Recent Discussions
Q and A with Kalyan Venkat: Timely Metrics from Varied Applications While Meeting Audit Requirements
What were the underlying reasons for the need of data? Need accurate & timely operational and strategic key business metrics from varied applications - has been challenging using multiple ETL tools, data refresh schedules, and data integration points Describe your data strategy and how you executed the strategy. The design focuses on building patterns where 80% of data movement between Source (applications) objects and Target objects– Az Cloud Datalake is tied to executing patterns in SnapLogic. The pattern approach eliminates significant development and testing effort required towards new and updated data from source systems. The use of patterns in data movements allows for well thought of design that is required to trigger data movement only on those pattern certified objects. The data fetch process within a pattern is also designed to be codeless meaning like to like attributes between source and are dynamically mapped in the pipeline – this eliminates need to manage and maintain coding required toward querying data from source and updating target system. Example: one of the enterprise applications has 350+ tables that requires to be updated in Azure Cloud Datalake - instead of developing one to one - 350+ SnapPipelines - using a pattern framework significantly expedited development and delivery schedule - in total there were just 45 Pipelines to address Data refresh both Delta and Full load to Az Cloud Datalake. Comparing with legacy ETL solution that required One to One workflow for each source and target table refresh. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? We leveraged SnapLogic offshore Snap Development resources (2) and Internal (1) FTE to deliver Az BigData Solution What were the business results after achieving this data strategy? Using SnapLogic truly expedited design, build and deliver data solutions and met business needs timely. The ability to integrate data from 13+ systems (Enterprise Apps, Cloud Apps, Third-Party SAAS data and list goes on) - most importantly key data metrics are captured during Pipeline Execution, Data Orchestration, Data Ingestion and Post Process Certification - this is a key requirement from Internal Audit to ensure Data Integrity is not compromised Anything else you would like to add? So far we have deployed over 3000+ Snap Pipelines in production and at most we allocated a half hour per week to review any exceptions during Pipeline processing in production. This clearly demonstrates the strength of SnapLogic as a product to move tons of data between source and target and by applying well thought out design ahead greatly benefits towards building robust, and flexible Snap pipelinesHampshire Trust Bank: Building a More Agile Financial Services Organization
2022 Business Impact Award Nomination Submitted by ⋮IWConnect on behalf of Hampshire Trust Bank. What were the underlying reasons or business implications for the need to automate business processes? As a UK-based specialist bank focused on providing asset finance, specialist mortgages, and development finance solutions, Hampshire Trust Bank (HTB) is continuously innovating and implementing sophisticated solutions to optimize internal business processes. These processes range from Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting to screening and payments integrations. HTB has a clear strategy of acquiring best-of-breed applications to maximize business efficiency and value with new systems that share data and processes within the existing software ecosystem. Each system has its own technology stack on one side and data formats on the other. As a result of this difference, data interoperability became one of the main challenges affecting HTB operational efficiency. Furthermore, considering that data contains personally identifiable information, it required cryptography solutions such as X509 and PGP to be implemented. Once data has been consolidated, screening and monitoring processes are orchestrated to ensure data validity. Paramount among HTB’s concerns were to: support the increased processing of payment transactions per month improve the process of data screening to ensure data validity become more agile and increase customer satisfaction With process resilience of critical importance for any financial services organization, SnapLogic was used to move workload between data centers or strategically use the cloud depending on availability and requirements. Describe your automation use case(s) and business process(es). Use Cases Integration of payments, general ledger, direct debit, and direct credit transactions from asset finance software Alfa to internal and external payment systems Integration of more than 100 reports from Alfa into HTB’s data warehouse Integration of Finova Core Banking Platform’s processes for retail savings customers Risk and fraud detection with implementation of transactions screening with Comply Advantage Business Processes Fully automated processes for customer and employee screening Payments integration with Bottomline and other external providers Consolidation of data into a unified Snowflake Data warehouse for advanced BI analysis and reporting Describe how you implemented your automations and processes. Planning, defining and documenting The process starts by defining the business flow, requirements, and edge cases. Once these things have been defined, the design is documented in detail. A team of business users and technical experts reviews the documentation and approves the design. Implementation The implementation of automation starts by creating pipelines and other assets such as parameterizations or storage locations. Pipelines are executed as Scheduled, Triggered and Ultra tasks. JMS consumers in asynchronous mode are used to read messages from message queues. REST Snaps are used to read data and execute processes for REST endpoints. PGP Snaps are used for cryptography operations, and Script Snap is used