Managing user accounts, access rights and even passwords is a royal pain for IT. Usually the task is easy, but can be a major time drain, especially for an organization that has frequent movement of employees. Plainly put, it is a waste of resources to have highly qualified people managing such mundane tasks. These employees, specifically, should spend their time focusing on technical and complex organizational projects.
Tech companies can help their customers by streamlining these mundane yet critical tasks for IT managers. Many solutions are on the market today that can assist with this process and allow the IT department to focus more on higher value technical issues and projects.
Management from one single place
Setting up a new account profile is probably one of the most frustrating parts of account management. The admin needs to access each application, enter the employee information and set their access rights. Chances are that the new employee will need numerous accounts to start their job, and will be left waiting for a few days for the correct access.
Access governance allows for automation of this process. You will only need to enter the employee information in the HR system, check off which applications will need to be accessed, and the new account is created. Access governance solutions easily integrate with your organization’s current systems.
Fewer time-sensitive requests
Another frequent request is for additional access to applications or resources for an employee. Here’s how the process typically works: An employee contacts his or her manager if they need access to an application or to make a change to their account. If this request is time sensitive, the employee may repeatedly contact the manager to check up on the progress and see if the change is being implemented. Imagine these emails and messages coming in from more than one employee saying they need a change as soon as possible. Time to automate the process.
Access governance technology allows a workflow to be set up for all of these requests. As an example, an employee needs access to certain application for a project they are working on. They simply make the request in the employee portal and it is routed to the correct person. That person can either accept or deny the request. If accepted, the change is automatically made and the employee will have immediate access. This eliminates the need for anyone to contact the IT department or an account admin to request the change. Workflow works seamlessly with in house and cloud applications so changes can be easily made to both.
Employees can check on their request and review the progress of their issue in the portal instead of contacting the managers directly. Thus, managers no longer need to contact system admins repeatedly to ask if the change has been implemented.
Several calls, same issue
Many access governance solutions work with password management so that these issues can be drastically reduced. Employees often call in to have their password reset for one or more of their applications when they forget them or are locked out of their accounts. This, like the account change request, is very simple to fix, but becomes time consuming when many employees are requesting fixes for the same issue.
Password management solutions, such as self-service password resets, can help those using cloud or om premise applications. With it, users can reset their own passwords without the help of the helpdesk, from any time and location. With all of the accounts that employees need access to, they may find remembering several sets of passwords difficult. Single sign-on solutions have also been adapted to work in conjunction with cloud applications, allowing users the ability to login in once with a single set of credentials, easily resolving the issue of needing to remember multiple passwords.
With these solutions, your IT department can focus on real technical problems and issues so that they don’t have to keep performing time-consuming, mundane tasks that take up a huge portion of their time – which is virtually pointless for such highly qualified professionals. With access governance technology, these sometimes overwhelming tasks can be automated, creating an environment better and happier for everyone involved. The result of which might just mean a happy IT department.
Dean Wiech is managing director of Tools4ever.