Western Union

My placement in Western Union can be divided into two parts due to working in two different departments: Sales Support and Marketing. The placement period lasted from 2nd of September till 28th of December 2013. I have been working in Sales Support Department (SS) during the first month of my employment in the company. My further practice continued in Marketing Department. Let me introduce some details about both departments and my duties, responsibilities and skills I have used and gained.

Sales Support Department.

The main function of this department is to create and build efficient network chain of active agents on a certain territories (retail locations only (shops, markets, mobile retails, different service locations, etc.), not banks). By the end of 2013, the total number of independent WU retail locations show 1650 with a revenue of 1,2m$. Geography of this project is widely spread and contains 15 cities of Russia and close locations. The territory is divided between 3 regional managers (STSEs) and WU locations in each city are controlled by different sub-regional managers (TSEs).

Despite of searching new WU locations, the aim of these managers is to develop and increase the effectiveness of business of each existing location, and to manage the revenue and income on advocated territory. The main stages in their operations are analysis, planning, realization and reporting to the Moscow office, while the main goals are to sign contracts with new partners, activate locations, develop these locations and keep reports updated.

All the managers' activities are controlled and supported by Sales Support Department in Moscow. It consists of several Sales Support Specialists who are responsible for own Russian regions and all of them have the same duties and responsibilities.

This department is relatively new in comparison with others (was opened in 2012). Its necessity was supported with increasing quantity of WU locations in retail chains. As business cannot be managed and controlled in banks and retail WU locations in the same way, the company decided to acquire specialists who will keep in touch with regional managers and retail locations would be better structured and more properly managed and controlled.

Every following step of new WU agent's activation can be done only after approval from the department. Firstly, manager comes to location (`cold visit') and presents WU's services, after the agreement is signed, SS make a pre-check of main documents. If all the documents are correct, the contract is send to Settlement&Compliance Department. After the full document package is ready and correct, Sales Support enters new agent in all databases, supply it with all necessary equipments to be able to make money transactions, ask Compliance to educate the staff and the agent is activated.

Sales Support Department usually has the same process of new agent activations and report updates. On every step Sales Support interacts with other departments for checking and agreements, and overseas offices. All the reports are daily and weekly updated (they contain information about activations, locations, transaction etc.), information about daily activities of TSEs must be send by them strictly by deadlines; every Friday there must be a plan for the following week.

During the first week on my new job I had to understand the functions and duties of the department and how it relies to the other departments in the company. I was given many presentations about WU Company and its main services, further with explanations and instructions of Sales Support regarding their responsibilities, communication processes and data reporting. The employees of Sales Support are the first people in this department and their team has never changed before I came. They faced some difficulties to explain me the duties and responsibilities of their job in the company. Luckily, there are several presentations for new regional managers in which all the processes of documentation and reports are precisely described.

It is always important to show yourself as a hardworking and diligent employee in the first working days and keep this image as long as possible. I tried to memorize everything quickly but it was not easy as Sales Support job was mainly connected with long algorithms of agents' registration and its further management. This type of job needs experience first, after what you usually get full understanding of situation and later try to improve your skills.

WU is a perfect example of worldwide brand which has many offices in many countries and they all have to keep in touch on phone or mail. All the business events, conversations, mails and reports in the company must be held in English language.

In my duties was included working with important documents and contracts: its composition, sending them to managers and agents for signing, checking, sending to the other departments, keeping them in online and offline archives and updating these papers if necessary. All the information was stored in computerized database programs like Paradox, Midgaard, Diasoft and SalesForce. It took time to get fully acquired with these programs; they contain locations and owners' data, agents' status, quantity of transactions etc. Most of the databases must be updated daily or weekly by hand and on time. Before I faced such tasks, I have never dialed with any complex computer databases. As many companies use such programs for data storage nowadays, it is very skillful to know how to work with them.

There were also special reports requests for me from colleagues and managers where I applied my skills of presenting relevant and concise data in a logical and structured way in Excel or PPP. This tasks from managers needed long analysis of a lot of information from existing quantitative reports and collecting of primary data. Usually these data was gathered through calls to regional managers or agent locations. It could be just simple acquiring of information or mystery calls to check the availability or quality of WU services in some locations. Here I had to use my communication skills in different situations. In the beginning I felt myself a bit confused as it was hard to follow some conversation but within time I heard how other employees answer these calls and gained needed experience.

While working with new location activation, I had to keep in touch with other departments of the company not only with local but also foreign offices. I had to remember well others' duties and whom I should ask various questions and requests. It was also good practice of English as most of the communication was done with USA office in Denver.

By the end of September, I was assigned to conduct an introduction presentation and two training programs for new regional managers where I explained them some new changes in their activities and processes which were introduced first in Q3 of 2013 and analyzed several WU cases which were connected with their responsibilities. It was my first experience in real life when I made such presentations where I taught people new things rather than discussed or presented some secondary theoretical information as I usually did in university. I felt so much responsibility because how well and correctly I explained influenced further managers' activities and understanding of up-to-dated situation.

In a couple of weeks after my placement has started I already had good understanding of company's structure and Sales Support Department responsibilities and activities. Nevertheless, the office has about 150 people, I became acquainted with most of them in a short period of time due to frequent job meetings, international townhalls, and numerous gathering in kitchen to celebrate holidays and mini events.

