Success Story: APACS

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 10 Oct 2007

APACS is the UK trade association for payments. It has 31 members, principally global and high street banks, building societies and credit card issuers. APACS is the payments industry voice on a wide range of topics and the industry's representative in Europe. APACS forecasts payment trends, conducts market research, carries out lobbying activities, collates industry statistics, gets involved in developing industry standards and best practices.

Challenge

The day-to-day management of APACS is handled by a separate company - APACS (Administration) Ltd (AAL) - which employs the 140 people who provide payment services to APACS and other payments-related UK companies.

AAL had three separate databases of contacts: a bespoke contacts database, the users of its extranet, and the address books within Novell GroupWise. There were complex manual business processes for keeping the three databases synchronised and ensuring that information was only shared with appropriate contacts.

The organization wanted to eliminate the manual re-keying of data that was involved in keeping the three databases synchronized - especially because much of the administration was undertaken by key industry professionals, taking up time that would be better spent on core activities.

Novell Solution

Following a review of possible solutions, AAL selected Novell Identity Manager and worked with PLUS Market-listed ANS Group Plc, a Novell Platinum Partner, to design and deploy the solution.

Now, when a user is entered or updated into the main database, the Novell solution automatically synchronises the changes with the other databases. AAL requires legal agreements for every extranet user; if a new contact is covered by an institutional agreement, the solution can immediately grant them access. This enables them to get onto the extranet to access relevant papers without delay.

"Now, if a contact is required to sign an individual agreement to access the extranet, the only delay is the post," said Sarah Lovell, IT Project Coordinator APACS (Administration) Ltd. "Novell Identity Manager allows the business to manage its contacts without having to go through the IT department, saving time and effort for both parties."

Results

With consistent, centralized user information maintained by Novell Identity Manager, AAL can manage its external contacts more efficiently. There is now a well-defined automated set of user-management processes, so business users can handle almost all administration without assistance from IT staff.

"The business is delighted that it now has full control over the membership of groups, and in particular that it can set up new contacts or move contacts to other groups much more quickly," said Sue Yoe, Director of Technology, Information and Facilities at AAL. "The Novell solution also significantly reduces manual administration and the re-keying of data."

With user information automatically synchronized by Novell Identity Manager, the consistency of data has improved. The speed of removing users has also increased: with a single click, a business user can revoke a contact's access to the extranet.

For the complete success story, visit: http://www.novell.com/success/apacs.html

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