for custom cryptographic operations. Data is transformed with a combination of mapper snaps. Results are written into various destination file systems by using File Writer Snaps. Log messages are produced and transferred to Splunk. JIRA tickets are automatically created by using JIRA Create Snap in the case of exceptions. Additionally, email messages and xMatters alerts are sent to the users. Expression libraries are used extensively to parametrize configurations across multiple staging environments. Once the development is complete, the detailed quality assurance process on multiple environments starts before the solution is finally deployed in the production environment. What were the business results after executing the strategy? Integrations combined with specialized banking systems allow the processes to complete faster, more efficiently and with fewer errors across all those systems, dramatically optimizing business processes. Currently, there are more than 50 different systems and apps automated and interoperable in production. By using SnapLogic automations, HTB can support the increased demand and process tens of thousands of payment transactions per month, as well as thousands of screening operations each month. There are tens of thousands of pipeline executions that result in millions of documents every day. Automation plays a key role in both digital transformation and developing a more agile business. Team members can now focus on higher-priority tasks such as strategy, security and customer relationship management. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? The solutions were built by a team composed of internal domain experts, consultants from the external systems, architects, integrators and Quality Assurance professionals. Five FTEs were engaged in the projects. In a relationship that lasts three years, ⋮IWConnect acts as the integration implementation partner and assists in the implementation of multiple projects, each lasting from three to 12 months.Skidmore College: Rebuilding Identity Management System with Oracle HCM Cloud
2022 Business Impact Award Nomination Describe your business and technical use case(s) and the challenges the business had. Skidmore was migrating from Oracle Ebiz on-premise to Oracle HCM cloud at the same time changing our Identity Mgmt system to Okta. All of this occurirng during the pandemic, with staff fully remote and in some cases furloughed. We needed to rebuild our entire Identity Mgmt system from the ground up with the new Oracle HCM system and Okta. Snaplogic became the integration hub for all of this work. In less than a year, we rebuilt our IDM system to work with the new Oracle HCM, Ellucian Banner, Okta and Active Directory. Allowing both employees and students to on board quickly access to all of the applications they needed across the organization Describe your strategy and execution to solve the business challenge. We created a database middle layer to store all the IDM information required for all users and built out pipelines within Snaplogic to handle near real time processing of user on and off boarding across the organization. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? We had 5-6 staff members working on this solution from start to finish. What were the business results after executing the strategy? Skidmore was able to remove the reliance on a 3rd party black box IDM platform and bring it in house. We also rolled out new features to allow users to pick from a list of potential usernames/emails including the use of “preferred first initial”. What was the ROI you gained from executing the strategy? Full transparency into user provisioning. Cut 3rd party IDM system which was about 50k per year Skidmore_Snaplogic.pptx (1.0 MB)Abano Healthcare New Zealand: Impressive Cost Savings by Streamlining IT Modernisation
2022 Business Impact Award Nomination Describe your business and technical use case(s) and the challenges the business had. Abano have an aggressive roadmap to acquire new businesses. Business direction mandated a minimal in house IT capability. Needed to augment the operating model through automation and governance. Pressure to optimise cost model and operating margins through standardisation and automation of business processes. Describe your strategy and execution to solve the business challenge. Abano Healthcare was also drawn to the agnostic nature of the SnapLogic platform. The DSO has a mixture of on-prem and other pieces coming in. SnapLogic was flexible and, therefore, able to connect to everything. With ambitious growth aspirations, it was clear Abano Healthcare needed a local, easy-to-use, scalable iPaaS solution that would spark communication between its disjointed systems to power its modernization journey. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? SnapLogic PS What were the business results after executing the strategy? $250K costs savings in solution implementation. 2 months time to value. 50% reduction in operating expenditure estimated for an integration platform. 200% reduction in FTE requirements across IT. What was the ROI you gained from executing the strategy? $250K costs savings in solution implementation. 2 months time to value. 50% reduction in operating expenditure estimated for an integration platform. 200% reduction in FTE requirements across IT. Anything else you would like to add? Nisha Clark is an advocate and has recently represented SnapLogic at Marketing events and feature in a customer focused video. Abano Healthcare Streamlines and Scales in Innovative Ways With the Power of SnapLogic | SnapLogicNAIT: Ensuring Data Quality and Ease of Use for Career Matching System
