Charles Sturt University Implements Boomi for 5-Year Transformation of Student Services

4 minute read | 26 Sep 2018

By Boomi

Integration platform to improve business capability and underpin a strategic renewal of core systems and support strategic decision making

Sydney, Australia – September 26, 2018 – Boomi

(Boomi) has announced that Charles Sturt University (CSU) is using the Boomi integration platform to enhance student and staff experience, and underpin a refresh of its core applications as part of a five-year IT transformation.

CSU is a regional university with more than 40,000 students enrolled across 10 campuses and online. In 2017 it initiated an IT modernisation project with the aim of improving its business agility so it can develop and roll out student and staff services efficiently.

“We developed our enterprise systems renewal program in order to speed up the delivery of new resources for our stakeholders,” said Tim Mannes, Executive Director of CSU’s Division of Information Technology. “To successfully execute on our objectives, however, we seriously needed a reliable, seamless and highly-integrated flow of information across our new enterprise environment. That’s the strategic background to our implementation of the Boomi platform.”

The cloud-native Boomi integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) serves as the linking mechanism between all of CSU’s renewed operational systems. This includes customer relationship management (CRM), human resources (HR), finance, research, student management system (SMS), data warehouse and identity management platforms, as well any bespoke applications that are incorporated in the future.

By underpinning those applications, Boomi facilitates a central data repository that makes it possible for CSU to capture consistent and reliable information that can be analysed for better business insights. These insights will help CSU make strategic decisions to overcome prominent industry challenges. In particular, the data consolidated through Boomi will aid CSU to combat attrition by proactively identifying priority students – those who may be struggling in their courses – in order to engage them early and guide them to improved outcomes during their learning journey.

Boomi also strips away complexity from CSU’s IT environment as it is built on a ‘low-code’ design. This should make it quick and easy to create and manage integrations controlling the need for dedicated specialised coding experts. It also reduces the need for the heavy maintenance that is inherent in legacy, on-premises integration technologies.

“The move to Boomi’s iPaaS has given us a high-reliability environment for business continuity. While we have been using integration for a decade, our old integration platform made upgrades difficult, and required a lot of resources to maintain – combined, it demanded a serious amount of effort that impeded our focus on what’s most important: the experiences of students and staff,” said Shane Jeffries, Manager of Integration in CSU’s IT division.

CSU’s decision to deploy the Boomi integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) over other providers followed a market evaluation and discussions with fellow Australian universities, including Deakin University and Flinders University.

“The higher education space is hotly-contested in Australia, with universities under constant pressure to differentiate themselves to existing and prospective students by demonstrating innovative services,” said Michael Evans, Boomi’s Managing Director of Asia-Pacific and Japan. “By connecting systems and operations with Boomi’s platform, CSU is in a better position to understand its students than ever before. As a connected university with digital services, processes and insights, the organisation can optimise its investments in the resources that students need most, ultimately providing students a better learning experience that will enhance their suitability in the workforce of tomorrow.”

About Boomi

Boomi is the leading provider of a unified platform to build The Connected Business, from cloud integration to workflow automation. Boomi helps organisations accelerate business agility by connecting data, applications and people to run faster and smarter.