Thorsten Podzimek, SAC Managing Director, explains: “We have to spend around 5,000 hours a year on administrative work related to the onboarding and offboarding of an employee for our customers. The goal was to no longer have to perform this time-consuming work manually by our own employees and to increase the quality and speed of implementation. In addition, the process was to be stabilized, scalable and able to be triggered by the customer itself.  

The consequence: more administrative work with more customers thus does not lead to additional necessary employees and their training. The costs for administration should also be reduced and standardized in order to be able to offer this type of work to our customers as flat rates in the future.”

SAC’s selection process initially ran through various vendors to be able to map dynamic forms as a web front end. The IT service provider initially tried Adobe and WordPress. However, it quickly became apparent that there was no product that could even begin to deliver the necessary functionality. So SAC began developing its own web front end for dynamic forms. A software developer was hired specifically for this purpose. However, it quickly became clear that the desired solution could not be developed in-house. The development costs would have been much too high. After about 6 months of moderate progress, CEO Thorsten Podzimek got a recommendation for Flowster Solutions’ automation platform.

“Flowster Studio was the only product that met our requirements. The company itself was also a decision criterion for us.

At eye level, in Germany with German support. The company grew out of a system house. That means they know what an IT service provider has to do and what is important. So we have the same understanding. It was clear that the solution would have to be continuously developed to reflect new requirements. The eye-level principle in particular is important to us, so that our ideas and requirements are also perceived and reflected.

We simply had the feeling very quickly that we were in good hands and that a partnership-based collaboration could therefore take place. The decision was also easy because the Flowster consultant on site supported us very well in the implementation. We have never experienced such eloquent support before,” says Podzimek, explaining his decision..

The particular challenges were that the administrative processes for onboarding and offboarding have a very large number of input parameters, especially dynamic ones (e.g., authorizations, printers, distribution lists, licenses, etc.). Furthermore, it was necessary to integrate all technically required systems, on premise and in the cloud, for administration as well as to map the internal and external communication belonging to the process.

In addition, the purchase of the required licenses and their return was to be implemented via an interface with the distributors. The process should be able to be operated by the customer as a self-service and therefore a great deal of attention was also paid to secure access to this system by the customer. Two-factor authentication and single sign-on were required here..

The automation software was implemented and tested on SAC’s own infrastructure. For this purpose, the server platform and the database connection were prepared by in-house system engineers. Subsequently, the installation was carried out together with the manufacturer. The external connection was implemented via a proprietary reverse proxy solution. In total, the implementation took only four weeks. The installation of the software itself took only one day. However, this was preceded by internal consultations in which all questions regarding data backup, integration, licensing, dimensioning, SQL databases, etc. were clarified.

The introduction was accompanied by a one-week proof of concept by the manufacturer. During this time, the internal process developers were trained on the system. This meant that they were very quickly able to implement the required processes independently. For Podzimek, internal acceptance was also a decisive decision criterion:

“The developers liked it and had fun. They quickly adapted the low-code platform and were able to implement the first workflows themselves within a very short time. It was important for me to see that. This means we don’t have to rely on consultants. This saves us further costs and speeds up the internal development of new Flowster workflows.”

The project went smoothly except for minor issues. However, implementing the security layers proved challenging. “More security usually means loss of convenience and extra effort in implementation. In addition to our own IT security, that of our customers and their accesses is our top priority, especially in such critical areas,” explains Thorsten Podzimek. He adds: “Branding the user portal to SAC’s corporate identity was a bit more complex and costlier. In some cases, we had to operate at the HTML level. Unfortunately, branding has not yet been possible in its entirety. But in the end, we overcame these challenges together to the satisfaction of everyone involved,” says Thorsten Podzimek.

The team at SAC is very satisfied with the automation software. Especially the easy usability via the frontend quickly led to a high acceptance. The positive experience in using the tool played a major role in this. A large number of processes or workflows were and are implemented internally and externally. Through daily use, many employees appreciate the software. They are relieved of a lot of manual work and have more time for more important tasks. In addition, they can also complete various processes that would not have been possible without the automation platform – either because the skills were not available or the corresponding authorizations were not sufficient.

Die Automatisierungsplattform erschließt für SAC ein enormes Einsparpotenzial. Geschäftsführer Thorsten Podzimek kann dies konkret zeitlich und monetär bewerten. Er erklärt: „Alleine durch die Automatisierung der 5.000 Admin-Stunden pro Jahr ergibt sich eine Einsparung von ca. 2,5 Administrator-Stellen pro Jahr. Das bedeutet nicht, dass diese Stellen gestrichen werden. Die entsprechenden Mitarbeiter haben aber dadurch mehr Zeit, sich um andere Tasks zu kümmern. Mit den Aufwendungen für den Betrieb der Lösung rechnen wir aktuell nur für diesen Fall mit einer Einsparung von etwa 100.000 Euro pro Jahr.”

The list of desired workflows for automation at SAC is long. This applies to both internal processes and external tasks. The IT service provider refers to this internally as “IT housekeeping”. This refers to necessary but tedious routine activities in IT – comparable to housekeeping in hotels. The automated system takes over many small and regular tasks that can otherwise only be carried out with delays or a great deal of effort.  

Examples are:

• Regular reminders before certificates or licenses expire
• Checks for manipulated user accounts
• Regular backup of configurations (e.g. for switches or firewalls)
• Automatic import of updates, together with backups, rollback and function tests