Seismic is the global leader in enablement, helping organizations engage customers, enable teams, and ignite revenue growth. From the world’s largest enterprises to startups and small businesses, more than 2,000 organizations around the globe trust Seismic for their enablement needs. Seismic is headquartered in San Diego with offices across North America, Europe, and Australia.
Challenge:
When Steve Foley, Senior IT Automation Engineer at Seismic, joined the company, the IT function was a team of eight. The small but mighty IT team completed the myriad of tasks they were responsible for manually. Foley saw an opportunity for automation to free up the IT team to help the organization with strategic initiatives, and ultimately work on more fulfilling projects.
“No one wants to manually assign a license or deprovision users. As important as that is, entering first and last name is not a skill set that’s going to really grow a career. I wanted to take those tasks away and give IT back time to build skill sets and do something that they enjoy,” explained Foley.
Foley vetted three solutions and quickly found BetterCloud best fit Seismic’s needs and addressed challenges ranging from user lifecycle management (ULM) to help desk ticket resolution.
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BetterCloud answered the most problems for us. It was the solution that could save our team time and effort. It aligned with the way the IT team was looking to automate and streamline processes.”
Steve Foley, Senior IT Automation Engineer at Seismic
Solution:
In the time since Foley joined Seismic, the IT team has grown to 18 people and currently supports over 1,500 employees. Foley strives to make onboarding, offboarding, and mid-lifecycle changes as seamless as possible for all departments involved. The IT team now depends on BetterCloud to execute ULM processes and maintain audit logs to ensure compliance. BetterCloud’s automation capabilities assure even the longest and most complex processes get done on time without the risk of human error.
Seismic’s ULM processes start within their HRIS which triggers Workato, an iPaaS solution. The data within Workato is then utilized to trigger workflows in BetterCloud. “It’s really cool to see these tools work together,” Foley explained. “BetterCloud’s integrations are fast, quick, and easy. It has a great GUI (graphic user interface) to build automated workflows that we are triggering based on specific trigger groups.”
With BetterCloud eliminating a high volume of manual tasks, the team has shifted to the role of proactive business partner. IT is able to get ahead of requests by understanding what departments need and taking action on it before they even ask.
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I can guarantee that someone has access to what they need day one or when they transition to a new role. Employees have what they need faster than ever,” said Foley.
Not only has automation proven to be a time saver, it also helps with data accuracy. “If I am building accounts daily across multiple platforms, there’s a chance that I could make a typing mistake. If I am pushing data to an application that is integrated into BetterCloud, I’m going to make sure that it’s using accurate data.”
Foley didn’t stop there. He has meetings scheduled with nearly 90 leaders in the organization to bring department-specific workflows to the next level and ask what IT can do for them. His aim is to use this feedback to “deliver an onboarding experience like no other” that ensures new employees globally have all the tools they need to work on day one. This also reduces the amount of help desk tickets submitted to IT. “Our tickets have dropped substantially,” Foley said. “And we are only getting better.”
Thoroughly offboarding an employee is just as important. Foley explained, “If you’ve been at the company for one year or six years, you’re going to have a whole lot of access to applications and files throughout your time at the company.”
Foley went on to say, “Offboarding is probably our most run workflow and guarantees that we’re deprovisioning people in an appropriate fashion. We’re taking back licenses, we’re transferring files to managers, we’re deleting accounts after a wait period. We are keeping our environment cleaner than ever. And when it comes time to audit, we’re compliant.” From a security standpoint, it is important that departed users have been appropriately disabled across all systems.
BetterCloud has freed time for Foley to work on how automation can impact different areas of the organization.
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There’s a lot that we can do with BetterCloud. It is making us a more respected and renowned player in the business,” said Foley.
Results:
Configured over 750 automated steps in onboarding and offboarding workflows
Executed over 17,000 actions in one year using ULM workflows
Saved 860 hours in one year using ULM workflows
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BetterCloud is a great company with great people. The solution certainly makes our job easier and leadership loves the benefits we are getting from the tool.”
Steve Foley, Senior IT Automation Engineer at Seismic