Australian Red Cross completes significant DX milestone with Boomi

Boomi, a Dell Technologies business, has successfully provided a unified experience for the Australian Red Cross and helped the organisation achieve a significant milestone on its digital transformation journey.

More specifically, Boomi has provided a platform that automates administrative tasks and reduces manual attention required, freeing up time and resources for other business operations.

The unified experience directly impacts 270,000 Red Cross stakeholders, including clients, donors, members and volunteers. The platform has also integrated data from multiple new and existing core systems, forming the foundations of the charity's digital experience platform, including the new MyRedCross portal.

Founded in 1914, Red Cross provides multiple services to the nation's most vulnerable, including Emergency Services, Migration Support Services, First Aid and Mental Health First Aid Training, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partnerships. The organisation also manages an extensive retail network.

As part of its digital transformation strategy, Red Cross made the decision to develop a new application, the MyRedCross online self-service customer portal, that would allow it to offer a unified customer experience to its donors.

However, with a large IT environment, Red Cross first needed to connect data from a number of core systems and third party platforms.

This would give the organisation a clearer view of its 75,000 Regular Giving donors in the first instance, before being extended to remaining clients, donors, supporters, and volunteers.

The Boomi platform provides a low-code, drag-and-drop graphic user interface (GUI) to simplify integrations and break down data silos across the business, according to the company.

The project included the integration of EpiServer, Pivotal CRM, Okta identity management, InTech address validation, and Campaign Monitor marketing automation systems.

While these tools were necessary to develop the MyRedCross portal other integrations included connecting the systems from third parties, including fundraising partners, to Red Cross' CRM.

Future integrations include connecting Point-of-Sale terminals to the charity's finance systems to facilitate instore donations, and integrating the data from multiple HR systems to ensure consistent employee and volunteering data and enable the automation of onboarding procedures.

The MyRedCross portal is set to be released early in the new financial year. The organisation states the digital experience platform will transform how Australians engage with the charity.

Red Cross Australia CIO Veronica Frost says, "If we don't have integrated systems, we don't have accurate or up-to-date data on which to base business decisions, and therefore can't provide a personalised experience for our stakeholders.

"We offer so many services across Australia, it's important we're able to tailor our communications to the needs and interests of each person that is engaging with us.

"Personalisation leads to better experiences, but in order to personalise, we first needed to digitalise our operations - this meant connecting all our various systems so we could have a holistic view of our customers based on all the data available to us. Boomi will enable the 360-degree view of the customer we need.

Frost says, "As an NFP, we need to ensure we make the most of our donor dollars so we're focusing our resources where they're most needed; in the community.

"Boomi not only simplifies our integrations and the maintenance of our back-end infrastructure, it also enables us to streamline how we communicate with our stakeholders and will automate administrative tasks like employee and volunteering onboarding.

Every dollar we can save from these tasks is another we can give back to the community through our various services.

"It's a high priority for us to be a digital organisation and deliver digital services to our clients. Access to consistent, accurate, and up-to-date data is absolutely pivotal to our digital transformation efforts, and Boomi is a central part of delivering connected experiences to all our end users," she says.

Boomi managing director of Australia and New Zealand Nicholas Lambrou says, "Not-for-profits play a critical role in helping the most vulnerable in our communities but they face unique challenges in terms of balancing budgets and finding the funding they need to modernise their services.

"By tapping the Boomi platform to break down siloes in its systems, Red Cross can not only provide more tailored experiences to all stakeholders, but it is now in a position to automate administrative tasks and invest even more resources into the crucial support services it offers the Australians who need it most.