2022 Data Innovation Award Nomination What were the underlying reasons for the need of data? Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) wanted to make using Symplicity CSM (a career matching system) easier for students and alumni to use. Student Self-service profile creation and maintenance in CSM was time consuming and prone to error (It was easy for students to typo profile info, forget to update, or to select the wrong major since there are subtle nuances in how program/course history maps to majors in CSM). Describe your data strategy and how you executed the strategy. NAIT wanted to pull student data and alumni data from PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. They determined this would be a good integration use case for SnapLogic. To do this, 20 different inter-related pipelines were built to map and transfer the data between the systems. Because Symplicity CSM has many multi-value look up fields, this required restructuring of JSON documents and the build out of a mapping file of all courses. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? NAIT resourced the project internally. Cindy Bustamante from Transition Services first recognized the need for this sort of integration. She also administers Symplicity CSM and provided invaluable support through all phases of the project. Michael Gutierrez from the Student Progression and Registrar group offered his expertise in the Campus Solutions system to assist in constructing the data extraction queries for Campus Solutions, and Russell Bain built and tested the integration. What were the business results after achieving this data strategy? While this program was only launched a few weeks ago, there has already been some adoption of the new process. Email for job opportunities are going out and the process is running smoothly. Anything else you would like to add? SnapLogic has provided an excellent platform to support the development, testing, implementation, and monitoring of this solution. I’m excited to get going on my next integration project in SnapLogic!Managing Information Systems 3 Inc: Helping the Province of Ontario Employees Access Training in One Application
2022 Partner Innovation Award Nomination What were the underlying reasons or business implications for the need to innovate and transform the business? This project is centered around business process workflow to be automated so that the end users which are employee workers throughout the province would get access to their course and training information in one application. Which customer did you implement this on? Province of Ontario Describe your strategy and execution to solve the business challenge. Developed proof of value document focusing on workflow scenarios current state and worked with the province to understand future state. We aligned Snaplogic and Snowflake and its business value to align to the province future state. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? MIS3 CEO, CTO, Chief Data Officer and province’s team What were the business results after executing the strategy? Still in proof of value mode. Ontario Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development have seen a major improvement to their data ingestion process into Snowflake which was not possible before SnapLogic was introduced. The benefit clients are experiencing is having all their data accessible in one platform where their training certs, course material, course scores, and any upcoming training courses required are now accessible and easily available. Cutting down the time for end users to find this information across multiple set of applications. What was the ROI the customer gained from executing the strategy? Still in proof of value mode. Productivity and speed improvement has been estimated at a 45% throughout the organization Anything else you would like to add? We love SnaplogicInfosys: Modernising the Client's Landscape Containing 500+ Legacy Interfaces
2022 Partner Innovation Award Nomination What were the underlying reasons or business implications for the need to innovate and transform the business? Client organisation was carved out from a large conglomerate and they inherited a large set of legacy applications built on disparate legacy technologies. The client wanted to modernise the landscape and also look at utilising a platform led approach, in a new cloud based setup Following were the key major challenges: Heterogenous integration landscape with 500+ interfaces spread across various legacy technologies like SAP PI, WebMethods and Cast Iron with EOL approaching fast Minimal documentation of existing landscape High maintenance cost of several operative environments with respect to platform and application support Challenges with skill availability on legacy platforms leading to high cost and business continuity risk High license and Infrastructure cost Selecting the right platform that meets future needs Migrating 500+ interfaces involving multiple internal stakeholders, external vendors and third party with an aggressive timeline Which customer did you implement this on? Siemens Energy Global GmbH Describe your strategy and execution to solve the business challenge. Considering the business challenges and criticality as well as technical complexity, Infosys and Siemens Energy worked in close collaboration to devise a robust strategy and execution plan. Strategy After evaluating various platforms, Snaplogic was shortlisted as the platform of choice for its robust capabilities The timeline of the project was aligned to the license expiry date of the legacy integration platforms Wave wise approach was finalised based on business criticality, application availability and technology grouping Ensure zero business impact with on par performance and no end system impact 5.Feasibility checks to confirm connectivity with various applications 6.Focus on maximizing the use of standard features and reduce customization for better maintainability Rationalisation of number of interfaces for better performance and cost reduction in collaboration Execution Cloud and On-premise Application integrations have been performed utilising the various SNAPS available In built SNAPS have been used to connect to various applications like Workday , SAP HANA etc. REST/SOAP connectors have been used for the Integration of Non-Standard Applications to ensure security Handle security aspects of Internal and