Netherlands-based ORTEC uses math to improve efficiency.

The business optimization company leverages data and mathematics to reduce waste, improve delivery routes, and optimize schedules for major companies like Walmart, Shell, Coca-Cola, and KLM. ORTEC’s hybrid solution for routing and load design helped Walmart save 4 million gallons of diesel fuel, with 28 million fewer miles driven and 65 million more cases of goods delivered.

Product manager Merlijn Gootjes says, “We want to help our customers with data-driven decision support that makes them more efficient, effective, sustainable, and predictable.” Over the years, ORTEC’s diverse portfolio of clients across industries like healthcare, transportation and storage, and energy—all of which store highly sensitive data.

Now, they influence logistics across 1,200 enterprise customers. It’s a huge responsibility, and a single data breach could spell disaster.

Maintaining Data Security for 1,200 Enterprise Customers

ORTEC’s strategy involves transitioning all customer data to the cloud, but the problem was that many of their customers’ identity providers were not compatible with cloud applications. ORTEC needed to find a way to securely grant and monitor access across their 1,200 customers.

ORTEC initially created its own solution to support OIDC protocol, allowing them to link cloud technology and user data. However, like many homegrown solutions, their authentication software was problematic. “It was error-prone, time-consuming, and it became frustrating to arrange the authentication process,” says Gootjes.

This was problematic for hospital customers using ORTEC to optimize employee shift schedules, and other organizations with “really high standards when it comes to security.” Gootjes points out that someone accessing the wrong information in a scheduling database could wreak havoc with supply chains, scheduling for thousands of workers or delivery routes for large corporations. Cloud operations architect Christian van de Schraaf says, “It’s really challenging, especially in the last few years, to keep up with the standards that companies need in terms of security.”

“We concluded we could do a lot better,” says van de Schraaf, “and Auth0 was the solution.”

Auth0 Becomes the Standard Across All Apps

ORTEC is using Auth0 to bridge the gap between multiple identity providers and technologies. With Auth0, customers can now connect to ORTEC’s platform through Azure AD, SAML, or ADFS, depending on their requirements. 

ORTEC also leverages Auth0 Rules to simplify mapping of claims for tens of thousands of identities. “Each identity provider has its own user ID claim,” says van de Schraaf, “so we set up a rule to map that to only a single claim, which we use in all our applications.”

Within the first few months of going into production, ORTEC configured Auth0 for 25 customers with approximately 35,000 unique users per month. And the team recognizes the value in a standardized, repeatable authentication approach. “We now recommend our internal organization to use Auth0 as the default—and only—authentication solution for our cloud applications,” says van de Schraaf.

Authentication Setup Time Cut From Weeks to Days

It used to take ORTEC weeks to set up authentication for customers due to the extensive communication and number of steps required. This involved “connecting our system with the customers’ system, and then authentication, and then the identity provider.” Now, the process is much faster. “Setting up authentication has been reduced from around 10 to 20 days to a few days, max,” says Gootjes.

ORTEC achieved such a huge time reduction by configuring Auth0 to automate 90% of the cloud tenant registration process and streamlining client communication. “We internally created some development scripts, APIs, to just call Auth0 to do the deployment, retrieve the client IDs, etc., and use that information for the tenant creation,” says van de Schraaf. In addition to shortening the configuration for customers, he adds that customers are quicker to trust the process once they learn about ORTEC’s third-party solution.

As well as time, ORTEC saved money and resources with Auth0, as it would have taken an estimated two full-time employees to maintain their original solution. ORTEC now aims to roll out Auth0 as the authentication solution for all 800,000 of their customers’ end users in the next couple years. “As we continue to grow, every new application we create in the cloud, or mobile apps, will have Auth0 as the authentication provider,” says van de Schraaf.