WU operates worldwide in `American style'. What I mean is the open atmosphere in relationships and conversations between any status of employees, cooperativity (when people are keeping well in teams, trust each other, actively introduce their ideas) or friendly communication style which is rather informal than formal (with reasonable limits for sure). These things let me dispel the myths that working in office can be just boring; what is more, my colleagues were always happy to help me with some tasks or advice.

My last days in Sales Support Department I spent ordering WU marketing products for all the Russian cities where WU operates and sent them to regional managers to use in their locations. This was the first time I appeared in Marketing Department and later I was offered to continue practice there, after what I finally moved to this department.

Marketing Department.

Marketing Department in WU Moscow office is responsible for all marketing activities on the territory of Russia and CIS countries. Despite being a big company with high number of staff, all the duties in marketing are divided among just three Marketing Managers. Their job is related to all 4Ps and other marketing issues: planning and strategy for Russia and CIS, pricing, promotion, production of advertising materials for online and real WU locations and partners' support, market segmentation analysis, corridors analysis, surveys etc. As any other department, WU has to keep its reports updated.

During 2013, WU Marketing Team Russia interviewed more than 200 clients, carried out two important researches and held 15 focus groups, placed advertising on all WU locations and 500 transports, introduced 2 hours of advertising on radio, spread 226k leaflets, sent 7m SMS/MMS, and contacted directly to half a million of people.

The first days in new department I had to spend for analyzing what is going on in WU Marketing Department. I was introduced to all marketing employees; they are real professionals with great experience and good specialists in this business.

Since the competition of money transaction (MT) market has significantly increased in the last few years due to entrance of many Russian competitors which offer lower price MT service with quality sometimes not worse than WU's. I have read many survey results and competition analysis of MT business, which gave me a much greater insight of MT market and understanding of WU's market position among competitors. These surveys were ordered by WU in popular marketing research agencies. The reports contain data about competitors' countries of operation, pricing, location and client figures, some financial data and operational and service peculiarities. Furthermore, I should not have forgotten about other MT methods which are also some kind of competition for WU and MT market in general.

To gain some quantitative data I analyzed some statistics on Central Bank Russia website which introduce annual and quarter money inflow and outflow figures to and from the country, money amount circulations between Russia and abroad which are sent only through MT companies. To start to work I also needed to have well understanding of least and most popular corridors of money transaction between countries. The process of searching for this information, memorizing the main aspects and building in mind the general picture of the market structure and companies' needs and goals was totally different from what I used to do in Sales Support Department.

For the first two weeks I was given tasks by managers to find some secondary data about competitors in the Internet in order to help to make market research presentation with comparison of WU and other companies. Further tasks were individual, most of them were connected with competitors where I analyzed main KPIs such as corridors' market share, inbound and outbound transaction volumes, average transaction amount, number of locations, migration processes etc. Most of the reports and collected data I presented were in Excel tables and it was important to present it in proper way with high visibility and easy structure. While having done such reports, I had to understand that this file would be available in WU internal database for other employees as already secondary information or for further update. Gathering and analyzing such information always takes a lot of time as the data must be the latest but sometimes it is impossible to find everything you need just in Internet or by mystery calls, however usage of some external data can be acquired from other sources or departments.

In Q2 of 2013 Western Union introduced new pricing for their services, so I did some reports on comparison of prices in bank and retail locations of WU and its competitors when MT are sent and received in cash. As WU has a wide range of product portfolio which means that people can send money in cash, online, through self-service terminals and ATMs, by cards etc. In 2014 WU is going to introduce D2B (Direct2Bank) service in Russia which makes it possible to make MTs in cash which the receiver can get directly on his bank account (available from Russia to 45 CIS and FA countries). This time my task was to make up the text which WU would place on the website and form a brochure and poster for the new service. I took some of American and British text and style as an example and made good proper translation. This task was more creative in comparison with previous ones, so I could show my creativity in marketing concept.

Promotion is very important in such competitive market and every MT brand offers many seasonal or holiday discounts, promos and lotteries. However, every promo should be evaluated after it finishes in order to understand whether it was profitable and attracted more customers or not. I had a task to collect the results of two promo campaigns which took place in Georgia and Moldova in summer 2013: new tariffs were introduced and some events were organized in cities to attract new customers and increase existing customers' loyalty. By the way, results show positive figures in profits and increased amount of transaction in comparison with previous months.

WU runs loyalty program (LP) called myWU. To become a member of this program, a customer has to make the first money transfer and fill in personal data or register on the website. After registration he gets own personal code which can be used for further money transactions. Actually, myWU cannot be called as LP yet as by now it is just a card (or just number) which contains customer information (no any discounts or promos are introduced yet). To make it work, WU needs to develop the program and make it real LP. I analyzed the LP structure and its kinds and proposed some ideas in a form of presentation. I introduced full description of competitors' LPs and other popular LP existing in Russia in banking and retail sector, worked out most proper strategy and important issues to consider when developing myWU, offered possible next steps to develop the program, how to advertise and promote it properly and gave some useful tips to make the program more effective and attractive.

After numerous readings about focus groups, I finally had a real experience to see how these deep interviews take place. WU used service of CESSI agency (Institute of Comparison of Social Research) and conducted five different focus groups with different groups of people. The groups were chosen due to countries depending on where they send money (most popular corridors were chosen) and for which reason. All the groups were absolutely different; they did not know that the interview was ordered by WU. The subject for research was to find out how people's attitude to different money transfer systems. I found the interviewer's questions very interesting and I liked how she led discussion from one topic to another to reveal participants' real feelings and thoughts.

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