Successful Password Management Implementation at PepsiCo

1. CASE STUDY
PepsiCo
Integrating Sun IDM Password Management with IVR
In 2009, Partners Consulting was engaged to create a mechanism that
would allow employees and external users to privately and securely
manage their IDM password without the requirement of using a
computer. The company employs approximately 185,000 people
worldwide, and its products are sold in approximately 200 countries.
PepsiCo’s principal businesses include: Snack foods, Beverages, Sports
drinks and Juices. They previously integrated a phone based helpdesk
system that they were currently using to help their users deal with
password issues and other computer and system related issues. The
number of password calls to the helpdesk was increasing and more
helpdesk personnel would be needed to support the calls. The goal was
to assist PepsiCo’s users in resolving password issues without having to
involve helpdesk personnel and to do this without requiring a computer
interface.
The addition of an automated telephone password management option
will:
• Enhance the user experience by providing a simple,
automated, 24/7 solution for users who can't access a
webpage.
• Significantly reduce help desk call volumes and their
associated costs by automating the most common helpdesk
request.
• Allow helpdesk technicians to focus more attention on more
complex tasks, further enhancing responsiveness and
customer satisfaction within their user community.
Solution
The solution architecture was a simple extension of the existing IdM
(Identity Management) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems.
In order to minimize the customizations to the IdM system that must be
maintained, the IdM SPML interface was utilized for communication
between the two systems.
SPML (“Service Provisioning Markup Language”) is a protocol that was
created by the OASIS web-service standards organization to provide an
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2. CASE STUDY
open, standards-based method for systems to interoperate for
provisioning requests. These requests are based on a common
Request/Response model, and include the necessary features in order to
support password management requests.
Sun Identity Manager has built-in native support for SPML that was
utilized. In this case, IdM acts as the web service “provider” and IVR
acts as the web service “consumer”. IVR will send SPML requests to
IdM; IdM will process the request, and return an SPML response to the
IVR application. The SPML SOAP Handler on the IdM server maps the
SPML requests to native IdM function calls, such as querying a user,
processing a form or view, launching workflows, and provisioning
changes to the target applications via resource adapters.
The SPML protocol utilizes SOAP, a standard for web services which is
based on XML for the message format and HTTP(S) for the transport
protocol. All communication for the IVR Integration was done via secure
HTTPS SPML calls on an encrypted, private WAN connection between
the IVR and IDM systems.
Partners’ Consulting Approach
Partners leveraged our 5D Methodology™ that we developed from our
years of consulting experience. Using our methodology, we were able to
provide expert oversight, monitoring, and reporting on the issues
enabling the organization to make decisions that were best for their
needs at the appropriate time throughout the project.
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3. CASE STUDY
Major Challenges Included:
• Fine tuning Voice Recognition
• Providing communication paths between two unlike systems.
• The IVR system was untested and had not been used in the
companies environment before
• IVR must be able to retrieve the IDM user’s authentication
questions and verbally ask the caller the questions.
• IVR must understand a callers response to prompts even in
noisy environments
Sun Identity Manager
Our customer, PepsiCo, had already integrated Sun Identity Manager to
address their needs with respect to:
• New Account Requests (and updates)
• Provisioning and De-provisioning
• Password Self-Service
Partners Consulting Enabled Success
• Took advantage of IDMs built-in native support for the SPML
protocol
• Took advantage of the standard SOAP web services for
message formatting
• All communication was through HTTPS SPML calls
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