Hammer Group

The Hammer Group is a group of logistics companies and related industries headquartered in Aachen. It has over 350 vehicles, employs 700 people and generates an annual turnover of 135 million euros. The range of services extends from customized national and European overland transports based on its own state-of-the-art vehicle fleet to air and sea transports with its own customs warehouse, fully monitored security transports, special silo and bulk goods transports, heavy and plant transports and special Eastern European transports. All transport options are available to Hammer Group customers in conjunction with all logistics services along the supply chain for any merchandise management system, industry or goods. www.hammer-ac.de

Added value for the customer

Management Summary

Due to the coronavirus, the Hammer Group was faced with the challenge of moving around 140 workstations to the home office within a very short space of time. The customer uses Microsoft Intune as a central client management solution from the cloud, thus reducing the administrative effort to a minimum. In order to meet the highest security requirements, important administration tasks such as software distribution, updates and virus protection are carried out remotely. With IT-HAUS , the Group also has a strong partner that provides fast, reliable and expert support in every situation.

Project environment

Logistics without technology is unthinkable today. To ensure that forwarding operations and logistics services can run around the clock, the Hammer Group has its own data center with state-of-the-art technology and a 15-person IT team that supports all of the Group's companies from Aachen. In spring 2020, the team faced an unprecedented challenge due to the coronavirus crisis: they had to set up around 140 home workstations for employees from all departments and equip them with suitable hardware within a very short space of time. Although there was already a contingent of mobile devices, which had previously been used primarily by the field service, this was far from sufficient. For this reason, around 120 additional Microsoft Surface notebooks were immediately purchased, which can be transformed into a fully-fledged desktop PC using suitable accessories, a docking station and an external monitor. Great importance was attached to data protection and security: Employees access a virtual desktop, protected by their own firewall environment, so that they can work from home as if they were in the office. This has the advantage that the data does not leave the company, while the devices remain independent of the actual company network. However, given the number of devices and the ongoing contact restrictions, the question arose as to how the devices could be administered and maintained remotely and as efficiently as possible in the long term. There was still a lack of a centrally manageable solution for software distribution, patch management, virus protection and hard disk encryption. On the one hand, the devices had been deliberately set up separately from the company network. This meant that the IT department could not easily access the systems to install updates or update security policies. On the other hand, the company wanted to prevent the existing VPN connections from being overloaded by the rollout of new applications or software versions. The aim was to create a cloud-based client management system that was independent of the Group's on-premise structure at
and already offered extensive functions, but also left room for flexibility and was easy to use. Those responsible were also looking for a suitable collaboration tool that would allow employees to continue to work together and communicate efficiently.

Project success

IT uses Microsoft Intune to manage the home workstations and keep them up to date. The service makes it possible to manage company PCs centrally in the cloud, independently of hardware, and to protect them from malware and attacks. The Intune client software is installed on the computers to register hardware and software in the network. Administration tasks such as patch management, software updates, policy management and reporting can then be carried out remotely via a web console that provides an overview of the status of the managed computers. In this way, Hammer-IT was able to implement its security requirements in the home offices and also retain full Overview and control over all end devices that are located outside the company premises. The employees enjoy their high-performance computers, the stable working environment and the certainty that they can rely on the full support of the IT department at all times, even when working from home. The IT department in turn experiences an enormous relief and increase in productivity, as Intune and the lean standard configuration of the devices reduce the administration effort to a minimum. The bottom line is that the administrative workload for IT has been reduced by more than 90 percent in this way. The cloud connection also has the advantage that users can log in with one and the same password via single sign-on both at home and in the office or on the move.
As the Hammer Group was already using the Office package in the company, it made sense to use a solution from the Microsoft 365 suite when it came to collaboration. With Microsoft Teams, the group now has a modern platform that enables chats, contactless meetings, calls and collaboration in equal measure. With IT-HAUS GmbH , the Hammer Group also has a Microsoft-certified and experienced partner who advises and supports it in all matters relating to its business solution and ensures that it is continuously developed further. For example, the customer plans to integrate all company-owned cell phones and tablets - including those in its own 350 vehicles - into the client management solution in order to establish group-wide mobile device management.

Our experts will be happy to advise you on the individual options.

Fill out our contact form or call us directly. We look forward to talking to you.