Mattress Firm: Security and Innovation

That’s why Mattress Firm started working with Ivanti three years ago. Today, it uses the entire Ivanti identity and access management solution, including Ivanti Identity Director and Ivanti Automation. According to Mattress Firm’s Vice President of Infrastructure, Ivanti’s software has helped the company make great strides. The greater value is what the technology can do for the company going forward. “I don’t think there is a limit,” the Vice President said. “I think a lot of people say, ‘Oh great, I automated it, now I’m done,’ and if that’s the case then they’re short-sighted on the true value of what they are able to do.”

Reliable software is crucial for a company that handles 3,000 to 7,000 IT identity-alignment tasks on an average day and 20,000 to 30,000 changes on a day where the company is in realignment. There is other automation software on the market.

What sets Ivanti’s solutions apart is the ability to adjust in real time when an employee’s position changes. Identity Director automatically adds or scales back access to sales data, time-card approval or how much of the reporting system is visible. “All that changed was HR changing their title and, if needed, their location,” the Vice President said. “Identity Director picked that up and made all the downstream changes in the system automatically because of a single change.”

That assurance, making sure all the changes are made correctly, is something employees doing these tasks manually simply cannot provide. The Vice President added, “Who’s going to take the responsibility of making sure that a user is pulled out of every single secure group they’ve ever been assigned to? Who’s going to take responsibility to make sure that a user is pulled from every single distribution list they’ve ever been assigned to? No one does that because it’s so tedious and no one has time to do it. Well, Ivanti does it.”

The automated changes save time and allow employees to think toward the future. As a company subject to audits, they also provide peace of mind. “Now, with confidence, auditors can come in and we know we’re going to be in the high 90s for percent of success because we don’t require or allow manual intervention,” the Vice President said.

Looking to the future

Ivanti’s software doesn’t just help IT execute their current duties to the best of their abilities. It allows them to figure out what Mattress Firm will look like years from now. Mattress Firm is now preparing to take Ivanti’s software capabilities to the next level by experimenting in machine learning. By doing that, the company’s computers will be able to take data and produce information they weren’t specifically looking to collect or process. This could allow Mattress Firm to track sales in correlation to weather. Inclement weather can have a huge effect on sales, so without calculating for weather, changes in sales on certain days year-over-year can be hard to explain. With automated actions based on this type of data, the changes can’t just be explained, they can be predicted.

“Our next big adventure with automation is machine learning, where it’s pulling in data, it’s pulling in sales, it’s pulling in weather, it’s pulling in any conditions around there and being able to calculate what our sales projections are going to be for any given holiday,” the Vice President said.

As Mattress Firm uses innovative thinking to continue to grow, Ivanti will be alongside providing all the necessary support. Mattress Firm has 30,000 automated transactions on a busy day, but it aspires to the goal of 100,000 automated transactions. Ivanti has pledged to build up to that capacity before Mattress Firm hits its goal.

That pledge instills confidence in the partnership between Ivanti and Mattress Firm. It’s this commitment – coupled with the accuracy and ability of the Ivanti solutions – that makes Mattress Firm an enthusiastic consumer of Ivanti solutions. The Vice President concluded, “It changes the way we work. It helps me sleep better because I know that our systems are going to be more accurate, stable, and secure.”