Catholic financial services company deploys Boomi-integrated framework to automate complex fiscal processes for 293 schools in Victoria, Australia.

The Catholic Development Fund (CDF) has chosen Boomi to automate its customers’ corporate card reconciliation process, reducing complexity and speeding time-to-value for Catholic organizations.

CDF has been operating since 1956, providing financial solutions to Catholic schools, parishes, aged care, healthcare, and social service providers. From flexible and tailored lending to credit cards and payments, CDF provides its customers innovative and cost-effective solutions that are aligned with their customers’ values.

“CDF supports Catholic organizations by providing financial products and services. We understand each and every business comes with its own set of financial requirements and technology tools,” said Jukka Rinta, Executive Manager, Product, CDF. “We can’t rely on cookie cutter solutions. With Boomi, we’re able to build unique processes, tailored to each of our customers’ needs.”

As an example, CDF delivers automation of complex financial processes to its customers, including Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) – an organization responsible for the governance and operation of 293 Catholic schools in Victoria.

“Due to legacy processes, MACS was managing 293 individual processes for its corporate card reconciliation, which meant its cohort of schools needed up to 90 days to reconcile simple transactions. This was a massive admin burden,” Rinta said. “MACS identified immediate value in creating uniformity across the schools’ financial processes. So, we sought to deliver a highly integrated solution that could handle the complexity.”

Working it out

To automate and streamline the MACS Corporate Card reconciliation process, CDF worked closely with Australian advisory and IT solutions provider, Atturra, which helped it employ Boomi’s integration platform as a service (iPaaS).

Using Boomi, Atturra helped CDF connect core systems, including CDF’s core banking system, FlexiPurchase expense management, AWS Secure File Transfer Service, and SharePoint.

The Boomi-connected environment automatically cross-checks financial information against the numerous and differing enterprise resource planning (ERP) accounting platforms used by MACS’ 293 schools. The information ingested is delivered to schools via API payloads and fit for purpose content to easily consume purchase transactions together with relevant financial information to varying ERP platforms.

“After being in operation for just three months, we have already seen vast improvements to the speed at which MACS can reconcile transactions,” continued Rinta. “Now, up to 80% of transactions are compared against the ledger within the same month. This is a huge win for governance and provides significant reduction in admin burden.”

In addition to the improvements in user experience, the scalability of the Boomi environment makes onboarding new schools easier for MACS.

Jason Frost, Executive General Manager, Data and Integration at Atturra, said: “Bookkeeping for one business can be complex, let alone for 293 operating across multiple environments. Atturra is proud to have helped facilitate a boost in efficiency for CDF’s customers, while assisting CDF make its corporate card product even more competitive.”

David Irecki, Chief Technology Officer, APJ, Boomi, said: “By putting its customers first, CDF has gone above and beyond. This is a true example of value-add, enriching the organization’s technology capability to move the dial on its customers’ operations. With a connected data framework, CDF has helped its customers save several hundreds of hours in manual bookkeeping, which gives its schools time back to invest in student education.”

According to CDF’s Rinta, the Boomi-connected process is now being evaluated for the unique needs of CDF’s greater customer base.