Roche Gains Greater Control with IT Authorization and Allocation Automation

Background

Ultimus Client: Roche
Industry: Life Sciences
Solution: IT Authorization and Allocation

Roche is a leading Life Sciences company with a broad spectrum of innovative medical solutions. For more than 100 years, they have been active in the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of novel healthcare solutions.

Goal: Automate processes and increase visibility into process execution

With over 80,000 employees in 139 countries, the efficiency and accuracy of Roche’s IT authorization and allocation process has been substandard in the past. Authorization requests took several days to be approved which impacted productivity.

Human errors cost time and resources, and often resulted in the inadvertent allocation of user rights to inappropriate parties, a potential security risk. Challenges with the old processes include:  

• Inconsistent Data- The IT department received numerous authorization requests every day with inconsistent information. Forms lacking complete information had to be returned to the requester for further completion. This part of the process would take several days to complete before the request could even be processed.
• Lack of Monitoring and Reporting- The lack of visibility in the authorization process was very frustrating for employees as they could not check the status of their requests or ensure that all of the necessary information had been submitted properly.  Conversely, the IT department lacked a means of reporting, monitoring, and controlling the access and authorization rights they had granted.
• Time Consuming and Wasteful- The authorization process took several days to be approved meaning that employees were not able to complete all of the tasks required of them. Additionally, there was excessive lag time in the rerouting of access when the responsible party was unavailable.

Ultimus' Approach

Using the Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite, the IT department standardized all IT authorization requests in a system called Authorization System IT (ASYS), which is based on the Ultimus BPM Platform.  Now, requests for IT user and access authorizations are standardized and involve organization-wide allocation, change and removal of IT user and access rights. Additionally, the enhanced monitoring and reporting functionality of the BPM suite allows Roche to ensure that the requested authorizations are allocated efficiently and can be verified at any time. Moreover, information concerning the user authorizations of any employee can be accessed at all times.

In terms of security and controls, all approvals are regulated. Due to the process definitions with respect to the assigning of people for approval, inadvertent allocation of user rights is eliminated. With the Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite IT authorization supervision is centralized and approvals are regulated, so IT security is guaranteed. Integration with Roche’s database ensures prompt and secure updating of employee data. User access rights are removed or added promptly upon employee departure and hire.

Implementation

Roche successfully implemented the Ultimus BPM Suite for their IT authorization request application, which is being rolled out to every Roche Diagnostics location within the EMEA region. This now encompasses approximately 15,000 users handling 50,000 authorization requests consisting of approximately 900,000 process steps annually.

About Ultimus

Ultimus has automated more business processes than any other Business Process Management (BPM) vendor worldwide. Ultimus Adaptive BPM Suite has enabled companies to accelerate their performance goals at every stage of corporate growth. Ultimus’ award-winning technology seamlessly adapts to people, systems and change. Utilized by more than 2,000 customers worldwide, Ultimus provides solutions to organizations such as Pfizer, ProHealth, Bausch & Lomb, Northrup Grumman, DHL, Microsoft, Daimler, Perdue Farms, Chevron, and Tulane University. Ultimus is headquartered in North America, and has additional offices in Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia.