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With annual production of 670,000 tons of copper and copper-alloy semi-finished products, KME is one of the top eight global manufacturers in the non-ferrous metals sector. The KME Group is headquartered in Italy and employs 6,600 people in 16 countries, generating more than €3.5 billion in consolidated annual turnover.

Challenge

Following a period of rapid growth through corporate acquisition, the KME Group wanted to standardize user management across its subsidiaries in Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain and China.

Without a shared, enterprise-wide user directory, it was the responsibility of the local IT team in each company to manage and maintain access rights for internal users. Not only was this inefficient, but also the IT teams lacked the time and expertise to handle the work consistently, accurately or rapidly enough.

Novell Solution

Realizing the need for a single, centralized identity management solution, KME considered software from four major vendors before selecting Novell Identity Manager.

"Novell Identity Manager offered the best combination of functionality, price and quality," said Mario Bendinelli, IT Corporate Director, KME Group.

Using the Novell software, KME worked with official Novell partner Netstudio to cleanse and normalize the existing user data, then create a central repository for employee information and a set of workflows for managing users. Novell Identity Manager synchronizes with the local HR systems, and automatically propagates any changes in employee status throughout all relevant systems.

"The introduction of Novell Identity Manager means that information for all internal users can be automatically updated when changes are made to the central HR database," said Bendinelli. "This has improved the quality and speed of user management, as this function can now be driven centrally by a small team of IT specialists. The automated workflows we have created using the Novell software have significantly reduced the total workload, keeping organisational information updated with minimal administrative effort."

In the past, if an employee moved from one department or site to another, it could take several days for the HR team to inform IT in order to update all the relevant systems. During that time, the employee in question might lose access to information or applications, causing frustration and loss of productivity. Equally, it could take several days to delete an outgoing user's account in all systems, potentially creating security issues.

With the new solution in place, the HR team in each country can simply update the local payroll system when an employee's status changes - the central SAP HR database is updated via an online interface, and Novell Identity Manager automatically cascades the change down to all systems related to that employee within a few seconds. For new hires, KME is now testing an automated provisioning system that will create a corporate e-mail account and generate user names and passwords for applications relevant to each new employee's function.

Results

By implementing Novell Identity Manager, KME has improved the efficiency, speed and accuracy of user management. The solution has enabled the company to centralize all management tasks under the control of skilled technology specialists, freeing up non-specialist staff in the country HR teams.

The users themselves also benefit from the Novell solution, as any changes in their personal information or employment status are immediately reflected in the tools and services they use. There is therefore no longer any loss of productivity when an employee moves departments or changes roles. Security has also improved, because the solution automatically rescinds all access privileges from related user accounts when an employee leaves KME.

For the entire success story, see:
http://www.novell.com/success/kme.html

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It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.