third apps/vendors using various authentication mechanism Real Time Vs Batch processing requirements have been executed using various connector and the supporting parameters provided by Snaplogic Snaplogic Dashboard used extensively for optimized monitoring of the pipeline executions Parallel Processing of threads for improved performance Snaplogic Architects and SMEs were consulted for architecture, design and performance related aspects Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? To migrate 500+ legacy interfaces, a peak team of 25 people from Infosys were involved, with support from Siemens Energy integration experts and application teams When we encountered issues that required support from Snaplogic Product team, regular interactions were organised to look for suitable solutions What were the business results after executing the strategy? Siemens Energy achieved the following business results with the successful execution of the migration program: numbers of interfaces reduced by approx. 1/3rd in the Snaplogic landscape reduction in technical complexity with reduction from 4 platforms to single platform, leading to significant cost reduction for platform/application support and skills modern cloud based setup with assured future scalability Introduction of APIs Improved predictability of business continuity What was the ROI the customer gained from executing the strategy? Below are the overall ROI gained by customer with the success of the migration program: ~50% reduction in license and infrastructure cost ~30% projected cost reduction for platform and application support Anything else you would like to add? The following were the key highlights of the migration program: There was focus on maximizing the use of standard features and reduce customization for better maintainability Extremely complex requirements were also implemented with standard snaplogic feautres to eliminate the existing custom code Component tracker was introduced which is an innovative way to maintain and access information about interfaces at a single place2021 Application Innovation Award Nomination: ITV: Accelerating sales processes with automation
What were the underlying reasons or business implications for the need of application integrations? Describe the business and technical challenges the company was facing and how application integrations can help. ITV’s goal is to be more than TV by creating meaningful and creative content that connects millions of people around the world every day. To successfully execute on this strategy, the company began to pursue a company-wide digital transformation. The transformation would help streamline employees’ business processes and access to the right data at the right time. The Global Distribution Sales team, in particular, is the core department responsible for selling and distributing ITV shows and content to the world. The company initially implemented an integration tool (Boomi) to connect SQL Server data into Salesforce so that Sales and Finance teams had a single view of their data in a single platform. For five years, however, ITV was able to only take advantage of two integrations. The application service team sought to scale out their Salesforce usage and give more employees the access to even more Salesforce information. Additionally, the application service team that supports Salesforce only consisted of 3 people who are primarily Salesforce Administrators, not technical developers who can build integrations. As a result, the application service team would hire and rely on consultants to build integrations. Describe your application innovation strategy and how you executed the strategy. Include details on how SnapLogic played a role in the strategy and execution, including Snaps and other SnapLogic products/features. The application service team replaced their integration tool with SnapLogic and rebuild the existing Salesforce integrations within 3 days. Salesforce, SQLServer, Oracle, and REST Snaps were used. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? (Please include the # of FTEs, any partners or SnapLogic professional services who were involved on the implementation) Total of 3 internal FTEs were involved What were the business results after implementing these application integrations? Describe how your company, departments, and/or employees/customers benefit from the application integrations. Include any measurable metrics. The application service team has increased their confidence in building integrations without support, hence increased their ability to deliver more integrations for the business. The integrations that were rebuilt would automatically upload and/or update catalog data each day from their License & Rights management system to a SQL Server database and into Salesforce. As a result, sales people can see which licenses or rights are sold in near real-time. The team also connected data from their campaign management system and SQL Server to Salesforce for sales teams to view information on what advertisements are being sold for each channel and digital hub, enabling them to better manage and forecast sales and revenue. Another example includes ITV’s core catalog, an archive of all their content, was connected to Salesforce in 6 weeks. The editorial metadata of shows within the core catalog is automatically updated in Salesforce, which enriches the existing information hosted in Salesforce. Sales can also obtain catalog data they need within seconds by simply typing in the production number, enabling them to speed up operations and deliver content to clients more quickly. This integration took longer as it was more complex, requiring more complex parameters, exceptions, and logic into the pipelines to help the sales team get the data they needed. Finally the custom fulfillment management tool was connected to Salesforce so that the application service team wouldn’t need to manually upload spreadsheets that included content files into Salesforce in order to fulfill the sales. This manual process delayed the fulfillment process. The Salesforce Admins then used SnapLogic to link the fulfillment management tool with Salesforce to automate the fulfillment process, sending the content in the right format into Salesforce once the sale was completed. ● Empower 90+ Sales team to gain access to real-time data ● Deliver integration in 3 days
