The law firm aimed to stabilise and modernise its core integration. Our client wanted to leverage Boomi’s capabilities and features in their Intapp integration ecosystem to enhance its long-term integration strategy, reduce complexity, improve data reliability, and support future growth. Overall, they wanted a reliable architecture to handle the complex financial workflows, reduce manual dependency and provide a strong foundation for future scalability.
About Our Client
Our client is a UK-based law firm established in the 20th century. Today, they have a strong presence both nationally and internationally. The firm is known for its legal expertise and people-focused approach. With over 600 professionals and 70 partners, they offer a comprehensive range of legal services to clients across various sectors.
Challenges
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Fragile Point-to-Point Integration
Their Microsoft PowerApps directly communicated with the Practice Management System(PMS) Elite 3E via APIs. The app sent data like payment requests and client receipts to Elite and pulled data like account balances back. The process was technically functional, but this point-to-point integration created fragility in the system.
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Rigid and Inefficient Architecture
When companies rely on point-to-point integration for all systems, the architecture gradually becomes rigid and hard to scale. This increases complexity and operational inefficiencies. Direct integration would bypass the opportunity to enforce consistent business logic across integrations, unified monitoring of log transactions, error handling, and future-proof architecture against changes in any system.
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Lack of Orchestration and Visibility
There was no orchestration or middleware to validate or transform data, making it challenging to scale or adjust processes. The absence of centralised error handling, logging or data flow visibility led to inefficient troubleshooting and high operational costs.
Solution
Data such as client, matter, and fee-earner, flowed from CDS to Microsoft PowerApps. CDS pulled data from multiple systems, such as Elite, CRM, and HR, and presented it in a unified view.
The law firm was using a Microsoft Power Apps-based Finance Request App to manage daily financial processes. The app offers a simple and easy-to-use front end that allows users to submit client account receipts, check account balances, and initiate fund transfers.
The finance professionals interacted with Elite 3E using the PowerApps interface. As an Intapp integration partner, we routed all data flows through Boomi to handle data formatting, business rules, error handling, and API management instead of connecting directly to Elite. Today, PowerApps communicates with Elite 3E; the architecture is designed to scale and interact with CRM, HR, and other systems in the future.
We used Boomi’s low-code platform to implement a middleware-based integration model. Our Boomi team designed and deployed the Boomi processes to manage all interactions and data sharing between Microsoft PowerApps and Practice Management System Elite 3E.
We used Boomi’s HTTP connector to expose pass-through APIs wherever needed. To ensure continuous connectivity with PMS Elite 3E, we used Boomi’s dedicated OData connector. Now, all the data is processed from Microsoft PowerApps to Elite 3E via Boomi. Boomi handled validation, transformation, and logging for each operation.
This architecture ensured better error handling, logic transformation and business rule enforcement. Microsoft PowerApps is a user interface and should not be overloaded with system-level integration logic or exception handling. Boomi uses its data transformation and mapping capabilities to keep Microsoft PowerApps lightweight.
The Boomi solution that we delivered supports a wide range of finance-related operations and different data types.
- Client search – Real-time retrieval of client records from Elite.
- Matter Search – Look up the details of the matter required for financial processing.
- Post client account receipt – Receipt submission is directly sent to Elite via Boomi for accurate and validated transactions.
- Client account balance check – Before initiating any transactions, validate the latest account balance from Elite.
- Post office-to-client account transfer – Fund transfer management from the office to client accounts with higher accuracy.
- Create disbursement for office-to-client account – Enforce business rules while automating disbursement creation workflows.
- Post client account transfer – Support secure and auditable transfer to client accounts.
As a Boomi Partner, we leverage Boomi to orchestrate and manage these flows, ensuring complete visibility and control over the data lifecycle.
Technology Stack
- Boomi
- Microsoft PowerApps
- Elite 3E
- OData Connector
- HTTP Connector
- Intapp
Transformative Outcomes
- Increased Reliability: Increased reliability as Elite APIs changes no longer break the front-end application.
- Centralised Monitoring: Centralised monitoring of integration flows in Boomi.
- Systematic Error Management: Now errors are managed systematically, and easy troubleshooting.
- Enhanced Scalability: The integration ecosystem is more scalable, and new data flows can be added with zero disruption. Boomi has made the entire infrastructure easy to scale and integrate with third-party apps in future.
- Improved Efficiency: Improved operational efficiency for the finance team by streamlining the PowerApps interface and reducing turnaround times for the finance process.
- Reduced Maintenance: Boomi minimised the need for hardcoded integration, making it easier for IT teams to maintain and scale.
Conclusion
Now, the law firm has a more stable and manageable architecture by introducing Boomi as the integration layer intheir Intapp ecosystem. Boomi’s advanced capabilities and tools made the whole integration ecosystem easy to scale with less dependency. Our partnership with the UK law firm delivered a robust Boomi-based solution that modernised their legal finance integration, ensuring data reliability, operational efficiency, and a strong foundation for future scalability.
