Workday® Boomerang Integrations
You might have heard the term “Boomerang Integrations” thrown around the Workday community, but did it go over your head? If so, you’re in luck! In this blog post we’ll be taking a look at boomerang integrations in Workday and what they can do for your organization.
What Are Boomerang Integrations?
A typical Workday integration transfers data between Workday and a third-party application. A boomerang integration, on the other hand, exports data out of Workday, transforms the data, and then feeds the data back into Workday (like a boomerang). The primary purpose of boomerang integrations is to help solve process gaps or automate functions without clear business process definitions. For example, moving data from Custom Objects to Workday delivered fields or automated reclassification of journal entries could be done through boomerang integrations.
What Can Boomerang Integrations Do?
There are two main ways that boomerang integrations can save your organization time, money, and resources. The first is automating tasks within Workday that are not usually automated and the second is modifying Workday delivered processes to fit your organization’s unique needs.
Consider, for example, an organization that provides a rolling time-off balance or accrual. Since there can be multiple factors affecting the calculation rate, maximum balances, and carry-over a boomerang integration can aggregate the various data points, apply the calculation, and post that result back into Workday. This can save employees a tremendous amount of manual processing time.
Another example would be an organization who wants to apply cash basis accounting to their employee expense accounts and supplier receivables. In order to reflect actuals without outstanding payables or receivables, a boomerang integration can be used to distinguish transactions and repost accounting journals accurately.
Finally, Grant and Funding Source creation in Workday typically involves two separate manual business processes. A boomerang integration could be leveraged to trigger at the completion of one business process and automatically complete the subsequent process, thereby halving the time spent on data entry.
How Can Makse Group Help?
As you can see, boomerang integrations save considerable time, effort, and resources by closing business gaps within Workday. However, implementing boomerang integrations can be intimidating, especially as it involves leveraging Workday’s API, writing XSLTs, and coding custom Workday Studios. If your organization is looking to explore the possibilities of boomerang integration but is lacking the time and resources to do so, consider taking advantage of Makse Group’s extensive Workday Services. Contact us now to speak to a Workday expert today!
