MercyCare is a Western Australian not-for-profit organisation delivering a wide range of services across aged care, health, disability, early learning and community support. With close to 2,000 staff working across 48 locations and delivering 29 services, MercyCare supports Western Australians from early childhood through to senior years.
Challenge
Keeping integration aligned with growth
MercyCare was seeing continued growth in its application landscape as the organisation expanded its services and adopted additional cloud capabilities. However, the point-to-point integrations linking its systems were becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, with each new connection adding further complexity.
This was particularly evident in payroll processing. Rostering data had to be extracted, imported and validated across various workers, shifts and complex business rules through a disjointed process involving significant manual handling.
Nor was payroll the only example of this. Similar patterns showed up across the business through:
- Inconsistent data across systems
- Duplicated effort across teams and processes
- Limited visibility of critical business transactions
Each was a symptom of the same underlying issue. And every future initiative, whether a new system, a new integration or a new digital capability, would inherit those conditions unless the integration approach was modernised.
Opportunity
Laying the foundation for connected operations
The situation called for much more than a simple, tactical fix. MercyCare needed a secure, scalable and reusable enterprise integration capability that could support the organisation as it continued to grow and modernise.
A governed, API-led approach would move MercyCare away from traditional point-to-point integrations. It would improve data consistency across systems, reduce manual effort, accelerate the delivery of new business services and provide a scalable platform for future integration requirements.
Payroll was chosen as the first strategic use case. Automating the rostering-to-payroll process would reduce manual effort, improve data consistency and support more efficient payroll processing.
To realise these outcomes, MercyCare partnered with NRI to establish a modern, governed enterprise integration platform. MercyCare’s internal integration team could then use that platform to:
- Automate the rostering-to-payroll process as the first major use case
- Support future digital transformation initiatives
- Build reusable APIs and integration services that can be leveraged across multiple projects
- Improve monitoring, error handling and business validation across critical transactions
Solution
MuleSoft Anypoint Platform with API-led Connectivity
NRI assisted MercyCare with the implementation and establishment of the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform as its strategic enterprise integration platform.
The design followed MuleSoft’s API-led connectivity approach, enabling reusable services and standardised patterns that can be applied across multiple business projects. Through the NRI Recipe framework, NRI also contributed platform architecture guidance, deployment best practices, governance frameworks and operational recommendations.
The result was a solution with five key components:
1. Enterprise integration platform foundation
The MuleSoft Anypoint Platform was deployed as MercyCare’s strategic integration layer, with reusable APIs and integration services aligned to platform best practices. Centralised monitoring, management and governance were built in from the start, giving MercyCare a single platform to view and control its integration assets.
2. Secure authentication and credential management
Security was addressed as part of the platform foundation. The platform was integrated with Active Directory to provide single sign-on for platform administration and support teams, while hard-coded usernames and passwords were eliminated from integration services. This supported a more secure operating model while reducing operational risk.
3. Automated payroll processing
Following the establishment of the platform, MercyCare’s internal integration team leveraged MuleSoft to design, develop and implement the rostering-to-payroll integration, automating payroll validation and processing activities.
Rostering data is validated and transformed between source and target systems, with real-time integration improving processing efficiency and reducing manual handling. This also improves data quality and consistency across business systems.
4. Error handling and notifications
A comprehensive error management framework was built into the platform to improve operational visibility and accelerate resolution when things do go wrong. The framework distinguishes between two types of issues:
- System faults: Technical failures such as connectivity issues, service outages, authentication failures and platform errors. Automated alerts route to support teams for rapid investigation and remediation.
- Business faults: Validation failures such as missing employee information, overlapping shifts and unprocessed records. Clear, actionable messages are surfaced to business users and operational teams so exceptions can be resolved at the right level.
This separation matters, ensuring the right people see the right information at the right time.
5. Extending the platform with SailPoint identity integrations
NRI also leveraged MuleSoft to assist with the implementation of SailPoint Identity Security Cloud, where integrations between SailPoint and other enterprise systems required complex integration processes. MuleSoft played a key orchestration role between SailPoint and key enterprise systems for user management.
This extended the use of the platform beyond payroll and provided a reusable integration capability that can support additional requirements as they emerge.
How the delivery approach enabled internal ownership
The MuleSoft platform was established with support from NRI, who provided platform implementation guidance, architecture patterns, operational recommendations and knowledge transfer. This helped transition ownership to MercyCare’s internal team who subsequently assumed responsibility for the design, development, testing and support of additional business integrations delivered on the platform, which included the rostering-to-payroll integration.
Outcomes
Greater payroll automation and a platform ready to scale
The MuleSoft platform gives MercyCare a modern, governed integration capability that has already delivered against its early objectives.
Here, three outcomes in particular stand out:
- Payroll processing has been significantly automated. The integration automates the validation and transformation of rostering data between source and target systems, reducing manual handling while improving data quality and processing efficiency. Business validation and reconciliation checks are also built in, strengthening financial controls through automated checks.
- The platform is extending its value across several initiatives. Beyond payroll, MuleSoft has also been leveraged to support SailPoint integrations with key enterprise systems for user management. More broadly, MercyCare now has a reusable integration capability that future projects can build on, with common services and patterns shared across projects and new integrations benefiting from the governance, monitoring and error handling framework already in place.
- Operational visibility has improved. Proactive monitoring and the two-tier notification framework mean that issues are surfaced early, routed to the right people and resolved faster.
Looking further ahead, the platform could also support future AI initiatives. For potential agentic AI use cases, the same integration capability offers MercyCare a potential framework for the discovery, management and protection of data within an AI ecosystem.
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