Since the founding of H. Jungheinrich & Co. Maschinenfabrik in 1953, the predecessor of today’s Jungheinrich AG, the family-owned company has grown into one of the world’s leading providers of intralogistics – with over 20,000 employees and direct sales subsidiaries in 42 countries.
No less complex than the demands of today’s intralogistics industry was the management of the numerous enterprise identities and privileged accounts – an enormous logistical challenge for Jungheinrich’s IT team. To overcome this, Jungheinrich partnered with iC Consult to modernize its Identity & Access Management (IAM) as well as its Privileged Access Management (PAM) holistically – from strategy to operations – and bring them to a future-oriented level.
Situation
In 2020, Jungheinrich launched an initiative to completely restructure its identity and access rights management – and thus respond to the dynamically changing security and usability requirements. After developing a robust IAM strategy and holistic identity governance, key components for a future-proof Identity & Access Management were established, including the control of sensitive access. Thanks to the new structure and clearly defined approval processes, Jungheinrich employees can now request the permissions they need for their applications largely automatically via a webshop.
Challenge – Strategy and Governance as a Solid Foundation
“Our Identity & Access Management until 2020 was characterized by many manual processes handled under the key-user principle,” explains Malte Müller, Head of Central IT Services at Jungheinrich. “Accordingly, the effort was very high – granting authorizations was too slow, and compliance with policies could not be effectively monitored and documented. All in all, our former system was outdated in many respects.”
Since the company was looking for a sustainable long-term solution, those responsible decided to start at the very foundation – with the development of a robust IGA strategy. To be prepared for all eventualities, they brought in the vendor-independent expertise of iC Consult. “We decided from the outset to develop our IAM strategy and governance together with the experts at iC Consult and to enrich them with their specialized expertise. The close exchange with iC Consult provided valuable input and in-depth experience that significantly enriched and strengthened our strategic foundation – and on which today’s solutions are built,” summarizes Malte Müller.
Solution – Efficient Processes with a Powerful IGA Solution
As the IAM strategy evolved, the team of Malte Müller opted for an IGA solution with extensive functionality and high flexibility. Since then, the processes for access rights of internal and external employees have been greatly simplified.
Instead of the manual process through a key user who requested and approved access rights on behalf of employees, users today order their permissions themselves via a self-service webshop. Thanks to clearly defined and now system-supported approval processes, Identity & Access Management has become significantly more user-friendly, direct, and faster. The same applies to the revalidation of authorizations, which can now be carried out in the tool with direct feedback. In addition to simplified usability and faster processes, the system-supported workflows and documentation especially enhanced security and auditability.
“After initially starting the technical implementation with another service provider whose way of working unfortunately did not harmonize optimally with ours, we relaunched the project with iC Consult due to our positive prior experience,” recalls Malte Müller. “In hindsight, this was absolutely the right decision. Thanks to iC Consult’s expertise, both the platform implementation and the integration of numerous applications went smoothly. We already run many applications directly via the IGA solution – and if we add those covered indirectly via Entra ID, it’s significantly more. Such progress in such a relatively short time would have been unimaginable without iC Consult.”
Agile Collaboration – Hand in Hand
The key to the IAM project’s high efficiency lies in the very agile, close, and multi-layered collaboration between Jungheinrich and iC Consult. This includes a wide range of regular and ad hoc meeting formats – to keep the entire project team continuously updated, maintain cross-team knowledge transfer with other stakeholders, and gather input for further optimization potential.
“The way of working between iC Consult and us simply fits very well. Over time, we even developed a joint methodology that works optimally for all parties involved,” says Malte Müller. “You can really say that we work together as equals and can communicate even critical issues openly and honestly. Particularly noteworthy is that our developer – who previously had little experience with the IGA solution – was able to build up solid expertise in Identity Governance & Administration thanks to sparring with iC Consult. This is a particularly high added value for us.”
The Next Step: Privileged Accounts
Building on the consistently positive experiences, Jungheinrich gradually expanded its partnership with iC Consult – including in the area of privileged user accounts, which Jungheinrich manages with a dedicated Privileged Access Management solution. Following a comprehensive health check, concept consulting, and initial implementation steps, Jungheinrich’s IT leaders ultimately made the strategic decision not to operate PAM management themselves but to outsource it to iC Consult as a Managed Service.
Outlook – A Well-Filled Roadmap
“We are fully satisfied with the path we have taken with iC Consult – and we are looking at a well-filled roadmap,” summarizes Malte Müller. “In addition to further optimizing identity and object lifecycle processes and onboarding new applications – which are recurring tasks – two major projects are already on our to-do list. First, we need to connect a large ecosystem of new applications associated with the introduction of SAP S/4HANA to IAM via the corporate directories. And the second major goal for the near future is the development of an Identity API that will simplify data exchange between our IAM and other applications.”
