Fischer

Case Study: Identity Management in Energy / Utilities

CUSTOMER PROFILE

• Headquarters: USA
• Customers: 500,000+ customers
• Recognition: Edison Electric Institute Index Award
• Publicly Traded: NYSE

SCOPE

• Number of Users: 7,500
• Key Applications: Oracle Financials, Remedy, Active Directory

PRIMARY MARKET DRIVER(S)

• Streamline Employee Lifecycle Management
• Compliance: SOX, FERC

PROBLEM

• This company used paper-based processes for requesting, approving, and provisioning access to network resources, phones, and physical areas for employees and contractors. Problems were typical of manual provisioning environments and included:
• High Help Desk costs
• Compliance risks:
• No comprehensive or clear audit trail
• Difficulty in responding to Auditor’s questions
• Error-prone and expensive to track all identity-related events
• Difficulty in completing regulatory audits successfully and economically
• Excessive IT and physical access privileges due to inconsistant policy enforcement
• Orphan accounts: managers did not routinely submit paperwork to deprovision access upon employee and contractor changes/terminations
• Reduced employee productivity: delays in access to physical and IT resources impacted employees' ability to fully perform job responsibilities
• Reduced management productivity due to time-consuming paper-based provisioning request process
• Further delayed access due to errors on hand-written provisioning request forms

SOLUTION

• Leveraged Fischer Identity to automate account creation and entitlements based on real-time events and self-service provisioning requests.

WHY FISCHER WAS SELECTED

• Participants: Nine vendors were initially evaluated. Fischer and one other vendor performed POCs.
• Evaluation period: 1 year
• Determining factors that led to Fischer's selection were:
• Simplicity: Ease of use for both end users and administrative staff
• Minimal customization required
• Ability to connect to all required systems
• Workflow capabilities
• Application platform configuration
• Project management philosophy