Founded in Hamburg in 1949 as a coffee mail-order business, Tchibo GmbH has grown into a globally leading multichannel retail company with over 10,000 employees. Across its approximately 900 stores, 24,200 retail depots, and nine online shops, Tchibo offers traditional coffee products, a weekly-changing range of non-food items, and various services, such as its mobile offering, Tchibo MOBIL.
The IT infrastructure required to provide the company’s numerous employees with access to the applications they need is as versatile and complex as its product portfolio. Identity & Access Management (IAM) plays a key role in this process: to continuously adapt its IAM to dynamic requirements and make the assignment of permissions as efficient as possible, Tchibo has relied on iC Consult as a service provider since 2020.
Background
Over a decade ago, Tchibo implemented the Identity Manager from One Identity, a comprehensive and powerful platform for managing identities and permissions. This solution enables the company to efficiently manage both external and internal employee identities and to provide the required permissions for over 100 applications automatically via a web shop.
Challenge – Service at Eye Level
“In 2020, due to an internal policy, we had to re-tender our IT services as part of a routine process,” recalls Jörn König, Head of IT Operations Enterprise Applications at Tchibo, reflecting on the procurement process he co-led at the time. “We developed a detailed requirements catalog, which included deep expertise in the One Identity solution, and began the search for a suitable service provider. iC Consult impressed us in many constructive discussions with the best price-performance ratio and a clear willingness to go the extra mile for us whenever needed. From the very beginning, we felt that iC Consult truly understood the many facets of Tchibo and had a solid grasp of our diverse requirements and goals.”
Solution – High Efficiency in Daily Operations
As part of the service agreement, iC Consult provides 2nd- and 3rd-level support and regular maintenance for Tchibo’s Identity & Access Management system, playing a crucial role in ensuring smooth operations. “The decision to work with iC Consult proved to be the right one from day one, as the team actively addressed our pain points,” explains Dierk Buttler, Senior Manager Identity & Access Management at Tchibo. “Beyond that, our cross-company collaboration, with weekly update calls and the ticketing system, has always been characterized by an engaged and productive approach to tasks and mutual understanding.”
Tchibo’s operations team regularly faces the challenge of expanding the IAM solution or adapting its functionality to meet new requirements, which arise almost daily in such a dynamic and versatile organization. One of the most recent challenges was the development and implementation of a new interface between the IAM system and the new Transport Management System (TMS), enabling external agencies to be created and equipped with permissions automatically.
Complementary Consulting Services
“In addition to the support for our daily business, what we particularly value about iC Consult is their consistent ability to identify optimization potential and necessary adjustments beyond the scope of our contractual agreements,” explains Dierk Buttler. “We benefit greatly from the team’s extensive market knowledge, which regularly provides us with insights and easily adaptable solutions — for example, regarding the license-driven renewal of our webshop or the advantages of an interface with the ServiceNow platform. Realistically, in recent years, there have been more suggestions than we’ve been able to implement. Nevertheless, these aspects are what make the difference in a service relationship, delivering incredibly valuable input for future strategic decisions.”
Outlook – The Next Milestone in Sight
The next major step is already on the horizon for 2025, with the planned software update to version 9.3 of the Identity Manager. This upgrade will bring significant changes, both in terms of technical enhancements for the operations team and the look and feel for end users. Reflecting on the substantial resources required for the last upgrade, the teams are already preparing for the upcoming implementation with extensive gap analyses.
The plan includes a comprehensive set of measures, ranging from evaluating necessary new developments and front-end layout adjustments to creating training materials and updating documentation and videos. These efforts aim to ensure a seamless transition to the new version.
A Solid Foundation for Future Challenges
“Even though we can only partially control the effort required for the update, we feel well-prepared with iC Consult — both for this milestone and for the long-term development of our IAM system,” says Dierk Buttler. “There’s certainly plenty of room for further optimizations. So far, we’re only utilizing a small portion of the One Identity Manager’s capabilities, which can do far more than just manage identities. We plan to unlock this potential step by step.”
He continues, “As of today, it’s clear that the support from iC Consult has been a tremendous relief for our operations team, significantly accelerating many processes. Our compliance department, in particular, is very pleased with how much faster their requirements are now being implemented.”
