| JUST OVER A YEAR AGO, the IT team at Fifth Third Bancorp discovered a way to accomplish what all IT teams strive to do: streamline its workload, enable employees elsewhere in the enterprise to work more efficiently and, of course, save money.
The opportunity the team identified had
nothing to do with installing a glitzy electronic commerce
system or embarking on a potentially expensive ERP implementation.
Instead, team members focused on simply improving efficiency
and cutting costs in the institution’s human resources
information system. Specifically, they determined that the
company could quickly reap impressive ROI on a self-service
intranet that provided employees with easy, one-stop access
to HR information.
To do so, Fifth Third would have to create the new application from scratch. At the time, employees did not have online access to HR materials; they retrieved information by telephone. “We had an environment that could be improved significantly,” acknowledges Bob West, chief information security officer for the Cincinnati-based financial institution.
THE TASK
In a fast-paced financial services environment, employees need to be as efficient as possible. Waiting on crowded phone lines for information about 401(k) accounts, health insurance plans or vacation status obviously cut heavily into their productivity. An intranet that provided simple yet secure access would let employees quickly retrieve the information they wanted—and then get back to work.
Moreover, the IT staff constantly found itself helping HR representatives manage, locate and secure data stored in hard-to-find information silos in multiple systems throughout the company. A new system would eliminate much of that wasted effort, freeing both teams to concentrate on other important projects.
Finally, an automated system would allow the bank to provide its employees with much better customer service while helping to lower operating costs.
The IT team faced several technological challenges in undertaking the project. First, the institution needed a secure way to exchange information with its HR outsourcing partner. It also needed an application that would let employees sign in once and access the information they needed while still being able to navigate to other applications.
THE SOLUTIONS
By December 2003, the team members selected two solutions from RSA Security: RSA® Federated Identity Manager and RSA ClearTrust® web access management software. RSA® Federated Identity Manager provides web-based single-sign-on functionality that lets users easily move between online applications within company or partner environments without having to reauthenticate themselves each time. The solution also creates a centralized source of authentication information for applications and web services, identifying users and recording when, where and how they were authenticated. The RSA ClearTrust solution, among other capabilities, can help organizations provide secure, cost-effective access to web applications.
West’s team began studying the intranet
project’s technical requirements in order to develop
a high-level implementation plan. With help from RSA Security
and one of its business partners, they mapped out the placement
of each component of the RSA Security applications in a Sun
J2EE™ technology (Sun Java 2D™ , Enterprise Edition)
environment. They also decided to implement the RSA ClearTrust
solution on its own site, which enabled Fifth Third to use
a rules-based architecture to authenticate users to view web-based
information.
In addition, the team deployed the RSA Federated
Identity Manager solution, enabling Fifth Third to exchange
users’ digital credentials with its HR partner.
That partner agreed to implement RSA Federated Identity Manager. It now uses the solution as a strategic tool, promoting its single-sign-on and authorization capabilities to potential clients interested in creating systems similar to the one at Fifth Third. RSA Federated Identity Manager serves as an important differentiator between the partner company and its competition, West adds.
THE RESULTS
In January 2004, Fifth Third completed a proof-of-concept project, and in March, after RSA Security provided additional customization, it installed both RSA Security products. By April, the system was up and running.
In fact, Fifth Third plans to extend its use of RSA Security solutions soon. The bank resells a wide variety of other companies’ financial products, so its employees need constant access to information at those other businesses. Its current system requires employees to log on to a separate system for each of the other companies—meaning 50 to 60 different systems. Fifth Third’s IT team plans to use the RSA ClearTrust technology and RSA Federated Identity Manager solutions to create a single consolidated access point that will work much as the HR system does, enabling employees to work more effectively while helping to lower IT administration costs.
Meanwhile, the bank’s HR initiative has already produced impressive results. Employees can now access HR information without wasting time on the phone. In addition, Fifth Third has reassigned hotline operators or streamlined its staff, further reducing payroll costs. In fact, West expects the system to pay for itself within its first year.
The RSA ClearTrust solution also lets the bank store employee information in a single repository, allowing both IT and HR staffers to move and manage information more efficiently. Security is easier, too: RSA ClearTrust software provides for and can protect a single information repository rather than multiple storage spots scattered across the enterprise. As West puts it, “If there is only one place to go for stored information, that’s a lot fewer systems I have to protect.”
By Lee Pender
Photograph by Chris Cone
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