2021 Enterprise Automation Award Nomination: Pulse Biosciences: Automate applications to streamline business processes
What were the underlying reasons or business implications for the need to automate business processes? Describe the business and technical challenges the company had. Provide Enhanced Customer Experience. Delight the Customer (Dermatologist) with fast Fulfillment of Digital Goods and Services (Cycle Units). Provide near real-time KPI’s and metrics to Physicians and our C-Suite executives. Set a foundation for building a predictive analytics model around Customer Behavior using Advanced Analytics. Automate Identification of Data anomalies within Enterprise Applications. Setting up foundation stone for an Improved Revenue Recognition. Minimize data entry and duplicate keystrokes in the ecosystem of transactional systems. Data governance. Describe your automation use case(s) and business process(es). Automated Association between Product once fulfilled and Customer. Automated replenishment of digital goods and services. Master Data governance. Synchronization of Customer and Address Data between our ERP and CRM applications. Perform ETL for Data warehousing application. Describe how you implemented your automations and processes. Include details such as what SnapLogic features and Snaps were used to build out the automations and processes. Leverage on built-in SNAPs for NetSuite and Salesforce. Took advantage of Triggered Pipelines. Setup proactive notifications within SnapLogic platform for any Execution failures and troubleshooting. Use metadata pipelines for monitoring traffic jams in pipeline execution. Leverage on Auto-upgrade capabilities and Management Dashboards provided by SnapLogic. Followed a disciplined IT Change Management procedure, including Regression Testing, User Acceptance and approvals as applicable. Maintain thorough documentation of enterprise architecture, functional requirements and field mappings. Closely managed cross-functional teams across Endpoint Applications, Business Stakeholders and Integration Developer. What were the business results after executing the strategy? Include any measurable metrics (ie. productivity improvement, speed improvement, % reduced manual inefficiencies, etc.) Initial focus was on Data Quality for six months to one year. After that it shifted to improving pipeline performance. Metadata pipeline in SnapLogic sends out alerts to Administrators for slow running pipelines Current focus is tightening security standards and scaling up for volume and velocity. Reports in NetSuite proactively send out alerts, where a functional component does not meet its SLA due to an Integration execution failure or delays. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? (Please include the # of FTEs, any partners or SnapLogic professional services who were involved on the implementation) FTE (~30%) Consultant Developer (~ 60%) Snaplogic Support via Zendesk (~ 10%) Anything else you would like to add? As the cloud focused architecture continues to grow in our go-to-market function, SnapLogic is the supporting pillar for much of the planned growth at Pulse Biosciences. With that, The SnapLogic footprint is expected to grow and assist with our enterprise automation.2021 Application Innovation Award Nomination: Davidson College: Keeping students safe with Covid-19 surveillance tracking
What were the underlying reasons or business implications for the need of application integrations? Describe the business and technical challenges the company was facing and how application integrations can help. How to automate a Covid-19 symptom and testing tracker that would ensure compliance. Describe your application innovation strategy and how you executed the strategy. Include details on how SnapLogic played a role in the strategy and execution, including Snaps and other SnapLogic products/features. Using Kuali Build, a low code form and workflow automation platform for higher ed, they connected to SnapLogic to integrate Kuali with other applications to create a unique Covid-19 test and surveillance tracking system. To use the system, those getting tested would swipe their identity card, which triggered a task to complete a web form with their information. IT developers used a series of SnapLogic pipelines to populate a secure Redis cache with relevant directory information and PII for students, faculty, and staff. By querying that cache, the testing form was able to match each student or employee’s card identifier to their testing information in under 100 milliseconds. Upon form submission, another SnapLogic pipeline sent the matched results to a reporting database. A final set of SnapLogic pipelines enabled a robust compliance and reconciliation process, producing a list of students who should have tested but didn’t, shouldn’t have tested but did, and so on. When combined with symptom tracking data in a dashboard, the attendance tracking process allowed public health staff to make data-driven decisions, follow up on outliers, and keep the campus safe. Who was and how were they involved in building out the solution? (Please include the # of FTEs, any partners or SnapLogic professional services who were involved on the implementation) IT staff of 40, and some auxiliary IT campus partners What were the business results after implementing these application integrations? Describe how your company, departments, and/or employees/customers benefit from the application integrations. Include any measurable metrics. 77,000 Covid-19 tests completed They were able to automate the process to the degree that it took 50 seconds for a testee to check in, get tested and exit, further minimizing potential exposure to Covid-19.
