Enhancing Active Directory management: Automobile Club of Southern California's Success with ADManager Plus

Business challenges

• Transitioning: The club was moving away from its previous vendor, necessitating the need to find a new solution that would fit their specific requirements for Active Directory management and auditing.
• Administrative Sprawl: There was an evident challenge of managing administrative sprawl, which translated to difficulties in managing credentials, roles, and accesses effectively.
• Least Privilege Management: Ensuring that rights and accesses were restricted to the least privilege to enhance security was a significant concern.
• Intuitive User Interface: The need for a platform with a straightforward and streamlined user interface was essential to ensure smooth transitions and operations for technicians and support staff.
• Efficient Workflows: To streamline processes and reduce manual interventions, the club required a tool that could offer effective workflows for various Active Directory tasks.

The Problem

The Automobile Club of Southern California was in a transformative phase, reassessing their Active Directory management and auditing tools. Their previous vendor did not seem to meet their evolving requirements. As Greer Richard, the IT admin, highlighted, the challenge was not only about finding a new solution but ensuring it was the right fit for the company. The administrative sprawl they experienced was a testament to the inefficiencies they faced. This sprawl increased risks and made it challenging to manage roles, credentials, and access rights efficiently. The club sought a platform that could offer an intuitive user interface, ensuring a smooth transition for their technicians and support staff. With their vast member base and the critical nature of their services, they couldn't afford inefficiencies or security lapses.

Greer Richard emphasized, "The layout, the user interface, the simplicity and streamlined nature of the platform would be a really good transition product for our technicians, support staff, and security administrators." The desire to consolidate and reduce administrative tasks to ensure least privilege access was evident. They required a solution that could address these challenges head-on and provide functionalities that made their day-to-day operations seamless.

The outcome

With the integration of ADManager Plus, the Automobile Club of Southern California found the solution they were looking for. Richard particularly appreciated the platform's layout and user interface, which he felt would ensure a smooth transition for their team. He mentioned, "The ability to dig into unlocked or locked accounts, the workflows, and the backup and restore features, especially the incremental restoration, is going to be extremely helpful."

The most striking benefit was the club's ability to manage and reduce their administrative sprawl. They successfully started moving towards a least privilege model, ensuring tighter security and more efficient operations. Richard also emphasized the value of the workflow features, noting, "Workflows are going to be super nice." This feature, combined with the backup and restore functionalities, has streamlined their operations, reduced risks, and ensured better Active Directory management.

The Automobile Club of Southern California's partnership with ADManager Plus illustrates the transformation a reliable Active Directory management tool can bring. By choosing ADManager Plus, they have strengthened their IT infrastructure, achieving better efficiency, security, and operational excellence.

About ADManager Plus

ManageEngine ADManager Plus is a web-based Windows Active Directory management and reporting solution that helps Active Directory administrators and help desk technicians accomplish their day-to-day activities. With an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, ADManager Plus handles a variety of complex tasks, like AD object backup and recovery, user account provisioning, and stale account management, and generates an exhaustive list of Active Directory reports, many of which are essential requirements for satisfying compliance audits. It also helps administrators manage and report on their Exchange Server, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Active Directory environments—all from a single console. For more information about ADManager Plus, visit manageengine.com/ad-manager.