In 2007, a leading New Zealand Bank needed a solution to streamline their IT processes and automate their Identity Management.

Challenge

All requests and changes required by the 6500+ employees were handled manually by a dedicated request team. This meant that it often took a number of days for requests to be actioned. The manual processes were also error prone and inconsistant, adding to the service desk load as errors needed to be corrected.

Active Directory was used as the main authentication and authorization system to control access to Applications, Software, Folders, Distribution Lists etc. However, over time this evirvonment became less controllable as duplicate Groups were created and the usage of existing Groups became more difficult to track.

User Accounts were created, updated and deleted manually from requests made by the business. There was no tracking of accounts to employees and there were a large number of old user accounts that meant it was difficult to determine if they were still in use.

Solution

Activate was chosen as the solution to automate their internal IT and Identity Management processes. In the first phase of the implementation a number of high value processes were automated.

User Onboarding and Offboarding

An integrated Identity Management User Provisioning process was implemented where user accounts were created, updated, moved and deleted as users join and leave the organization

Role Management

Department and Location roles were automatically sync'd from HR information into a specific hierarchy that matched the Banks organizational structure.

Service Definitions

All existing groups and applications were matched to an Activate 'Service'. Around 1500 services were created on day one from AD Group discovery.

Role Entitlement Discovery

A Role discovery process was used to map default entitlements to roles. Smart huristics were used to assign defaults when the majority of users had a service in a role.

Secure and Automate High Value Applications

Retail Banking Teller System
Retail Banking Customer Relationship Management

Management of Contractors, Vendors and other non-employee accounts.
Implement other Activate Products

Distribution List Management
Folder and File Data Management
Password Reset

The Bank has been a customer since 2007 and over the subsquent years, there been numerous drives to improve efficiency within the business and Activate has been the main platform to empower this. The following is a small example of the additional functions that have been automated-

Induction and Pre-Termination Processes

Automated induction processes for new employees through to pre-termination risk accessments.

Role and Application Review Processes

Periodic review of Role, User or individual Application Access by the business and service owners.

Mobile and Phone Extensions

End to End management and automation of Mobile Phones from request through to delivery of a fully provisioned Device and Telco connection.

Governance and Mandatory Leave

Automatically enable and disable user's accounts based on goverance and mandatory leave requirements.

Priviledged Account Management

Automatically secure and manage highly priviledged accounts, including, Service accounts, Administrator accounts and Vendor admin accounts.

Additional Automated Service Connectors

There are over 6000 Services currently in active use today and over 90% of those are fully automated.

Shared Mailbox Management

The automatic creation and management of data stored in Shared Mailboxes.

Automatic Out of Office

Automatically create, update and remove Exchange out of office settings based on user's leave in HR.

Office 365 Management

As the Bank moves to the Cloud, Activate has provided the tools and guidence to make this easy.

$STATS$

Result

The customer observed an immediate reduction in Service Request tickets as a direct result of implementing Activate.

New User Provisioning went from 3-5days to less than 10 minutes.
From day one, more than 80% of all requests were fully automated. This has increased to over 90% today.
The number of requests through Activate has gone from around 5000 per month to over 32,000.
The cost of performing these requests manually would be over $9M per year at $20/ticket.
Users can request, approve and manage most of their environment without needing manual intervention.

Activate has allowed the business to streamline their IT processes, improve accuracy and timeliness, and empower users to take control of their environment. The solution provided a robust and automated approach to managing their users environment, reducing manual efforts, and enhancing efficiency across the organization.

Full End to End Integrated Identity Management

380,000+

$9M+

900,000+

Summary

Related Products

Get started with Activate today

© Activate. 2025, Activate SC NZ. All rights reserved