Know how to Automate Access Requests, Certifications, and Compliance Reporting
180+ Employees
In distribution and logistics, operational precision is now a baseline expectation. Yet, for many mid-sized organizations in this sector, the process governing how employees are onboarded, moved across roles, and offboarded remains manual. Processes like identity provisioning, access control, and HR-IT synchronization are often managed through a patchwork of email threads, verbal handoffs, or spreadsheets. All of which becomes a potential point of failure.
This results in delayed account creation on a new hire’s first day at work, orphaned accounts after termination, security groups that no longer reflect organizational structure, and IT teams spending hours on repetitive tasks. As Southern Diversified Distributors grew and regulatory audits intensified, these inconsistencies shifted from being an operational inconvenience to security liabilities.
Headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, Southern Diversified Distributors (SDD) is the parent company of the following entities:
SDD’s portfolio comprises established, industry-leading companies in floor covering distribution, warehousing, logistics, and transportation. It supports each subsidiary through expertise in Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, and IT. Southern Diversified Distributors’ roots are deeply embedded in a 150-year history of delivering exceptional products and services, providing profitable solutions, and building strong relationships.
With approximately 180-190 employees across the East Coast and a stable headcount over the past several years, SDD operates with a lean IT team supporting a complex, multi-domain environment. This included seven to eight domains unified under a single internal Active Directory environment.
Some of the major challenges SDD had to deal with are:
Southern Diversified Distributors’ HR-IT workflow was built on manual handoffs. So, when a new employee was added to Paycor, HR personnel would manually notify IT. Then the IT would independently create an AD account, assign security groups, and provision access. However, the same employee data was entered multiple times, by multiple teams, with no automated synchronization between systems.
This duplication introduced the compounding risk of inconsistencies and HR-IT gaps. Therefore, any discrepancy between Paycor and AD required manual reconciliation, a reactive control in an environment that demanded proactive governance.
Another acute pain point for SDD was offboarding, as they had no automated mechanism to trigger access revocation when an employee was terminated. Without automated termination workflows with scheduled access revocation, the organization was dependent on timely human notification. This left a large surface of exposure between a termination event and system access disabling, increasing the risks of insider and external cyber threats.
The pre-boarding timeline varied significantly by employee type. Corporate employees were typically notified five to ten days in advance via a ‘Personnel Action Form,’ giving them ample time to gather the necessary items. In contrast, warehouse employees were often given only one day’s notice, leaving the IT department with very little time to create accounts, assign appropriate security groups, and issue other credentials. Over time, this led to manual errors across the company, delaying the onboarding process.
To streamline its processes, SDD was implementing Desk365 as its first ITSM ticketing system, alongside other integration platforms. However, the organization realized that expanding the scope of its systems without an automated identity provisioning layer would multiply the complexity manifold. Why? This was because every new platform would add yet another manual step to already strained workflows.
Hire2Retire by RoboMQ was purpose-built to close the HR-IT gap Southern Diversified Distributors were dealing with. The core ways in which Hire2Retire resolved SDD’s challenges are:
Hire2Retire has established Paycor as the authoritative source for all employee identity-related data. It continuously monitors Paycor for events related to the employee lifecycle and automatically triggers corresponding changes in AD and other downstream systems. With Hire2Retire, employee attributes within Paycor serve as the input driving the creation of accounts, the assignment of group memberships, and the provisioning of access, all without any human intervention.
Hire2Retire supports configurable pre-boarding windows. For corporate hires with five to ten days’ advance notice, account creation and provisioning can be staged and scheduled in advance to ensure day-one readiness. For warehouse hires with a one-day window, the automated workflow reduces provisioning time from hours to minutes, independent of the IT team’s availability. Initial credential configuration, such as temporary password generation and mandatory password change on first login, is handled by Hire2Retire to improve security posture.
Hire2Retire handles dynamic group assignment based on employee attributes sourced directly from Paycor. As employees change roles or departments, group membership is updated automatically. This dynamic handling extends to the distribution list, ensuring communication groups remain accurate over time.
Hire2Retire addresses SDD’s compliance gap with automated termination workflows. When a termination event is recorded, Hire2Retire triggers access revocation across systems and deactivates accounts on a defined schedule with time-zone sensitivity. In case of immediate termination, Hire2Retire can be configured to treat such an event with elevated urgency, ensuring access revocation is done without manual IT escalations.
Southern Diversified Distributors’ environment includes seven to eight email domains, with four primary ones. Each domain maps to a single internal AD domain, increasing operational complexities. Hire2Retire’s architecture accommodates their multi-domain configuration, enabling consistent identity provisioning across SDD’s subsidiaries without separate provisioning workflows per domain.
Hire2Retire’s Workforce360 reporting module gives HR teams visibility into Active Directory group memberships and provisioning status without requiring direct AD access. For SDD, this capability enables proactive oversight of identity data and early detection of discrepancies.
Southern Diversified Distributors’ engagement with Hire2Retire reflects a broader shift in how distribution and logistics organizations approach identity governance. What was once considered an IT operational concern is increasingly recognized as a compliance, security, and operational efficiency issue that spans across the organization.
By establishing Paycor as a single source of truth and automating downstream actions, Hire2Retire eliminated redundant data entry that was spanning SDD’s HR and IT teams. Overall, Hire2Retire helped Southern Diversified Distributors reduce manual effort by up to 90% and operational costs by ~70%.
If your organization is also struggling with HR-IT gaps, manual employee and identity lifecycle management, and overprivileged/orphaned accounts, it’s high time to automate operational processes to drive your business forward.
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.
180+ Employees
