Item: Boomi
Rating: 9
Author: Jake J. Darley

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We started using Boomi in Finance and Operations with a simple use case of provisioning our Product to the customer as Orders are approved and processed. Since then, we have used it to connect Salesforce Account and Opportunity records to NetSuite Account and Sales Order records, to connect Workfront and NetSuite, our Production servers and NetSuite, Zendesk and Salesforce, etc... thought the entire organization. We now have a Corporate Information Systems team that sits within Finance that are Boomi power users, and have 6-7 ongoing projects at any point-in-time. The main objective we are using Boomi for is to connect all of our different SaaS platforms together, so that data can systematically flow between the different environments.

Pros and Cons

Moving data between Salesforce and NetSuite. With the great and extensive open API that both of products offer, Boomi allows you to simply connect to the different endpoints, and drag-and-drop to create the workflow. In fact, when we first implemented Boomi, it was so easy to learn and adopt, that we took one of our accountants and turned them into our Boomi admin.
We also use it in on-boarding employees. When we first create an employee in our HRIS (syncHR), it automatically creates and syncs the user across to Concur, Workfront, Motivosity, etc.
We also use it to sync project data between Workfront and NetSuite. This allows us to have a simply but robust process in recognizing revenue related to projects and work being performed in Workfront.

Honestly, the user interface. It has a lot of room to improve to get aligned with our products it is working with. The design is intuitive, but somewhat clunky because of the interface. It seems to be about 10-years behind other products in this area. The UI is important, especially when you are trying to attract users that may not have a development background.

Return on Investment

It has allowed us to scale significantly without having to add headcount, specifically those geared towards data entry. We went from a $10m ARR business to $200m ARR business with the same amount of Order Processors and 12x amount of transactions by leveraging Boomi to perform a lot of the work, and then having the Order Processing team to simply review that the transaction was processed successfully.

Alternatives Considered

Azuqua and Mulesoft

Even though Azuqua may be a bit more user friendly, Boomi can handle many more situations. Azuqua couldn't handle the majority of the processes we wanted to perform.

Other Software Used

Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Netsuite SuiteCommerce, Concur Travel and Expense, Avalara AvaTax, Workfront, Workfront DAM, ProofHQ, syncHR, Tableau Server, Zendesk, Box, Dropbox, Greenhouse

Likelihood to Recommend

It is very well suited for moving data from one location to the next (especially in the case of moving data between Salesforce and NetSuite). It is drag-and-drop intuitive.

It is less appropriate when you need to run complex sequences of manipulating the data in transit, and also when you need to have thousands of similar items running through the same branch at the same time.

Connecting our Ecosystem of Best of Breed Applications with Boomi

Overall Satisfaction with Boomi