FedEx’s impressive IAM ROI

FedEx spent $277,000 on an IAM project and saved $500,000 in real costs along with $1.2M in soft costs. This article in CIO Magazine because speaks to how FedEx integrated their security badge management system into their IAM system for both better security and compliance. Clearly, FedEx not only had some clear goals in mind (improve security & regulatory compliance, cut costs and improve operational efficiency) but they also had a very clear picture of the ROI potential associated with the project and what their criteria for success was. I especially appreciated the fact that FedEx quantified both the hard savings ($500K) and the soft savings ($1.2M) associated with the elimination of 23,000 annual hours of a administrative work related to managing their badging system.

One important factoid was how FedEx decreased the time to get a badge to a new hire from three weeks to near real-time. I’m willing to bet that FedEx employs some contractors so that’s probably something that could figure into their overall ROI calculation also. What percentage of those contractors – who you are paying by the hour – would have been impacted by a three week wait for a badge? Multiply that out and I’m willing to bet that FedEx may have saved even more.

This is a good example of some of the upfront work that needs to be done to help measure the impact of an IAM project before you spend the money to do it. The only bit remaining is to re-examine all of the numbers a year after-the-fact to see if, in fact, those savings actually materialized.

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-- updated/fixed the article link.