Identity and Access Management (IAM) summarises all aspects of managing digital identities. But what are the concrete advantages of introducing an IAM system?
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Automation of processes and cost savings
Identity and Access Management enables the comprehensive and secure automation of numerous routine tasks relevant to the lifecycle of digital identities such as the creation of user accounts for employees, the allocation/modification of resources and permissions or the deletion of user accounts. This highlights some of the clearly measurable benefits of using an IAM system.
When a new employee joins a company, the administrative effort to set up the corresponding user profile, including all access rights, is usually very high. This is usually done via HR databases such as SAP-HR. As a result, the employee is often unable to work effectively in the first few days of work.
IAM in daily use
A central identity and access management system can considerably simplify and automate the process of user provisioning. With the help of the criteria and algorithms stored in the IAM system, all required systems and applications for the new employee receive access authorisations automatically, error-free and traceable.
For such automation, it does not matter whether an employee changes his workplace within the building, within the company or between different departments. Thanks to IAM, the management of identities and access rights is centralised across applications and systems. New identities can be created and existing access rights changed with just a few clicks via a web-based interface.
Automation of routine IAM tasks
A workflow for identities and resources represents the company’s approval process. In this way, even administrative tasks that cannot be fully automated can be carried out easily and efficiently, for example to assign members of a temporary work group to certain resources. The electronic request process helps to minimise the effort of administrative activities.
The IAM system automatically detects when employees need new access rights due to internal changes or function changes and makes the appropriate adjustments. Likewise, user profiles of employees who leave the company are automatically deleted.
Without this process, IT administrators would have to manually assign requested resources to users for each system and application after approval.
Economic benefit
The goal of the automated processes of an IAM system is to do as much as possible automatically and also as correctly as possible. In particular, of course, with regard to user authorisations to be assigned and accounts to be created. This should lead to the need for smaller support teams in the help desks. It is measurable that the number and duration of support calls will decrease. This shows that the automation of processes through IAM can lead to significant cost savings.
