Volvo Cars Nederland Implements Tools4ever’s Enterprise Single Sign On Manager

Seeking a solution to streamline employee’s access to internal accounts, Volvo Cars of The Netherlands, sought a solution to reduce the number of login and access credentials required of employees to gain access to their (web) applications.

Employees at the dealership use 20 different applications a day, on average, each of which requires a different combination of user name and password. Through Tools4ever’s single sign on, a total of 35 generic web applications, including sales and inventory and workplace management suites, were made ready for single sign on with the help of Enterprise Single Sign On Manager (E-SSOM.) The software’s implementation was carried out in collaboration with Volvo Cars Nederland B.V.’s software and service provider, Beesd A2.

“When Tools4ever presented us with its solution, I was immediately impressed by the product’s ease of use and how fast Tools4ever was able to implement the solution,” Tjeu Bollen, the founder of Beesd A2. “During a pilot run of the program, Tools4ever was able to make 20 applications ready for single sign on in just one day. This pilot, and the relatively low costs of the solution, made our decision to select this suite very easy.”

The European dealer is not alone in its desire to streamline. Dealerships across the globe increasingly are forced to turn to web applications to process and sell automobiles. Typically, each of these web applications requires a different user name and password. As is often the case, employees write down passwords on sticky notes or file them in other non-secure manners in an attempt to remember them. However, a single sign on solution corals all systems together and allows a user to enter just one password or login credential to access them. 

The staff at Volvo Cars B.V., in particular, benefit from the software. They no longer have to enter credentials for each individual application, and spend considerably less time on the login process and are spared a lot of frustration.

During a successful pilot at one of the Volvo dealerships, the value of the Tools4ever single sign on software quickly became apparent to the employees, said Dean Wiech, managing director of Tools4ever. “Three salespeople and two receptionists tested the software on site over a period of two months. From the very first day, they were highly enthusiastic about the solution, as they no longer had to log in to each and every application. They realized the immediate efficiencies it created."

“When the two months had ended and the test license expired, they got on the phone and said that they absolutely needed the software.”

The dealership has since implemented Tools4ever’s E-SSOM across all of its 110 branches throughout the Netherlands.

For more about Tools4ever, E-SSOM and to read customer case studies, visit our website.

Managing Free Email Solutions for Education

 
When educational institutions first began providing student with email accounts, the options were limited – implement an in-house solution from Novell or Microsoft depending on your network infrastructure.  There were some also small players in the market that provided hosted solutions. The problems with these options were they were expensive, required resources to set-up and maintain and had an ongoing costs associated with them.

About 5 years ago, Google, as they so often do, upset the proverbial apple cart by giving free email accounts to the educational space. Not to be outdone, Microsoft soon followed up with Live@edu and then Office 365 for Education. Both of these offerings eliminated the requirement for schools and colleges to purchase and maintain hardware for email and also eliminated the need for licensing of Exchange or GroupWise.

 One of the initial shortfalls with these offerings was the common fact that there was not an easy way to manage accounts in bulk. They did provide an interface that allowed for “one off” account creation and management, but with the large influx and outflow of students that the typical school or college is faced with each semester, the task can be daunting at best. One recent college I spoke with shared that when they first deployed Google Apps, they spent nearly 300 man hours keying in data, and they only had about 5,000 student accounts to create. Extrapolating this out, they could anticipate spending 3.6 minutes per account, or 75 hours per year, managing email accounts - assuming 1/4th of their students matriculate annually.

Further complicating these deployments was the fact that there was no easy way to synchronize passwords between the network account and the emails account.  It was easy to set the initial password as identical but, as is often the case, the user is required to change the password upon initial login. This frequently resulted in 2 different passwords – one for the network and one for email – causing a large number of calls to the helpdesk for password resets in one or both systems.
Fortunately, vendors that specialize in Identity and Access Management stepped in quickly to fill the void. Software tools were made available to allow IT staff to extend their automated user account provisioning to include both the Google Apps and Office 365 environments.  By utilizing these connectors, the amount of time to manage an account went form 3.6 minutes to virtually zero.  As the solutions offered by Google and Microsoft provide email accounts “for life”, it is important to have procedures in place that insure the email accounts remain active, and possibly moved to an alumni folder, upon student graduation.  This needs to occur even when the network access account has been deleted.

Another feature available from software vendors was a password synch tool. Anytime a user changed a password in their network account, the new entry was immediately passed to the mail account, insuring consistency and a significant reduction in calls to the helpdesk.  Extending this one step further is providing a self-service reset password application whereby the student can rest a forgotten password based on challenge questions.   This reset password can also be synched to the email solution, once again insuring consistency.

Summary
While the email offerings provided by Google and Microsoft are free, the time required to set-up and manage thousands of student and faculty accounts can be overwhelming and expensive. Fortunately, cost effective solutions are commercially available to reduce or eliminate the burden placed on the IT staff by automating the user and email account lifecycle.


For more information, please visit our website.