Novell Delivers Secure Identity Management Solution to RadioShack

Novell is helping one of the nation's largest consumer electronics specialty retailers, RadioShack Corporation, more efficiently manage employee turnover and significantly reduce the costs associated with it. Using a Novell® Nsure™ secure identity management solution, RadioShack has been able to securely extend paper-based business processes to the Web - making them faster, cheaper and more convenient.

In the retail industry, employee turnover is a constant topic of interest. To minimize the cost of bringing on new employees, RadioShack elected to take its benefits election process online and make it completely self-service. After evaluating the PeopleSoft* Directory Interface, RadioShack decided a comprehensive secure identity management solution from Novell could best address the company's needs, now and in the future.

"Before Novell Nsure, our benefits process was completely paper-based, with nearly 100,000 election information packets mailed to new employees each year," said Jana Freundlich, vice president of Compensation and Benefits for RadioShack. "By taking that process online, we've made it much faster and more convenient for users, and we've saved about 30 days of administrative work."

RadioShack engaged Novell consultants to create a single repository for identity information by using Novell Nsure Identity Manager™ (DirXML®) to integrate employee data from PeopleSoft to Novell eDirectory™. Using eDirectory as the identity repository, RadioShack was able to automatically create network accounts for each of its 30,000 employees, giving them secure access to benefits information based on their identity. Today, when a change is made to data in either PeopleSoft or eDirectory, Nsure Identity Manager automatically synchronizes the change across both systems, eliminating the need for manual updating.

During the benefits enrollment process, employees use a single ID and password to authenticate via Novell iChain®, access their online benefits application and make their selections. Novell consultants also created a custom password-reset utility to help RadioShack avoid the cost of hiring additional support staff. If employees forget a password, they have a self-service application to reset their password without having to call for support.

During the first major test of the new solution, RadioShack's 2003 open enrollment period, manual data entry required of the HR department was reduced by 85 percent, and the company received relatively few help desk calls during the entire six-week enrollment period. With the Nsure solution in place, RadioShack has been able to meet its goals and drive down the cost and complexity of employee turnover, yet the solution also provides a solid foundation for future identity management projects.

"Our Novell solution is a foundational project in many ways," said Ron Cook, vice president of Strategy and Technical Operations for RadioShack. "It met our immediate needs of rolling out online benefits, but it is really the foundation for a secure identity management solution throughout all our 7,200 stores."

For more information about Novell Nsure secure identity management solutions, go to http://www.novell.com/nsure.