Boomi Helps Higher Ed Institutions Meet Increasingly Complex Demands

5 minute read | 27 Aug 2024
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By Boomi

In an article published late last year in Forbes, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation Jamie Merisotis noted, “Society’s demand for talent continues to grow, to the point that two-thirds of good-paying jobs now require a post-high school credential.” Of course, as this and many other articles point out, higher education is rife with problems. It’s easy to find lists of these issues, and funding and budget constraints top many. But two frequently mentioned near the top sit right in Boomi’s wheelhouse:

  • Technology Integration: As digital transformation accelerates, institutions must invest in new technologies to enhance learning experiences and administrative processes while ensuring the security of student data.
  • Online Learning: The pandemic accelerated a shift to online learning that was already well underway, presenting challenges in maintaining engagement, quality, and accessibility in virtual environments.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at how the Boomi Enterprise Platform helps three universities solve the many technology hurdles affecting their ability to deliver the services — financial, digital, and physical — that contribute to student success.

California State University Dramatically Shrinks Cal Grant Processing

California State University (CSU) is the nation’s largest four-year public university system, enrolling more than 450,000 students across 23 campuses. During their studies, many of these students become eligible for Cal Grants, issued by the California Student Aid Commission (CSAC). The grants are often the difference between a student staying enrolled or dropping out. Yet the grant issuance process often took a month or more.

CSU’s Chancellor’s Office adopted the Boomi platform to provide API services across all its campuses. One of the first services built automatically collects Cal Grant data and transmits it to CSAC, reducing the time required to collect critical enrollment information from a month to just a few days. Read the whole story of CSU’s success with Boomi.

Florida International University Transforms Its Mobile App in Two Months

It’s no secret that today’s students expect to do everything on their phones. The students at Florida International University (FIU), Miami’s public research university, were no different. FIU had a mobile app that connected to its Student Information System (SIS), but it was built with legacy code. As student demands and third-party data sources increased, the app needed a serious overhaul.

FIU’s IT group looked for a low-code integration platform to help make the changes. Boomi’s ease of use, efficiency, and comprehensiveness — including its ability to reuse components FIU had already built — were just what the doctor ordered. Within weeks of purchasing the Boomi Enterprise platform, FIU was deploying integrations, and its team easily picked up speed. The backend of the FIU mobile app was rebuilt in only two months, while the initial build took 10 years! Learn more about FIU’s success with Boomi.

Louisiana State University Drives Student Success With Workday Student

Louisiana State University (LSU) has streamlined financial, HR, and educational processes by transitioning from legacy mainframe systems to cloud-based Workday technology. With nearly 39,500 students across multiple campuses, LSU is rolling out Workday Student to help drive student success and meet expectations for unified experiences among Gen Z digital natives.

After evaluating several industry solutions, LSU selected Boomi for its easy drag-and-drop interface, development speed, quick ramp-up for new users, and centralized maintenance. The Boomi platform has proven to be an effective solution for LSU to address cloud-to-legacy challenges and the complexity of custom coding.

Boomi Helps Higher Education Institutions Overcome the Challenges of the Digital Age

Fast, flexible connectivity across multiple applications and data sources is essential for more engaging student experiences, improved recruiting processes, tailoring the student lifecycle, and boosting administrative efficiency. It’s also the only way to “hit the sweet spot” with tech-savvy Gen Z students who expect a digital university experience on par with what they enjoy in their consumer lives. Moreover, economic pressures demand institutions make the move from costly, inflexible, and maintenance-intensive legacy on-premises systems to more affordable and agile cloud applications.

Done properly, digital transformation initiatives in higher education improve the quality of education, streamline administrative processes, liberate funding for innovation, and raise satisfaction levels across all stakeholders.

Learn more about Boomi solutions for higher education.