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Winston-Salem U Deploys Enterprise Service with Integration & Automation

CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT

When contemplating the use of automation and integration as part of a broader Enterprise Service Management (ESM) strategy, it’s important to consider the different ways a tool like iPaaS (integration platform as a service) can be used to extend ESM even further.  For instance, a simple service request like a name change, may seem simple but in reality it will require a series of rather mundane and manual steps - this could easily get automated.  There are hundreds and hundreds of these types of activities happening all across the enterprise - all waiting to get automated.

At Winston-Salem University, they’ve done just that. Derrick Hargrove and his team in the Office of Information Technology, are using iPaaS to automate processes throughout the University that directly impact service resolution times whether in IT, the Office of the Registrar, the financial aid office or human resources. Hargrove said the university started building iPaaS workflows to address various challenges they had with both system access and access to various apps and software provided to students, employees and faculty at the university.

 


By creating these workflows within iPaaS we are able to save a significant amount of time.


 

“By creating these workflows within iPaaS we are able to save a significant amount of time,” Hargrove said. “Previously we’ve had situations where system access has held up a ticket so having the automated approval and access granted through iPaaS has helped us avoid those issues. And when you have people who need certain access or software to do their jobs, it’s nice to be able to provide that almost instantaneous resolution. It’s been a big win for us.”

The university has flows in place to grant system access based on different groups within Active Directory. Those same groups are utilized to run flows to grant access to things like Microsoft Teams and Adobe Creative Cloud.

Using iPaaS To Clean Data in Ellucian Banner

Another way in which Hargrove and his team plan to use iPaaS is to clean up data as it flows into the university’s Banner ERP system.  “Over the years we’ve noticed different departments refer to themselves by different names than we might have in our system. To help clean this up, we have built data cleansing flows within iPaaS. The flow is pulling the names and checking against what we have as the standardized name, then notifying our Human Resources department if there are any outliers so we can go in and make sure we’re including all the departments we need to, and make any corrections needed.”

Prior to iPaaS the discrepancies in department names were causing issues when granting system access and software licenses – either due to misspellings or the requestor using a non-standard department name.

“Having this whole process be automated, including the notifications out to our human resources team about any correction needed will save us a lot of time,” Hargrove said.

Are you interested in learning more about what you can integrate and automate with iPaaS? Read our latest eBook – Enterprise Integration Playbook: Saving Time with iPaaS