SCALAR simplifies their complex access and authorization challenges with Auth0

The challenge of scaling a custom-built identity system

For fleet operators, moving goods is a complex logistical challenge. They must juggle schedules, drivers, and maintenance for hundreds or thousands of vehicles, with dispatchers traditionally spending hours manually tracking vehicles on a map. With their digital fleet management platform, SCALAR, commercial vehicle solutions provider ZF is solving these challenges by automating tasks for drivers and planners, streamlining all operations into one modern system. 

Effective automation of this kind requires SCALAR to provide secure, frictionless access to a wide variety of users and systems, including dispatchers using web applications to monitor their fleet, truck drivers using mobile applications, back-office teams for customer support, and partners integrating with SCALAR using machine-to-machine integrations. SCALAR’s predecessor, Transics, managed identity with an entirely custom-built, in-house system, but as the business scaled, it became increasingly difficult to maintain.

Handling customer identity and access management (CIAM) internally required continuous development effort just to keep up with industry standards and best practices. This placed a significant burden on the engineering team, which spent around 10% of their time custom-building core identity and security features like single sign-on and federation protocols, as well as maintaining the legacy identity system.

“We had to manage the solution from end to end,” recalls Gokul Amuthan S, software solutions architect at ZF Digital Solutions. “That meant we needed expertise in every security workflow. We needed to develop everything from scratch.”

Increasing efficiency while leaving identity to the experts

SCALAR recognized that managing CIAM was an inefficient use of their time.

“We were constantly reinventing the wheel,” explains Karl Vannieuwenhuyze, senior engineering manager at ZF Digital Solutions. “Customer identity and access management is not our core business. These challenges have already been solved by identity specialists. We realized it would be far more efficient and secure to rely on a comprehensive identity platform to manage identity and access for us.”

To support a growing customer base, ranging from small fleets to larger enterprises with their own IT environments, SCALAR needed an identity provider capable of handling complex authentication and authorization requirements out of the box.

“We evaluated several identity platforms based on clear criteria: protocol support, ease of use, integration capabilities, and advanced features such as federation and single sign-on,” Vannieuwenhuyze explains. “Auth0 clearly delivered on all fronts.”

Securing every customer, from small fleets to global enterprises

With Auth0, SCALAR can now securely manage access for a diverse customer base. Large enterprise customers often prefer to continue using their own identity providers. Auth0’s federated access allows customers to authenticate with their company’s existing system, which securely communicates with Auth0 to grant access to SCALAR. 

This capability works hand-in-hand with Single Sign-On (SSO), which enables users to log in once and access multiple SCALAR applications without repeated authentication. The benefits extend beyond the core platform: users can seamlessly access the Salesforce ticketing system without needing a second login or having to manage identity separately from Salesforce. The result is a smoother, faster experience for dispatchers and drivers, and fewer access-related support tickets. 

In addition to improving the experience for end users, SCALAR is also using Auth0 to simplify how customers integrate their own identity providers. With Auth0’s out-of-the-box Enterprise Connections, SCALAR can support the IdPs their customers already use while dramatically reducing the manual configuration work their internal teams had to handle.

“Previously, our customer service team had to manually configure the entire set-up,” Gokul Amuthan explains. “With Enterprise Connections, our customers can now manage integrations themselves through a self-service portal, removing the burden from our internal teams.” 

This shift from a manual support task to a customer self-service capability provides a significant efficiency gain for the SCALAR team. By automating these processes, the team has successfully eliminated a substantial manual workload, allowing them to redirect their focus from routine identity management to higher-priority strategic initiatives.

Authorizing complex roles and access with Actions

With a wide range of users, roles, and subscriptions, the SCALAR platform requires highly customized authorization. The SCALAR team uses Actions to achieve this, adding specific authorization details to the user’s token to define what each user can access. As a result, SCALAR can grant or deny access to different products and features based on the customer's subscription. 

Additionally, when the SCALAR customer support team needs to troubleshoot any user issue, they use Actions to build a custom impersonation enabling their customers to grant impersonation rights to temporarily act on behalf of users, without ever handling passwords. This means they can resolve any issues and provide support to customers without compromising security.

Securing API access with Machine-to-Machine communication

SCALAR’s ecosystem extends beyond their fleet management interface — they also offer their backend services to customers who want to build their own applications using SCALAR’s raw data and metrics. SCALAR uses Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication to secure these API integrations, as well as all internal integrations, ensuring that any system accessing SCALAR’s APIs is properly authenticated. 

Furthermore, with Actions, the SCALAR team can customize M2M authorization to easily restrict a partner's access to only the APIs and data they have paid to access. This enables SCALAR to control the amount of API calls each system makes, ensuring system stability, while also providing the SCALAR team with valuable API usage insights by tracking M2M traffic.

Free to focus on tomorrow’s innovations

As the SCALAR team continues to migrate all customers onto the new platform, they’re now exploring how to use Auth0 to improve login experiences for truck drivers. This could include integrating drivers’ hardware devices with Auth0, as well as enabling Passwordless Authentication to eliminate the inconvenience of manual logins.

Crucially, being able to turn to Auth0 for these innovations, rather than having to build them in house, is a strategic advantage. It frees the SCALAR team to focus on advancing their fleet management platform while ensuring it remains secure, scalable, and optimized for every user.

"Auth0 has delivered a clear step change in user experience while significantly reducing complexity for our engineering teams,” says Marco Laumanns, head of product engineering at ZF Digital Solutions. “By relying on their identity expertise, we can stay focused on our own, building the most effective platform for our customers.”