Frances Waterford, CIO at Cancer Council NSW, tells us how Australia’s leading cancer charity is eliminating data duplications and automating user experiences with the Boomi integration platform.
Boomi, a Dell Technologies business and a leading provider of cloud-based integration platform as a service (iPaaS), has announced that Cancer Council NSW (Cancer Council) has leveraged the Boomi integration platform to connect core operational systems, delivering the real-time data visibility the not-for-profit (NFP) needed to establish a single view of its constituents.
The project also helped automate a multitude of previously manual processes, with the productivity returns allowing Cancer Council to reinvest supporter dollars where they are needed most amid its pandemic response.
Cancer Council provides services that improve the quality of life of those affected, combined with research that aims to lessen the risk of cancer and increase survival. As part of its strategy to become a fully-digital, cloud-first organization, the NFP dedicated recent technology investments to ensuring the efficiency and timelines of information, creating 360-degree visibility of its digital assets and paving the way to enhanced employee and supporter experiences.
Fundamental to achieving its ambitions was the need for digital cohesion and scalability, leading to the decision to integrate its formerly disparate IT environment using Boomi’s Integration Platform-As-a-Service (iPaaS), allowing business units to work more strategically and less administratively.
“From patient support, to research and retail, we offer so many services across NSW, making it critical to have the right building blocks in place to maintain visibility across our operations,” said Frances Waterford, CIO at Cancer Council NSW.
“By leveraging the Boomi platform to integrate our business-critical applications, we have not just removed barriers between our teams, but established a foundation through which we can use real-time data to better understand our constituents, comprising supporters, volunteers and clients. This level of intelligence has shaped informed decision-making as we continue to transform our services for those stakeholders.”
Cancer Council used Boomi’s cloud-based iPaaS to link Dynamics CRM with peer-to-peer donation platform Funraisin, fundraising tool Evergiving, project management platform JIRA and billing software Zuora. With these applications now connected, Cancer Council NSW can trust data is consistent, accurate and always up-to-date.
This proved a major step up, with Cancer Council’s Supporter Experience Unit no longer relying on legacy, point-to-point integrations and batch imports for all data exchanges. With a new, dedicated integration platform in place, siloed data was one of the key issues Cancer Council NSW needed to overcome.
“As an NFP, we needed to select the most versatile, cost-effective and low-code solution. That’s why we chose the Boomi platform – it wouldn’t require a dedicated team of developers and it allowed us to focus on more strategic initiatives, such as constituent centricity,” said Waterford.
Since successfully completing the integration, Cancer Council has eliminated duplicate data and automated user experience. Employees are now spending less time on routine tasks, achieving new levels of efficiency.
“Formerly, donor support employees would have to go through three different systems to obtain and record data when constituents requested a change. Inaccurate information made servicing our community slower,” said Waterford. “Now our supporter experience unit can better focus on the constituent experience by using a single sign-on digital form, integrated and developed using Boomi.
“With less time spent on spreadsheets and more time focused on supporter engagement, we’ve been able to create more rewarding roles for our employees. At the same time, we’ve also found new ways of engaging our supporters, given the administration behind each engagement is no longer a concern.”
Funding for new digital heights
Waterford also said that the company’s digital strategy played an important part in maintaining operations once the COVID-19 pandemic reached Australian shores. Once face-to-face interactions became limited almost overnight, along with broader challenges like an increasingly cashless society, Cancer Council was at risk of losing one of its main revenue sources. In fact, around 60% of charity fundraisers have gone virtual in the last year, with 47% choosing to invest in digital donation outlets.
Cancer Council’s integration transformation went live one month after the local COVID19 outbreak, with parts of the implementation completed remotely once employees needed to work from home. This equipped the charity with real-time intelligence to respond rapidly to changing conditions, all while adjusting to new workplace policies.
“When our annual campaign Daffodil Day hit our calendars, the thought of losing our annual flagship event was a challenging reality. But with the Boomi platform in place, we now had the resiliency to quickly pivot our fundraising tools and methods, in a brand new, socially distant way,” said Waterford.
Shifted off the streets and fitted into a new online model, Cancer Council took Daffodil Day to new digital heights, raising up to A$500,000 thanks to donors embracing the online experience.
In other Boomi projects, Cancer Council is currently evaluating Boomi Master Data Hub (MDH) with the aim to enable management of data and analytics to foster a single source of truth for future business intelligence projects.
Nicholas Lambrou, Managing Director Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) at Boomi, said not-for-profit organizations have been exposed to a unique set challenges in the wake of COVID-19, with as many as 72% of Australian charities reporting an overall decline due to the impact on community fundraising and events.
“Throughout the last year, Australian not-for-profits have seen existing, daily obstacles amplified by restrictions that have eliminated fundamental face-to-face interactions; those designed for both community engagement and fundraising. With an integrated digital environment providing granular data visibility to transform the constituent experience, Cancer Council NSW has been able to reshape its business model to create more meaningful interactions, while combating the industry-wide revenue decline.”
