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Sanofi: Building a Global Identity Program That Scales

Last week the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit brought identity governance professionals all over Europe to London for a two-day conference. The event was buzzing with chatter over what’s next in identity, with many identity professionals looking for guidance on how to develop and grow a best-in-class identity program. SailPoint customer, Christophe Vernant, Global Head of Identity and Access Management at Sanofi presented the identity governance journey the company is currently on. Vernant spoke of the business drivers that lead him to invest in an identity governance platform that addressed their growing challenges. For those of you who were not able to join us at Gartner, below is a recap of Sanofi’s program shared during the session.

Sanofi is a global healthcare company based in Paris with over 100,000 employees. The company provides healthcare solutions to over 170 countries around the world. They pride themselves on improving the lives of people, with sustainable and responsible solutions. Their global IT organization supports each of the 5 business units and in a highly regulated industry, that is no small task.

The Growing Need to Address Identity

Sanofi had employees all over the world accessing systems without a centralized program to govern access. Security was the issue, and the IT team needed a solution that could unify identity management, scale and meet the requirements of the business. “As a global company in a highly regulated field, we needed to build a core foundation that would secure the business and leave us primed for growth,” Vernant shared. “SailPoint’s market leadership and vision for a secure, global enterprise gave us the confidence that their partnership would help us continue to scale at the pace the business required.”

Sanofi partnered with SailPoint to address these challenges and build their global identity program. Their first goal was to secure access to systems and create processes for managing onboarding and offboarding for employees. User provisioning is now globally managed and by automating the onboarding and offboarding processes the company has seen an increase in employee productivity. “No longer are employees experiencing unnecessary wait times to gain access to the applications necessary to do their jobs,” Vernant shared.

Vernant has big plans to grow the program. He continues to bring key applications into SailPoint that will enhance the onboarding and offboarding experience for employees. Privileged access management is a key area of focus for the team, and these super accounts will soon have increased visibility and further security around the applications they are accessing.

Identity Best Practices

During his presentation, Vernant shared several recommendations with the audience for building an infrastructure that fosters growth. We couldn’t agree more with his advice below.

Clarify Your Primary Goals: Working with the business to define the goals for each phase of your program will allow your team and the business to work towards the same objectives.

Take a Phased Implementation Approach: Identity governance is a program, not a project. Set your milestones and deliver on what was expected before moving to the next phase of your program.

 Consider IAM Best Practices: Be ready to challenge your requirements to leverage the best practices that others have before you and your solution partner advises.

Cleanse Your Data: Assess the quality of your data sources and evaluate the impact of non-compliance on your own processes.

Christophe, thank you for sharing your identity journey at Gartner!


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