UTS completes digital transformation with Boomi support

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has completed a digital transformation project integrating Boomi to enhance student experiences and streamline administrative processes.

UTS serves over 40,000 students, which requires efficient handling of a vast amount of enrolment and academic data. The recent project involved migrating the core student management platform to the cloud, facilitated by Boomi's Managed Cloud Services (MCS). This move is intended to improve the institution's capacity to provide rapid, data-driven services.

Anthony Heiler, Head of Enterprise Platforms at UTS, noted, "In April this year, we migrated our formerly on-premises core student management platform to the cloud, making Technology One our first major user of MCS. It was a huge piece of work, requiring a rejig of 400 integrations. Yet, this was practically a non-event, which was a huge relief to the organisation. Because we worked with Boomi to ensure MCS was 'right sized' to handle the load, students didn't feel a thing."

Boomi's MCS offers UTS fast and scalable access to cloud services without the need for configuration, monitoring, or management on their part, allowing the university's IT team to focus on process automation.

Heiler further explained, "Rather than maintaining integrations, we've invested in building integrations that bolster students' experiences. For example, it used to take 16 days to ratify student grades. We've now brought that process down to 24 hours, which is a huge feat for 40,000 students. And according to student services, we're receiving fewer support tickets, which is a victory for clerical overhead and student happiness."

The MCS implementation allows UTS to scale its use of Boomi's platform. Initially introduced in 2018, the platform now provides comprehensive visibility of student, operational, and research data by linking UTS's Technology One Student Management system with other platforms like Salesforce CRM.

Jennifer Leech, Senior Platform Manager Integration, ITU Enterprise Platforms at UTS, commented, "We were highly impressed with Boomi's support during our migration from Boomi on-prem to Boomi MCS. Their team collaborated closely with the UTS Integration Team to ensure the MCS platform met the university's diverse workload requirements. The platform has been a tremendous success for UTS, and we are excited to leverage the new capabilities Boomi has introduced in the APIM space."

According to Anthony Heiler, Boomi has become an integral component of the university's operations, enhancing its competitive stance. Heiler stated, "Throughout a semester, UTS processes up to 10,000 documents per day, but in an enrolment week, this peaks at 300,000 documents. It's at this time students log in and submit timetable requests, typically within the same hour. But this isn't a burden anymore. Since Boomi, we've earned the power to scale and process the data traffic, while maintaining uptime. So, our technology decisions are essentially helping students secure classes with their friends, which keeps them engaged and enthusiastic."

David Irecki, Chief Technology Officer, APJ at Boomi, expressed his views on the project, "As the competition between universities intensifies, there's simply no scope for administrative headaches in the classroom, nor the IT room. By investing in the intelligence and simplicity of its data framework, UTS has not only strengthened its front-facing ability to attract and retain students, but added strength to its back-end IT environment as the university expands."