Case Study

Catalyzing Connectivity: SnapLogic Fuels Rhodes College’s Workday Digital Transformation

Backstory

Rhodes College is a prestigious liberal arts institution located in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1848, Rhodes College has a rich history and a strong commitment to academic excellence, intellectual exploration, and community engagement. They have over 2,070 students and almost 600 employees.

Stacy Pennington, Director of Infrastructure and Enterprise Applications, is leading a multi-year effort to move to cloud-based service applications and away from legacy on-prem solutions, which will reduce the number of systems students have to work with and modernize their IT infrastructure.

The Challenge

SnapLogic is a vital component of Rhodes College’s ambitious five-year migration project to transition from legacy systems to Workday. This project encompasses a wide range of critical processes, including student lifecycle management, alumni relationships, financial operations, and more. 

Although Workday has many native integrations, the college had several other non-Workday systems that required custom integrations to Workday or other non-Workday systems.

This was a major blocker for the integration team because there weren’t always readily available APIs that connected their non-Workday systems. The team would either depend on a costly third-party implementation or attempt to create custom integrations themselves, if possible at all.

The team responsible for this migration was limited to 6 generalists (1 in enrollment services, 5 in information services). Using a third party to code their custom integrations was not in the budget, so they needed an easy-to-use and scalable integration platform to tackle their challenges. Pennington and team chose SnapLogic for those reasons.

The Solution

Rhodes College used the SnapLogic Intelligent Integration Platform (iPaaS) to activate a series of pipelines to configure integrations and automate data processes that wouldn’t be possible. This allowed them to migrate their reporting data from a legacy SQL Server database to Workday Prism using the SQL Server Snap and the Workday Prism Snap Pack for student analytics.

They also integrated the following non-Workday systems with Workday:

1. Slate (CRM) to sync student profiles to PowerFAIDS using a REST GET and SQL Server Snaps, so incoming students can be packaged for financial aid.

2. Importing student AP (advanced placement) scores to Slate using the File Reader, PGP Decrypt, and File Writer Snaps.
3. Sync current student records from Workday to PowerFAIDS (financial aid) to keep both systems in sync, using a File Reader Snap to reach a Workday report and write data using the SQL Server Snap.

4. Automatically provision new employees upon creation in Workday using the Active Directory Snap Pack and the Workday Snap Pack.

5. Combine data from two different systems (Workday and Episuite ID card printing software) using the REST GET and SQL Server Snaps, as well as the JSON Splitter, CSV Formatting, and SFTP Snaps to write data to Transact (f.k.a. Blackboard Transact for student meal payment service).
6. Sync data from Workday to a legacy counseling center application (Titanium Schedule), using the File Read and SQL Server Snaps.
7. Facilitate the movement of data between systems with Transact (formerly known as Blackboard Transact), which Rhodes College uses for cafeteria payments and anti-theft measures, to ensure smooth integration and the proper handling of data increments and removals from Transact.

Business Results

With SnapLogic’s help, Rhodes College took on its Workday migration project with only 6 generalists in 3 months. They unlocked the fundamental ability to integrate non-Workday systems to Workday without needing expert integration know-how. 

Rhodes College modernized its student curriculum scheduling system and addressed the demand for courses by integrating student course selection data into Workday Prism for intelligent reporting. 

This capability allows students to plan their schedules based on their sports/extracurricular schedules and ensures the college has enough seats available for desired courses. This modernization has improved the student experience and ensures that students enroll in the courses they need to graduate. 

Pennington has emphasized how SnapLogic enabled his team to change the student experience. 

Conclusion

With SnapLogic’s integration capabilities, the college is effectively streamlining data flow, connecting disparate systems, and ensuring a smooth transition to Workday. This long-term project underscores the commitment of Rhodes College to modernize and optimize their operations while leveraging SnapLogic as a key enabler for successful system migration and integration with limited staff.

SnapLogic is the key component enabling non-Workday systems to integrate into Workday.