By Bruce Tierney
Imagine the following scenario: You are the Director of Enterprise Applications, and you have one week to complete a digital transformation project that you estimate will take 3 months. It’s a customer self-service order processing application that requires deep integration with several SaaS applications and a legacy on-premises application with internal approval routing.
This is very similar to what happened to Boomi customer Union Bank & Trust as the pandemic kicked into high gear. As part of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), they had less than a week to create an online loan processing application that connects multiple back-end finance, risk, and compliance applications as well as connecting to external government applications.
The race was on for almost every vendor to introduce one of the first self-service PPP applications — and every extra day of development meant millions of dollars of revenue lost to competitors.
But before we get to the results of Union Bank & Trust’s implementation, here are some new connectivity innovations that can help you if you are faced with this situation:
Boomi is pleased to announce two major enhancements to help you connect your applications faster:
- 130 New Pre-Built Application Connectors – Simply select and connect from over 130 new endpoints to reduce your time to deliver integrations and automations. Independent analyst research based on interviews with Boomi customers has shown integration efficiency can be up to 65% faster compared to custom-coded connections. Now, that efficiency has been expanded to include these new applications and services.
- Intelligent Connector Guidance – Data pulled from our crowdsourced knowledge of 300,000 endpoints connected is used to recommend which technology connectors to consider as you connect less-common application endpoints.
130 New Pre-Built Application Connectors
Boomi already offers more connectors to Amazon Web Services than any other connector, as is described in the blog post “Connecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) Into Your Business Faster.”
In addition to the 32 AWS connectors we have added, the Boomi connector library has expanded further to include 33 Google Cloud Platform (GCP) connectors, Blackboard for higher education, Healthcare.gov, Zoom, HubSpot, DocuSign, Dropbox Business, and many more, as shown below in Figure 1.
The advantage pre-built connectors provide is not having to learn how to code to an API or other interface. There is no need to determine which method to use to connect to the application or endpoint such as REST, file export, SOAP, DB, etc. Boomi has done that work for you, so you can simply exchange data independent of the underlying format.
Figure 1 – New Boomi Connectors (with Amazon & Google grouped by color)
For a complete list of Boomi connectors, including the newly released “Tech Preview” connectors, see www.boomi.com/connectors
Intelligent Connector Guidance, From 300,000+ Boomi Endpoints Connected
One of the biggest challenges in connecting applications is figuring out which of the many ways is best to access data from the source application, and how to insert it into the target system.
Should I use file export or use an architectural style such as REST? or SOAP? Should I write some custom code or is there a pre-built connector for that application?
This decision has traditionally been left to the integrator to try different approaches until one finally works out…a process that is both slow and costly.
Although pre-built connectors are typically the first choice for how to connect to an application, there are tens of thousands of potential applications and web-based services, and no vendor provides pre-built integration connectors for every application and service.
To alleviate this issue, Boomi has introduced the first connector portal in the market that provides suggested technology connectors based on crowdsourced intelligence insights from 300,000 connections made to applications and other endpoints by existing customers.
To find a connector or guidance on using a technology connector, simply enter the name of the application. For example:
- Pre-built Connector Match (i.e. “Amazon”): If an application name is entered and Boomi has a pre-built connector or connectors for that result, as shown in Figure 2, simply select the connector and read more on how to use it.
Figure 2. If there is a “match” with the entered name, such as “Amazon”, a list of all pre-built connectors for that application will be displayed.
- A Pre-Built Connector Does Not Exist: If an application name is entered, such as “epicor” as shown below, and there is not a pre-built connector available, the portal will search through over 300,000 Boomi customer endpoint connections and will return all technology connectors that those customers are using to connect to that application. This helps you know what Boomi customers are using as connections in production environments, removing the slow and time-consuming process of research integration methodologies. In some cases, customers are using multiple options, as shown in Figure 3, allowing you to select the option that makes best sense for your scenario.
Figure 3 – If a pre-built connector does not exist (i.e. “epicor”), then the display will show you technology connectors that our customers are using to connect to that same application.
With these new enhancements to connectivity, the next time an urgent request to create and deploy a new digital process comes your way, you can deliver on-schedule — or maybe sooner, as was the case with the real-world scenario mentioned above.
As described here, Boomi customer Union Bank & Trust built and tested its Paycheck Protection Program implementation in just three days. Within the first 72 hours of the program’s launch, Union Bank & Trust ranked second in the nation for the number of loans approved – far ahead of the country’s major financial players. The organization was one of the first to market, and captured a disproportionately large percentage of the loan requests, providing it with more revenue and increased customer satisfaction.
Check out the new Tech Preview connectors on boomi.com/connectors and search for connectors for less common applications that are used in your company to gain guidance on what other customers are using.
Also, join the Boomi Early Access Program to learn more about how you can collaborate with Boomi on Tech Preview developments to ensure future developments meet your needs.