By Lisa Martin
“The American Cancer Society runs over 3,000 events a year. Thanks to Boomi, we have data that is available and consistent across the organization. This is providing us new insights related to what’s working well with fundraising and events and what’s not. With better reporting and more insight, we have the ability to make better business decisions faster than we have before.” — Kenny Oxler, CIO, American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society (ACS) is a 100+ year old organization that is leveraging Boomi to modernize its technology foundation and facilitate its cloud-first strategy, with the goal of helping patients and finding a cure for cancer. So far, using Boomi has brought big improvements to the ACS:
39% increase in ride shares booked through its Service Match program
Service Match is part of the ACS’ Road to Recovery program, connecting cancer patients needing rides to treatment with volunteer drivers. Leveraging Boomi to integrate key data sources, the ACS is supporting real-time information sharing between patients and volunteers. They’re able to connect much faster, and in one year ride shares have increased almost 40 percent.
Donation processing management supports 3,000+ fundraising events per year
The Boomi Platform ensures data is accessible and consistent across the entire organization, which gives key constituents like event managers insights as to what types of events and fundraising activities work well and which do not. The improved reporting speeds better business decision making.
Mobile engagement drives DIY fundraising
Boomi is also bringing more flexibility to the ACS, helping its donors contribute in new ways beyond traditional fundraising events.
With Boomi integration, the ACS was able to quickly build a mobile fundraising app that has changed the way the organization interacts with its constituents and raises money. The app makes it easy for donors and volunteers to attract funding in new ways. Through the app, ACS supporters can have conversations with their friends and collect money via their cell phones.
To learn more about how Boomi has helped the American Cancer Society accomplish its goals, read the case study.
NetSuite and Salesforce integration ensures all revenue and expense information is synced
With Boomi, the ACS was able to quickly integrate Salesforce with NetSuite, giving volunteers, patients, caregivers, and event managers better access to real-time data.
Boomi helps ensure revenue and expense information for fundraising events managed in NetSuite is consistent with fundraising event data managed in Salesforce. The NetSuite-Salesforce integration enables volunteer staff and patients to get better access to relevant information than ever before.
“Leveraging Boomi to integrate these key applications helps us ensure that all revenue and expense information is in sync with our CRM,” says Oxler. “Not only does this provide event managers key information at their fingertips when they need it, but it’s also helping the ACS make better decisions and understand how things are happening across the enterprise.”
Improved collaboration between researchers benefits 30,000 patients each year
With Boomi integration and Salesforce, the ACS was able to create TheoryLab, a social media platform that connects researchers with each other so they can exchange information about the kind of research they are doing.
“TheoryLab is helping improve collaboration across the cancer research community, allowing them to be more effective together as they work towards a cure for cancer,” Oxler says.
Driving Digital Transformation for a 100-year-old Organization
The digital transformation journey for the American Cancer Society started with legacy systems that were either nearing end-of-life or were becoming too costly to maintain and enhance. The aging architecture was hindering the organization from keeping up with the pace of technology and meeting the evolving needs of volunteers, staff and patients.
The ACS chose Boomi for three specific reasons, all supporting its digital transformation ambitions:
- Security — This is paramount because of the tremendous volume of patient data that ACS manages. When a Boomi Atom initiates a connection, it uses an SSL handshake to authenticate the data center before transmitting data. The Atom uses the digital certificate automatically created during AtomSphere registration.
- Hybrid IT — In addition to NetSuite and Salesforce, the ACS is integrating Concur, Adaptive, a suite of on-premises solutions, and its data warehouse for historical information. Boomi enables integration of applications and data across hybrid IT environments with speed and ease.
- Low-Code Development — Boomi can support more people within the IT team to build integrations beyond what was possible with traditional custom-coding approaches.
With Boomi, in addition to its patient-focused benefits, the ACS has standardized on its data definition, simplified and agreed on common data collection and storage practices, and improved information and financial reporting to drive key business decisions and activities.
Mitigating Major Challenges Through Integration
Using the Boomi Platform, the ACS has integrated 120+ applications, data stores and external systems while processing 250,000 transactions daily. It has also identified 25+ data domains, mapped the flow of data between applications and data stores, mastered 36 million “golden records,” and implemented new approach to enterprise reporting.
The ACS has mitigated four major challenges with Boomi:
- Data spread across business-critical systems that didn’t sync properly
- Inconsistent data across key platforms
- Old legacy systems that were too costly to maintain
- Limited financial reporting capabilities and key performance indicator (KPI) tracking
Moving forward, the ACS will continue to leverage Boomi as its primary integration platform, and it plans to replace several legacy integration platforms with Boomi. The organization will be standardizing all of its donation processes on Boomi to make raising money for cancer treatments and cures far more reliable and easier to maintain.
To learn more about how Boomi has helped the American Cancer Society accomplish its goals, read the case study.