transaction
volumes • Copy & paste
between
• Structured digital
applications
data
WE QUICKLY REALIZED THE
IMPORTANCE OF PRIORITIZING…
WE HAD LOTS OF IDEAS BUT WE
NEEDED TO PICK THE “BEST
OPPORTUNITIES” RATHER THAN
CHASE EACH POSSIBILITY
THE BEST RPA OPPORTUNITIES

CREATE TIME SAVINGS Automation BENEFITS

that will enable more OUTWEIGH THE
value-added work and EFFORT REQUIRED to
time for innovation develop the solution
STEPS TO AUTOMATE A PROCESS
Initial process assessment
to validate the opportunity 1

Define the scope of

Part of this process is 2 automation and potential
benefit
deciding whether you
robotize the current 3
Design the robot

process or you fix the 8-12 solution

WEEK
process because a robot CYCLE 4 Develop the robot
can do it differently than a
human 5 Test

Deploy the robot to 6

production
CHOOSING A PARTNER
WE PARTNERED WITH BLUE
PRISM BECAUSE THEIR
TECHNOLOGY…
• Has a robust architecture
• Is easy to use
• Is easy to implement
• Supports a variety of different processes (from
Finance, Operations, Customer Service) in a high
transaction environment
RESULTS TO DATE
2016 2017 2018
2 AUTOMATED 21 AUTOMATED 53 AUTOMATED
PROCESSES PROCESSES PROCESSES
$1MM $2.6MM
• Proof of Concept with 1 Simple 700k Tx
• 40 Virtual Robots • 72 Virtual Robots
Process - Desktop Robot, Partner and
SW Selection, 1 month • 48 FTEs Free Up for Innovation • 112 FTEs Free Up for Innovation
• Production Pilot with 1 Complex • 6 Process Automation Analysts • 10 Process Automation Analysts
Process - 6 Virtual Robots, 12 FTEs • Complete Management Team • 4 Process Automation Controllers
Free Up for Innovation, 6 months
• Centralized Infrastructure • 2 IT RPA Service Delivery
• Established Governance • Optimized CoE
• Operating CoE

BOTTOM LINE It is doable, it has been done, it has been a great success here
RPA CoE
SET
1. 2. 3.
Proof of Concept Business Case Assembled
Organization

4. 5. 6.
IT Infrastructure Information Operating Model
Security

7. 8. 9.
Build Pipeline Governance Scale Up
WORKFORCE HUMAN + VIRTUAL
Director, BPM
and
Automation

Reporting and BPM and Virtual

Analytics Automation workforce
2 resources 7 resources 75 resources
LESSONS LEARNED
CHALLENGE HOW ADDRESSING

1
Creating and selling the Get around the business case. In the
business case beginning you won’t have success so
scrape together the money, do a pilot,
have a good partner.

Picking the processes to Set the right priorities, don’t invest in the

2 automate wrong thing

LESSONS LEARNED
CHALLENGE HOW ADDRESSING

3
Positioning to employees Educate on what RPA really is,
highlight the benefit to the employees
and debunk myths

• Get IT involvement
Technology &

4 infrastructure challenges
such as information
security policies
•
•
Pick the right partner
Have a maintenance team
LESSONS LEARNED
CHALLENGE HOW ADDRESSING

5
Determining the correct If there is a multi-step process, make
process sequencing sure you sequence correctly in order to
avoid creating backlogs within the
workflow

Planning for contingencies If the robots fail, what are the fail-over

6 and recovery plans?

WHAT’S NEXT…
WE ARE CHANGING THE ROLE OF
GLOBAL OPERATIONS FROM A
COST CENTER TO A CENTER THAT
ADDS VALUE TO THE BUSINESS

We can redeploy people to work on pilots for

new CX initiatives

Giving our higher volume customers more

attention – I can get to know you better and
treat you differently

If I am saving time in one place, frees up time

to spend in another – allow more time on calls
to empathize with customers
THANK YOU
FOR MORE INFORMATION

Ricardo Badillo
Ricardo.Badillo@westernunion.com

https://cr.linkedin.com/in/ricbadillo