Inchcape Ignites Identity and Access Management to Drive Digital Transformation

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Challenge

Rapid growth through acquisitions left Inchcape with a fragmented global infrastructure, including 26 separate Active Directory forests that hindered employee productivity and security.

Results

By consolidating identities into a unified SSO platform, Inchcape integrated 30+ applications and significantly reduced IT help desk calls.

Objective

As the leading independent automotive distributor and retailer, Inchcape’s Ignite strategy aimed to drive continual improvement and best practices globally. They sought to rationalize their IAM platforms to streamline the user experience, strengthen their security posture, and enable a more aggressive move toward cloud and SaaS solutions.

Challenge

Inchcape faced a highly fragmented global infrastructure resulting from years of acquisitions. With employees operating in 33 different countries, they lacked a unified way to provide secure access to IT services. Additionally, they needed to comply with international data privacy regulations like GDPR while protecting sensitive systems from both external and internal threats.

Solution

Inchcape implemented a policy-driven Single Sign-On (SSO) architecture and Multi-factor Authentication (MFA). They consolidated their 26 Active Directory forests into a single managed platform. Leveraging Ping's flexibility, they utilized Docker and containers to deploy the solution across their global estate, integrating everything from Microsoft productivity tools to Salesforce and their iPower ERP.

Results

The transformation exceeded best practice criteria, delivering a much simpler login process for staff, especially remote workers. The IT department gained deeper visibility and audit capabilities for data governance. The platform has proven rock-solid, handling constant authentication requests across 22 time zones with zero outages or performance issues.