Sewan is a telecom operator that facilitates telecommunications for businesses. Sewan provides telephony, internet connection, hosting and security, all for professionals!
Sewan in figures:
- 775 employees
- 125,000 client companies
- €180 million in turnover in 2022
- An IT team of 6 people, including one in Spain + a CISO
- 150 user movements per quarter (arrivals, mobility, departures)
Their needs;
- Track the user flow
- Optimize and improve the reliability of employee onboarding and offboarding processes.
"I wanted a solution that simply adapted to our needs without us having to adapt to the application. It's give and take: we're contributors to the platform's evolution."
Tony Chagnon CIO at Sewan
What was the problem at Sewan?
In a context of strong growth, there were many movements (arrival, mobility, departure) and it was becoming difficult to track flows with internal resources.
It was also necessary to make this entire process, which was entirely done manually via an Excel file, more reliable.
One person was managing these flows without really having established a process or formalized the actions, so that following their departure, it was difficult to take over the file.
Tony Chagnon, the newly appointed CIO at Sewan, decided to optimize these flows.
The 2 alternatives mentioned are then:
- manage this project internally
or
- manage this project with Microsoft tools
Internally, this requires creating a tool 'from scratch'. It requires specific development and a lot of resources, so the idea is quickly abandoned.
Tony turned to Microsoft, but while all Microsoft tools articulate well with each other for identity management, there were major weaknesses for third-party tools that were not all connected with Microsoft, especially for the 'on-premise' part.
Tony Chagnon then decided to look at what was being done in the market.
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Why choose Youzer as your IAM solution?
After realizing that developing a tool internally or centralizing everything on Microsoft was not working, Tony Chagnon decided to look at what solutions were available on the market and quickly discovered a few, including Youzer.
Apart from Youzer, none are proportionate to the needs of a company the size of Sewan. The solutions are aimed at large players and involve lengthy projects to implement.
"It was a lot more complicated to set up when we needed something fast enough.
I got in touch with Youzer afterwards. We did a POC for a month, to see if it would work for us, and now we've been using Youzer for three years."
Tony wanted to automate user accounts and, of course, be able to connect all of his tools without technical constraints.
It was an application that was in full evolution and that's what interested me.
I didn't want to have a rigid structure that wouldn't allow us to necessarily meet our needs. I wanted a solution that would adapt to the customers' needs rather than us having to adapt to the application.
Tony Chagnon
What Tony appreciated was the flexibility of Youzer, which regularly evolves its application with the needs of its customers.
In terms of pricing, the decision was quickly made: “The thing was very simple: the time lost creating accounts on the left and on the right compared to the cost of automation, we gained it directly.”
How has Youzer integrated into their processes?
Sewan used Eurecia as its HRIS, and all HR and non-HR users were managed on a single solution. Therefore, they did not have the difficulty of consolidating multiple HR sources.
Initially, a few applications were connected to Youzer, such as Eurecia, Active Directory, and Microsoft 365.
The arrival of Youzer within the teams was well received, but the existing processes had to be revised slightly to ensure everything goes through Youzer, thereby establishing best practices.
There has been some thought given to what would be kept or what integration schedule would be put in place.
Generally, I have a team that is always quite fond of these kinds of tools, and ultimately, there was a fairly quick adoption, and they found it quite user-friendly to use. Knowing that creating users is normally a rather tedious task, they always do the same thing, and bringing a bit of novelty, a bit of 'fun' into the creation, was rather welcome in addition.
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What was the initial feedback with Youzer?
What is immediately apparent when synchronizing the first connectors is: this account should be deactivated because this person has left!
We had a few little surprises but not many, so that means we were managing things correctly. We still had some, so it helped to make the information more reliable.
At Sewan, user profiles are the foundation of good user management. The IT team immediately adopted the packages that allow for the precise definition of user rights profiles for each application.
If the profile is correctly configured, there will be no unpleasant surprises.
Initially, the packages were a bit complicated to set up since this functionality was shaped with Youzer and Sewan's needs.
Next, alignments were heavily used. They allow verifying that the applications assigned to a user correspond to the person's position.
What are the preferred functionalities?
- packages = for the reliability aspect
- alignments = for the security aspect
What have been the benefits of Youzer?
With 120 mobility actions per quarter, Sewan needed a solution to automate the monitoring of user movements in order to make their IS more reliable and secure. Youzer has completely helped them with this.
After testing the synchronization of the three main connectors (AD, 365, and Eurecia), Sewan quickly connected several other tools such as GLPI, a ticketing tool developed locally on a VM, Meraki, Asana, Gitlab, etc. All of the tools could be connected to Youzer either with dedicated connectors, a universal connector that connects via an agent, or a self-service connector, which is a manual connector.
It is difficult to quantify the benefits that Youzer has brought to Sewan, but the satisfaction of the teams and employees proves that Youzer is well integrated into the company.
In addition, Youzer has evolved considerably, and Sewan wants to use more of the components of this IAM solution, which is why other projects are under consideration, particularly regarding IT stock management and the security aspect with the review of entitlements.
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Would you recommend Youzer?
Tony appreciates Youzer's approach, which blends automation and user and account management while maintaining a user-friendly aspect.
"Whether for SMEs or ETIs, it's always interesting to make all this [identity and access management] more reliable, and it helps departments that don't have dedicated IT structures to help manage all the tools they have on their premises.Yes, I'd highly recommend it."
"With the proliferation of everything we can do, of all the accesses, not everyone knows or can master all that. If we can have a tool that allows us to do that, that's ideal."
