Material employees get single sign-on for easier work life

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Teams

Professional Services

Active Directory

Future of Work

Microsoft Security

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Avanade Material Azure Active Case Study

Business Situation

Material is a strategy, insights, design and technology partner for companies striving for true customer-centricity. To that end, the company recently brought multiple separate legal entities together under one company to provide its clients with a unique mix of business, experience and brand solutions.

Material knew that it needed to deliver a secure, compelling and collaborative employee experience to help retain talent and create a strong team environment. It partnered with Avanade to modernize and streamline its IT identity infrastructure so all employees can be authenticated through a single Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AAD) and feel like they belong to one company while still having access to the tools they're comfortable with.

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“Fundamentally, we can do things faster with less effort. We’re finally truly able to act as one company, focus on more impactful work, and because things can be done more efficiently within our teams, it’s had a positive impact on client satisfaction as well.”

Brad Bazley, Senior Vice President, Information Technology, Material

Solution

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Using an agile methodology, we structured the modern workplace design work around identity, access control, security and technology interoperability with the goal of migrating all employees to AAD. This followed a carefully planned roadmap to:

Design, define and establish an appropriate identity foundation
Manage and secure Google Workspace by integrating with AAD for single sign-on, MFA and user provisioning
Consolidate user groups
Implement the phased migration and integrate user identities and security permissions into AAD

This identity foundation and migration allowed for a common email domain for all Material employees and a shared address book per the company’s goals. We also helped standardize the use of Microsoft Teams between users on both platforms to increase collaboration and make it easier for employees to do their jobs.

Results

Since migrating its employees across multiple entities onto a single AAD tenant, Material is demonstrating it can “walk the talk” as digital transformation partners. Other benefits include:

A 53% increase in employees actively using Microsoft Teams on a daily basis.
A 60% faster response and resolution time for employees’ support requests, meaning they can spend less time waiting for their IT issues to be fixed and more time focused on client work.
By enabling a secure, hybrid remote work environment, the company has seen a 47% increase in its Microsoft Secure Score for identity. Its score is now 9% higher than average.

Learn more about the value our work brings to our clients and their customers.