How HR Processes Can Work in Tandem with Identity Management

How HR Processes Can Work in Tandem with Identity Management

 

 

One of the most staggering statistics that you’ll find across third-party research, is that more than half of identity management projects fail the first time. You are more likely to toss a coin in the air and call heads and get it right than you are to implement identity management successfully. Even worse, four out of five executives say that their IAM systems don’t deliver enough value even when they are implemented successfully and don’t flat out fail.

One of the reasons for that is because organizations don’t lead with a process analysis and fail to align their identity lifecycle management processes (i.e. workers who join, move, leave) with their IAM solution. The end result is misalignment between worker processes and technology, where tasks do not complete properly, occur in the wrong order, or are inconsistent. This leads to a lot of workarounds; “sneakernet, if you will, where people are running around fulfilling things outside of the system, driving operations and support costs much higher than expected because the system has not automated the tasks that we hoped to automate when we built identity management in the first place.

How Can IAM and HR Make It Work?

So how can we beat the odds and deliver a successful identity management project? Well, what clearly doesn’t work is one sided fixes. We can’t treat this as a project that one group in the organization can successfully implement. And if we look at the complexity of the identity management lifecycle, it’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot that has to come together in order to make a user functional, assign the right level of access, and provision the applications and assets that they need to be a productive.

On a worker’s first day, they’re going to need the most assets. They’re going to need a place to sit. They’re going to need a workstation. They may need a badge in order to get in the building. There is a lot that has to be coordinated across different departments, and we can automate many of those tasks once we understand the underlying processes.

Process Mapping is Key

Process mapping is a key component, not only to understanding the end-to-end flow, but to drive out requirements, help HR understand the impact they’re having on end users, identify dependencies in how our IAM technology works with our processes. There’s a lot of complexity in identity lifecycle processes, and that can make it very difficult to clearly identify which elements drive both effectiveness and the end user experience without developing a detailed process map.

As each step in the process is described and documented, it makes it easier to identify bottlenecks and other problems and propose solutions. The conversations, workshops and meetings also drive alignment across the stakeholders as to where the problems are and how to best adjust – either by changing the process, or managing the issue through your IAM technology.  

Getting all your stakeholders together, breaking down the silos, eliminating political risk and getting everyone aligned is a critical success factor for any identity and access management project. And the nice thing about process mapping is, that it provides a good reason to bring everyone together, understand their needs, understand their requirements, and establish a collaborative environment to solving those problems.

The Takeaway?

The last takeaway is that during your process mapping exercises, it’s a best practice to also develop a data map that shows the attribute flow from HR to IAM and connected systems. The individual attributes on the worker, the availability and quality of that data, allow the identity management solution to make decisions based on policy and business rules, who gets what, when do they get it. And as data quality improves, we are able to drive a better outcome for the organization.

Have questions about HR processes you can streamline with IAM? Talk to Idenhaus today. By going to work quickly to solve the most challenging cybersecurity and identity management problems, Idenhaus takes the pain out of securing corporate information and assets for companies that aspire to maximize their potential in this digital age. Click here to contact us.

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