Knowlton Development Corporation, Inc. (“kdc/one”) embraces automation, saves time and effort, with ManageEngine

The challenge: Manual and time-consuming IT tasks

kdc/one had a manual process to create and terminate users. With many applications and domains, it took them more than half a day to do it using Microsoft PowerShell and Excel. Cedrick shares an instance where the HR manager had reached out to his team to terminate the account of a shift employee at 4am. It was difficult for them to create and terminate users manually, especially at odd hours.

Adding licenses to new users took them 20 clicks on Microsoft Office 365. It was a time-consuming process, and doing it on a daily basis—with their business growing by the day—was just not feasible in the long run.

Another cause of worry for kdc/one was that they did not have any proper visibility into user activities on Active Directory (AD). They had system administrators spread across the globe handling user accounts. Sometimes, a user would lose access to groups or attributes, so it was hard to understand which system administrator triggered that change and why. To audit this activity, they had to go to Windows Event Viewer and run a PowerShell script, eating away a lot of their time.

The tools: ManageEngine ADManager Plus and ADAudit Plus

It came to a point where Cedrick had to look for alternate vendors to support their growing IT needs. Microsoft was just not the right fit.

Cedric again turned to ManageEngine to address the challenges of AD user management. He evaluated ADManager Plus and ADAudit Plus and was blown away by the simplicity and power of the software.

The outcome: Embracing automation, saving time and effort

With ADManager Plus, kdc/one is leveraging its automation capabilities to create and terminate users, which used to take them almost half a day using Microsoft PowerShell and Excel. The productivity of their IT team has stupendously increased, allowing them to focus on other critical IT challenges and meet tight deadlines without a sweat. The Microsoft Office 365 integration with ADManager Plus allows them to assign licenses to new users in a single click, down from 20.

kdc/one now has complete visibility into their AD activities using ADAudit Plus. It lets them track which administrator added or deleted groups and also helps them secure their AD environment with user behaviour analytics (UBA).