Enforce Governance and meet Compliance for a zero-trust, least-privilege security posture
700+ Employees
As organizations grow, managing employee identities across HR and IT systems becomes increasingly complex. Especially when processes remain manual, IT administrators spend their time pulling information from HR systems and then re-integrating it into IT service management (ITSM) platforms. This reduces IT admins productivity and downgrades overall data quality. These were exactly the challenges Heinen’s Inc. faced.
Founded in 1929, Heinen’s is a premier grocery store chain noted for its quality products and outstanding customer service. Heinen’s has now welcomed the fourth generation of owners into the company, which operates 23 stores (19 in Cleveland, Ohio, and 4 in Chicago, Illinois), two distribution warehouses, one food production plant, and a corporate office (all located in Warrensville Heights, Ohio).
Their core offerings and specialty services include:
Heinen’s strives to exceed customer service and product assortment standards while placing a strong cultural emphasis on employees’ quality of life.
Heinen’s Inc. had used Active Directory (AD) for 20 years. They recently switched their HR Information System (HRIS) from Kronos to ADP. However, as ADP was isolated from AD, IT administrators had to do a lot of preliminary work. For instance, they had to export data from ADP in .csv format and manually uploading it to AD.
With these systems operating individually, several challenges slowed their operations, such as:
ADP and Active Directory operated independently, preventing automatic synchronization of employee data between HR and other connected systems.
Due to the lack of integration, data had to be exported from ADP as CSV files and manually uploaded to Active Directory, resulting in a slow, error-prone provisioning process.
With no governance over naming conventions, employee names in the Active Directory remained inconsistent. There were no tools or filters to identify and overcome these errors, making it hard to maintain consistent identity data across the organization. And rectifying these mistakes required hours of manual searching and updating data, making identity management difficult to maintain.
Heinen’s, Inc. had more employees on the storefront side of the business. That means employees leave and rejoin their organization every now and then, which makes tracking of orphaned accounts complicated. Therefore, even after an employee leaves the company, payroll records still held their information. When rehired, this led to multiple accounts and identity conflicts within the system.
Heinen’s Inc. only required Active Directory accounts for 700 employees who needed access to internal IT systems. But the ADP and Active Directory were not integrated. That’s why, the IT team had no automated way to determine which employees should be provisioned in AD. This led IT teams to manually review employee records from ADP and decide which identities should be created or managed in AD.
To eliminate manual identity management and data inconsistencies, Heinen’s Inc. implemented Hire2Retire. The platform now connects their ADP (HR system) with Hybrid AD (on-prem and cloud directories), automating employee lifecycle management.
Hire2Retire configured ADP as the single authoritative source. This enabled employee information (date of joining, unique employee ID, reporting manager, and employment status) originating from HR to automatically flow to downstream IT systems.
By integrating ADP to Active Directory, Hire2Retire automates user provisioning for Heinen’s Inc. Through this integration, Hire2Retire eliminates manual CSV exports/uploads and automates new hire provisioning in Active Directory based on HR data, significantly reducing IT efforts.
Hire2Retire maps attributes between ADP and Active Directory fields, ensuring consistent account creation and standardized naming structures across the organization.
Hire2Retire integrates with the IT service management systems of Heinen’s Inc to support automated access requests and approval workflows while maintaining governance and visibility.
Hire2Retire’s employee lifecycle tracking also prevents duplicate accounts when employees leave and later return to the organization.
Based on HR attributes such as role, department, and organizational unit, Hire2Retire automatically assigns Active Directory groups and access permissions. This helps ensure employees receive the resources they need from day one.
After implementing Hire2Retire, Heinen’s Inc. streamlined and modernized its identity management process. It helped them significantly reduce operational complexity for IT teams.
By integrating ADP with Active Directory (AD), Heinen’s Inc now uses ADP as a single source of truth, assuring that accurate HR information automatically flows across connected IT systems. This integration eliminates the need for manual CSV-based data transfers between HR and IT systems.
Hire2Retire now automates employee lifecycle management, ensuring that new employees are provisioned quickly and consistently, while updates to employee roles or status are reflected across connected systems.
As a result, from onboarding to role changes and offboarding, every step in the workforce lifecycle management has become a fully automated process for Heinen’s Inc. This transformation reduced their manual efforts by up to 90%, allowing IT admins to focus on strategic initiatives while provisioning the right access at the right time.
If your organization wants to simplify user access provisioning and automate employee lifecycle management, then connect with our experts to learn how Hire2Retire can transform your HR to IT workflows.
RoboMQ is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with any of HR systems that it provides integration with and are mentioned in this case study. All product and company names are the registered trademarks of their original owners.
700+ Employees
