Doing More with Less using Workflow Management
Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 9:31AM In identity management, balancing efficiency and security can be a tough and expensive proposal. IDM projects are complex, require broad support and can very easily fail, so it's understandable that many organizations have resisted these changes in favor of business as usual. Though, this is changing due to countless regulatory standards and industry trending, I have visited many businesses still relying on antiquated and painfully manual processes for performing simple tasks such as updating phone numbers or removing access for an employee on leave.
Just last week, I met with a hospital whose onboarding process for a new employee involved at least 3-5 different people, two sheets of paper, several emails and a response time of two days. On top of this, it was expected that parties involved would provide accurate information and do their own error checking. With over 1400 employees, you don't need to do much calculating to realize how much time is involved with this one process and the risk that is created. The good news is that the hospital is beginning the one year process of assessing and evaluating identity management options, however, it is still unclear what role of workflow automation will play in their eventual solution.
Any organization, like the hospital I visited, can implement a workflow project that utilizes web forms and automatic notifications that will provide a means to request, verify and approve facilities and implement network changes independently. Using a provisioning package such as Tools4ever's UMRA, these changes can be executed across the network according to predefined rule sets and can link to source systems such as HRM. This brings an even greater level of automation and can provide dynamic data options such as a list of job titles from the HR system that can be used during an account provisioning task. The graphic below outlines such a process.
A solution like this is easy to implement and can be an inexpensive way to manage security risks and improve the speed in which user management functions can be accomplished.
For more information, visit Tools4ever's workflow page. http://www.tools4ever.com/products/user-management-resource-administrator/features/phasefour/
