At 160 years old, the Western Union brand is firmly embedded in the collective psyche. Need to get cash to someone far away in a hurry? To paraphrase the 'Ghostbusters' theme, you know who to call. But the 2012 version of Western Union is about far more than simply money transfer. Over the past decade, the company has expanded into a dizzying array of new products and services that capitalize not only on Western Union's vast global reach - more than half a million physical locations - but also its powerful brand, its expertise in diverse local markets and an intricate web of business partners.

IT has been at the heart of this sweeping business transformation and CIO John Dick and his team are not only enabling change but anticipating it and helping draw the roadmap for the next set of 21st century products. In the latest installment of the IDG Enterprise CIO Interview Series, Dick talked with IDG Enterprise Chief Content Officer John Gallant about his role as a change agent and how IT is helping Western Union capture the opportunities that mobility and social networking offer - particularly in the developing world. Dick also discusses how he has re-architected his organization to keep IT at the center of Western Union's evolution and talks about the evolving role of the CIO in business transformation.

Tech Titans Talk: The IDG Enterprise Interview Series

John Dick is a member of the CIO Executive Council - IDG Enterprise's peer-based global community of leading CIOs.

Q. John, let's provide some perspective here. Talk about the transformation that Western Union is undergoing as a business right now.

A: Our new brand is 'Moving Money for Better' and we do consumer-to-consumer, consumer-to-business and business-to-business remittance and payments around the globe. Where traditionally we've generated most of our revenue from money transfer - where someone walks into one of our locations and sends money to another somewhere else in the world - we're moving to much more of a paradigm around multi-products, multi-channels and placing the customer at the center of our business. We've been very focused on transactions and transaction volume, but now we're looking at these adjacencies and transforming the business to become more customer-centric as opposed to transaction-centered. .