CDC Foundation successfully manages a fivefold increase in transactions during the COVID pandemic with Celigo

“It was a bit of a struggle for us to not only determine what to connect, how to connect, and when to connect it, but also what our business required,” said Malcolm James, Director Of Information Technology, who along with the Foundation’s chief operating officer spearheaded the digital transformation effort of the Foundation. “We saw when we met with vendors for these different implementations just how unique our business is. A lot of times the best practices didn’t necessarily accommodate our practices or our processes.”

The business was feeling the weight of manual processes, with staff dedicated to doing manual CSV uploads and reconciliation from system to system. As the sole member of the IT team, James needed a solution that was customizable, powerful, worked well with the CDC Foundation’s systems, yet was simple to build and maintain as the organization grew.

“The Salesforce-NetSuite connection was overwhelmingly positive. It would be near impossible to manage that kind of volume before Celigo,” said James. ”Celigo has cut down on our time to accomplish work tremendously. I mean, there was no area of our organization that wasn’t impacted positively by that connection.”

James also says that the intuitive nature of Celigo made it simple for the staff to become familiar with and take ownership of the platform.

“It was so breezy to learn. It made sense,” said James. “My staff was concerned that we didn’t have a lot of internal experience with integration. But they picked it up very easily and commenced using it on their own.”

“Our staff now has a different mindset looking at whatever our business process may be, and can really think about how we can make it more efficient and automate it,” he added.

The Foundation is currently implementing Concur-NetSuite for expense management and ADP-NetSuite to automate HR processes with Celigo. By continuing with its Digital Transformation efforts, the CDC Foundation can focus valuable resources where it needs the most – to support its mission to support the Centers for Disease Control.

“Everyone can see the value add of these integrations,” said James. “It has ben easy for the staff and administrators in the various departments to continue using their systems. It has been overwhelmingly positive,”