What is enterprise request management?
Enterprise request management (ERM) combines one web portal with a workflow automation engine to speed up fulfillment across an organization. Customers, internal or external, request any service, resource or piece of equipment from one place, and check the status of open requests there too.
Requesters get an easier experience. The organization gets:
- More consistent delivery, because requests are centralized and standardized
- More productive employees
- Faster fulfillment
- Lower delivery costs through automation
- Better compliance, because fewer steps depend on someone remembering to do them by hand
This paper shows how ERM improves both identity and access management (IAM) and physical facility and security access, and lowers risk in the process.
Visibility, control and efficiency
Large organizations have to control access to data, intellectual property and customer information. They also have to control access to buildings, equipment and people. The processes behind each of these entry points usually sit in separate departments.
Access governance is split across HR, facilities, IT and security, and each group uses its own tools to provision the access it is responsible for. Across the enterprise, that produces inconsistent processes, a confusing experience for requesters, and uneven service levels. Corporations, government agencies and service providers alike have struggled to put in place access controls that are easy for customers to use and automated from request to completion.
The illusion of safety: a risk management example
Data breaches are regularly in the news, and leaked customer or financial data is expensive and damaging to a company’s reputation. Often the affected organization had a mature security program and the right tools. What it lacked was a process that worked across the whole enterprise. The following example shows the problem and how ERM addresses it.
A healthcare organization (Sithco) hires a service provider (ACME) to build a new data center. ACME’s team has a project manager, a technical architect, a network administrator and 10 installers. Before work begins, every team member must pass a background check and then be granted access to:
- Sithco’s time-keeping system (managed by HR)
- The physical data center site (managed by facilities)
- Sithco’s project management system (managed by the IT PMO)
- Corporate email addresses and network IDs (managed by IT security)
Each department defines its own procedures to meet compliance requirements and Sithco’s security policies, including its own tools for fulfillment and compliance reporting:
- HR assigns tasks in PeopleSoft®.
- IT manages entitlements and network IDs in an enterprise identity management system, and tickets in an ITSM platform.
- Facilities handles requests by email.
- Physical access runs through a smart card system that controls entry and provides reporting.
Each of these practices aligns with corporate policy. Taken together, they still leave gaps.
Hidden complexity in straightforward processes
If every clearance and approval is done before the start date, the ACME team starts on time and works within Sithco’s security policies. That may be effective. It is rarely efficient.
To each department, its own access process looks simple. From the enterprise’s point of view it is not. When the project starts, the Sithco manager must confirm that every team member has the right access, or the project slips. Physical and system access are spread across separate requests to HR, facilities and IT, data entered into several systems, and manual steps: facilities answering emails about smart cards, HR confirming that a third party ran the background checks.
When the project ends, the manager has to arrange removal of all that access, which is just as complicated. Each department followed good practice, yet the enterprise loses time and opens new security gaps because no one process covers the whole thing. The scenario is generic, and unfortunately common.
Higher efficiency, lower risk
ERM puts integrated process automation behind a single request portal. One portal (a system of engagement) replaces the mix of emails, phone calls and department request forms. Behind it, an automation engine handles approvals, scheduling and fulfillment by communicating securely with each department’s software (the systems of record).
With ERM, Sithco would reduce its exposure and work faster under one centrally governed access process. Once the contract is approved, the Sithco project manager opens the project onboarding request in the portal and enters the project details. The system then coordinates every access step, including notifications, approvals and status updates.
The data is entered once, in one place, and the rest of the process runs automatically, including the existing access-control steps in each department’s own system. The enterprise gets one access governance model covering the whole process, and each department still runs its own fulfillment its own way.
When the project ends, removing access is automated in the same way.
How Kinetic Request and Kinetic Task support ERM
Kinetic Request is an enterprise request portal. Combined with Kinetic Task, it automates business processes across departments. Users request any service or resource through a web portal without training. Companies commonly build one catalog that offers services from IT, HR, facilities, payroll, security and finance, plus services that cross departments, such as employee or project onboarding.
Kinetic Task is a workflow automation engine. Process owners design task trees with graphical tools, and the engine communicates securely with enterprise systems and department applications (ITSM, HRMS, CRM, payroll, Active Directory and custom systems) using SOAP and REST. Non-technical users can design and automate simple or complex fulfillment processes with little help from IT, and approvals and notifications are handled in one place.
Summary
In many enterprises, digital and physical security are managed department by department. Each group may follow good practice on its own, but the organization as a whole ends up slower and more exposed.
ERM replaces those separate processes with one portal for requesting any service or resource and automated approval and fulfillment behind it. Requesters enter data once. Complex processes that cross departments, such as giving an outside vendor temporary access to facilities and systems, are coordinated in one place, and every required task and approval is completed and recorded.