Customer Case Study

A Legacy System That Could No Longer Evolve

The existing platform had been heavily customized over time, making it difficult to maintain, costly to upgrade, and increasingly restrictive. Even routine changes—such as adding new locations or modifying workflows—required vendor intervention, slowing operations, and limiting flexibility.

Ultimately, the organization faced a clear decision: rebuild the system from the ground up or replace it entirely.

They chose to modernize.

Fragmented Visitor and Contractor Workflows

The organization manages both short-term visitors and long-term contractors, but these populations were handled through inconsistent and inefficient processes.

Contractor access was initiated manually by employee sponsors, with limited visibility and no centralized governance. This created operational friction and increased administrative burden across sites.

Compliance Gaps in a Highly Regulated Environment

As an aerospace and defense manufacturer, the organization must enforce strict export control regulations to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive technologies.

Previously, required export control documentation existed outside the access workflow. Visits could proceed before forms were completed, forcing security teams to manually track and enforce compliance after the fact.

Global Operational Complexity

With sites spanning North America and Europe, the organization also faced regional regulatory differences, including strict data privacy requirements that impacted how visitor and identity data could be collected, displayed, and managed.

The organization selected RightCrowd SmartAccess to modernize how visitor and contractor access is governed across its global operations.

Rather than rebuilding the legacy system, the company implemented a modern, cloud-based access governance platform designed to support flexibility, scalability, and compliance from the outset.

RightCrowd SmartAccess was deployed alongside the existing access control environment, introducing centralized workflows, policy-driven controls, and improved visibility—without disrupting established infrastructure.

Key elements of the deployment included:

Unified Visitor and Contractor Access Workflows

The platform supports both:

• Short-term visitors through pre-registration and on-site processing
• Long-term contractors through structured onboarding and credential management

By bringing these workflows together, the organization established a consistent approach to managing all non-employee access.

Embedded Compliance and Export Control Enforcement

Export control requirements were integrated directly into the visitor registration process. Required data and acknowledgments must now be completed before a visit can proceed, ensuring compliance is enforced before access is granted, rather than after.

Integrated Screening and Risk Identification

The organization integrated third-party screening services into the workflow to evaluate visitor eligibility during registration. Potential risks are automatically flagged for review, allowing security teams to make informed decisions before approving access.

Centralized Configuration with Local Flexibility

Security teams can now manage locations, workflows, and data fields directly within the platform—eliminating reliance on vendor tickets for routine changes. At the same time, the system supports regional requirements, including stricter data handling controls for European sites.

Cloud-Based Deployment for Faster Support and Continuous Improvement

As a managed cloud solution, the platform enables faster issue resolution, streamlined updates, and ongoing improvements without the operational overhead of legacy environments.

The deployment began with a focused pilot across key locations, including:

• The organization’s largest U.S. site
• Additional U.S. facilities
• A Canadian site
• A European site

Following successful validation, the platform was rapidly expanded:

• All U.S. locations were brought online
• Global rollout followed shortly after
• Legacy systems were decommissioned as part of the transition

Today, the platform supports access governance across approximately 90 sites worldwide, providing a consistent framework across diverse operational environments.