Case Study: Sunsweet Growers and Security Weaver
Security Weaver Allows Sunsweet Growers Inc. to Sleep at Night

Customer: Sunsweet Growers Inc. Customer Environment: SAP R/3 4.7 Customer Challenge: Mapping out a system for managing user access and security for a co-op company

Background:
Sunsweet Growers Inc. is the world's largest handler of dried tree fruits including cranberries, apricots and prunes. A grower-owned marketing cooperative representing more than two-thirds of the prune market worldwide, Sunsweet processes more than 50,000 tons of prunes a year. Founded in 1917 as the California Prune and Apricot Growers Association, the cooperative served as a marketing agent to offer the crops of its members - under the brand name "Sunsweet" - to consumers at better prices than were offered by individual growers.

Challenge:
Sunsweet Growers had been using SAP technology for 6 years and had primarily managed the system through its internal IT staff. However, having a small IT department meant that the team was stretched quite thin, with one member primarily being responsible for managing user access and overall security. In addition, the task of running user access reports was time-consuming and lacked the critical information required to properly manage user access.

Beyond tackling security and user issues, Harold Upton, Vice President, Strategic Business Processes at Sunsweet Growers, saw a broader issue that needed to be addressed. "Even though we're a privately held co-op, we wanted to have an audit trail system that that was inline with strong business practices."

The IT staff worked with internal auditors to examine the network, and identify and correct any potential security conflicts -- which proved to be a very time-consuming and complex process using their existing technology. Upton said that this process "opened my eyes for what types of issues we could be facing."

Requirements:
Sunsweet Growers was faced with a variety of challenges:

• Managing user access but not limiting worker productivity
  
  
• Addressing segregation of duties issues
  
  
• Designing a security system that was inline with best business practices
   
• Implementing a profile-based system that allowed for easy generation of reports

Realizing that outside expertise was needed, Upton spoke with representatives from Security Weaver at the 2006 SAP Admin show and came away impressed. "We hadn't found anyone else that offered this type of solution."

Benefits:
Having just recently implemented Security Weaver, Upton has already seen many benefits that he feels will help the company in the long run.

• "Using templates based on best business practices has been very helpful for us since Security Weaver understands role-based processes and where conflicts may arise."
  
  
• "We had a strong security system in place beforehand but it was very complex and labor intensive. With Security Weaver we're able to run reports much more easily than before."
  
  
• "Based on our experiences to date, we're confident that Security Weaver's technology will help us to meet our auditor's requests."