Australian Red Cross looks to GenAI for integration work

Australian Red Cross said generative AI will be a “godsend” and could lead to less need for technical integration specialists and improved distribution of organisational resources.  

The community services charity has roughly 20,000 members and volunteers involved in its work.

Speaking at a recent Boomi World Tour event in Sydney, Australian Red Cross chief information officer Brett Wilson said while artificial intelligence “is one of the most overused terms” he is “really excited” about Boomi AI's potential.

Boomi AI was announced back in May and is intended to allow users to make natural language requests for systems, APIs or data models to integrate with one another.

Wilson said for the Australian Red Cross it will speed time to build but also help better allocate funding and make better use of internal technical resources within the organisation.

“We only have a finite amount of funding, so the more money we spend over here, the less we can actually spend out in the community doing some really great things," Wilson said.

“Boomi AI to us is a bit of a godsend because what it'll mean is I don't need as many technical integration specialists who are sitting there, I can have more business analysts to actually understand the data flows, and they understand the business as well.”

He said with the platform, the Red Cross will be able to connect various applications, data and processes to move developments faster more efficiently.

“That's what I really want to get because it's speed and efficiency.

“I don't need a whole bunch of people to actually sit there and wait for things to come through.

“It's hey, can we try this and then all the mapping associated with that, which is the really exciting part, which I need bunches of people to do now”.

He wanted his team to be performing "more exciting things and more value-add things rather than actually sitting there building connectors between two systems."

Wilson is also looking into Boomi’s master data hub (MDH) for future use.

“Data is a really important piece for us. We produce huge amounts of data. We're not really great at actually managing it," he said.

“I'm hoping that MDH is going to push us into the future a little bit there and provide a secure environment that gives us an opportunity to look into the data and hook into it and actually make sure that we have those single sources of truth or those golden records as well,” Wilson said.