Success Stories

BLANCO Group: Authorization management with Identity Processes

Written by Uwe Eisinger | November 16, 2016

With the help of IBsolution, BLANCO will regulate its system authorizations quickly, directly and largely automatically in the future. Thanks to SAP Identity Management (IdM), employees can react flexibly to business requirements. The uniform access and intuitive usability of the application increase performance.

 

   

“Thanks to IBsolution’s support, we will get a precise overview of all identities and will reduce administrative effort as well as process costs. The access rights of all employees can then be assigned more securely.”

Bernd Schütz, IT Manager, BLANCO IT Services

 

 

“We want to inspire our customers!” is the motto of BLANCO from Oberderdingen in Baden-Württemberg, which BLANCO IT Services also implements in its internal customer relationships. BLANCO stands for competence in all aspects of the sink center and is one of the leading suppliers worldwide. BLANCO CS focuses on the needs of these professional target groups with its three business units Catering Systems, Medical Care Systems and Industrial Components.

Since BLANCO has numerous subsidiaries around the globe, it is particularly important for the group to be able to access company data quickly, securely and regardless of location. The challenge here: managing personal user rights.

More security and less administration

Like most internationally active companies, BLANCO works with heterogeneous system landscapes in which employees access different applications. Digital user IDs and passwords play a very central role in day-to-day business − for example, when setting up new user accounts. To ensure that access to information works quickly and easily at all times, the company decided to introduce SAP Identity Management. “This allows our employees to respond flexibly to business requirements at any time,” says Bernd Schütz, IT manager at BLANCO. “We wanted more security and less administration. We will achieve this goal via IBsolution’s Identity Processes approach.”

IBsolution’s excellent industry know-how and additional proprietary developments spoke in favor of the standard software. The central task was to create digital identities for all users in order to manage user rights consistently and, above all, securely. After completion of the internal test processes in IT and finalization of the necessary organizational structures and role definitions, all areas will be provided with this solution in the next few months.

Uniform structures create transparency and security

With the help of preconfigured processes and best-practice functions, the new software is introduced during ongoing business operations. In the first step, the project team developed a strategy to migrate and rename user IDs from the various applications and platforms in a system-based manner.

In the second step, all personnel and organizational data was transferred from the existing systems to the homogeneous central IT infrastructure. From this data, the software automatically generated all new authorizations once and assigned the employees to a specific directory − according to their role in the company. Those responsible can manage rights independently at any time via their own portal. Standard authorizations can be granted easily and directly. Managers only have to tick the appropriate boxes in predefined masks. A particular advantage of the SAP solution is that the software harmonizes with both SAP applications and other systems.

All access rights under control at all times

“With SAP Identity Management, we regulate the personal access rights of all employees depending on their roles. The necessary workflows for assigning authorizations are triggered automatically when there are personnel changes within the company,” says Bernd Schütz. Previously, users had to log in several times a day. Different applications each required separate passwords. In the future, employees will log into the central portal only once a day (SAP Single Sign-On). This gives them more time for their core tasks and makes them more productive.

Urgent changes to access rights can now be handled by the departments themselves. IT’s help is now only called upon in exceptional cases. Bernd Schütz explains: “SAP Identity Management helps us to securely manage all user data and access rights at all times. This gives us an overview of all identities and reduces administrative effort and process costs.”

Ready for future tasks

Thanks to the uniform access and intuitive usability of the application, BLANCO’s employees are now much more efficient. Bernd Schütz puts it in a nutshell: “Our company has changed a lot in recent years. As a result, the tasks of our employees have also changed. That’s why we established a new infrastructure that permanently guarantees data quality, security and transparency of user data across all systems: SAP Identity Management.”

 

   

“With the help of SAP Identity Management, we want to manage all user IDs and passwords in a largely automated manner − and we want to do it quickly and uniformly across all platforms.”

Bernd Schütz, IT Manager, BLANCO IT Services