Feet on the ground and IT in the Cloud

In 2012, DLG Denmark decided to modernize the company's IT platform and move DLG to the Cloud, and turned to SIVIS for help. The modernization of the digital solution meant phasing out Novell and eDirectory and moving to Microsoft Cloud technology. It came from a desire for mobility, digital unification, administration without IT, and improved documentation and logging; all within current EU regulations.

Peter Rugaard, IT Manager at DLG: "To understand DLG's situation, it is important to know that since 2001 we have expanded by acquiring companies across the globe. This expansion resulted in a patchwork of different IT technologies and platforms being used throughout the growing company. This in turn meant that the IT burden exploded, the cost of maintaining IT was enormous and the transparency of systems was nil. A digital transformation was essential if we want to continue to expand."

"Our goal is to become number one in our market. To achieve this, we need a state-of-the-art IT platform and we need to have our IT burden under control. It is also necessary to have an IT solution that is agile and supports digital mobility and transformation. Being a frontrunner is a huge part of the company's DNA. If we weren't, we wouldn't be here today."

"From the start, we wanted to get away from our old Novell OnPrem solution and move to a Microsoft Cloud solution. In collaboration with SIVIS, it was decided in 2012 that the solution should simplify and streamline IT updates in DLG and DLG subsidiaries, and that employees should be able to access the solution to a greater extent mobile. But in the period from 2012 to 2015, demands for even greater flexibility and better internal communication began to be made, and in 2016 a new strategy was presented in DLG GROUP: Greater cooperation between the companies and a common IT strategy for the largest wholesale companies in GROUP up to 2021. With the announcement of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, DLG faces another urgent requirement: All user events must be documented throughout the company before the GDPR comes into force on 25 May 2018" 

"The IT burden was holding us back and hindering progress across the business. IT employees are highly educated people, and it is a waste of their skills if most of their time is spent on routine tasks such as creating and deleting users, license assignments, password resets, etc.

At the same time, they become bottlenecks for the rest of the business, which is deeply unsatisfactory for everyone. If we could push the routine tasks out into the business, it would create air on several levels: IT employees would be able to focus on their core tasks of creating new opportunities for the business through IT.

The business would experience greater influence and flexibility in their daily work if they themselves created and maintained the personal data they were responsible for, and if they could perform password resets and maintain licenses themselves. All in the knowledge that their changes would be immediately reflected in all relevant systems."

"A focus for us has been to build a solution that complies with current EU regulations. This meant that we were well prepared when GDPR was announced. With SIVIS Enterprise Security to do User Lifecycle Management, we just build on top of our previous strategy and stay the course."

"We have made the changes in close cooperation with the competent people at SIVIS. The collaboration has meant that we have learned a lot about the solution along the way, and we feel well prepared to take over the finished solution. So far, we have moved our solution and our basic role and license management solution into the Cloud, which means self-service for DLG employees and for a large part of our affiliated companies. Thus, our IT bottleneck has been replaced by self-service in the business through SIVIS Enterprise Security."

"Our complicated IT solution has been linked together, so we can only make changes in one place in the system, and it affects all places that are relevant in all companies under DLG GROUP. Since we are now in the Cloud, we can now offer our employees mobile IT: A large part of our employees are drivers and on the road most of their working hours. They can now access their digital workplace from their vehicles whenever they need it."

"We wanted to modernize our digital solution by getting rid of Novell and eDirectory. We wanted mobility, digital unification, administration without IT, and we wanted documentation and logging.

Are we achieving our goals? Yes, we are.

There is no doubt that it has been a long and complex journey, but it has been worth it. Due to our close collaboration with SIVIS and with the implementation of SIVIS Enterprise Security, we are confident that we will be compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation when it comes into force on May 25, 2018."