The MORE application is an online tool for provisioning users and their attributes within the McDonald's environment by providing easy-to-use functionality for system administrators and end-users that are fully compliant with BPOS requirements.

As a consequence of migrating all McDonald's Europe users to MSO, and their transition to the BPOS-D model of consuming business applications, smooth user administration was not possible with standard tools. That was the reason MORE application was designed, introduced and finally deployed into McDonald’s environment. It allowed mailbox provisioning on Microsoft Online that is done by setting extension attributes on objects so MORE solution certainly enabled easier administration of groups, users and contacts. Using MORE solution, McDonald’s users were able to manage all these objects depending on their user role and their security context.

Implemented online provisioning solution enables fully automated provisioning processes for McDonald's Europe and McDonald's APMEA in their own Active Directory environment and is yet fully compatible with Microsoft BPOS-D and Microsoft Mississippi solution.

Following functionality is provided by SPAN MORE solution and used by all McDonald's users in Europe and APMEA region:

• User Password Management portal
• User Management
• Group Management
• Contact Management
• Notifications Management
• Requests Management

 MORE solution is developed as a web based solution without any client components deployed. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was used as a platform on top of the Windows 2008 R2 operating system. Solution is fully scalable and designed with high availability in mind (both front end and back end components).

Starting from designing and developing all the way through testing perspective, solution was developed in SPAN LAB environment that is a simulation, more to say its exact copy, of McDonald's production environment.  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Team Services collaboration tools were used for development while ASP.NET and C#   were chosen as a development platform.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE. Prior to Microsoft BPOS-D implementation, McDonald's needed to prepare its current IT infrastructure for online service adoption. One of the major tasks was Active Directory (AD) domain reconsolidation and organizational restructuring. Before AD reconsolidation, McDonald’s EU had its AD forest spread across Europe, with every market having its own AD domain and an IT administrator responsible for user, desktop and server management.

SPAN, as the first Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Croatia and one of the leading Croatian systems and service integrators, was chosen to be a part of the AD consolidation for all European markets.

The project itself had a scope of migration for all European users and accompanying desktops, servers and applications that needed to be migrated onto a single EU domain. SPAN’s responsibilities included complete project management and coordination of all European markets. Furthermore, the SPAN team comprehensively planned, designed, tested and carried out all project tasks regarding smooth AD migration for all European markets.

After consolidation of the EU domain, McDonald’s IT infrastructure was ready for the introduction of online services. This is where SPAN also played an important role by managing the project from McDonald’s point of view. SPAN’s responsibility was to provide architectural expertise and third level support for all issues arising during the migration, to act as coordination point for both process and technical perspective between McDonald's and Microsoft teams, and to give first level support to users taking part in the migration by resolving desktop issues.

VALUE FOR THE CUSTOMER.   By developing the Managing Object Rights on Emerge (MORE) online provisioning application, SPAN helped McDonald’s to seamlessly integrate Microsoft Online Services into its everyday working environment, leveraging its full potential by allocating the exact service volume adapted to current business and end-user needs. A single, easy to use, administrative panel enables simple and centralized provisioning and management of new and existing users. Since it is created for both administrators and end-users, it empowers each employee, regardless of its administrator or end-user status, with password and group management capabilities, as well as user and contact management features.

Implementation of this powerful provisioning solution that enables customer selfcare brought a significant savings into daily operational procedures such as reducing the number of calls to the IT help-desk and systems administrators' engagement.

As an outcome of reduction in help-desk calls, McDonald's managed to centralize support functionality from market based to area based where one instance, by using MORE solution, is enabled to cover support request for several time zones.

A certain degree of independence in account management that SPAN MORE online provisioning application offers to McDonald’s employees was recognized as an optimal path to free their valuable IT resources from routine management tasks so they could focus on core business initiatives that can deliver a true competitive advantage.

Therefore, SPAN MORE was evaluated as a strategically important software application and deployed in McDonald’s Europe and McDonald's APMEA IT environments.