Utility Company

Vendor onboarding portal for field operations

A utility company had no centralized way to onboard contractors or track training compliance, creating bottlenecks with manual IT provisioning. Ollon built a vendor access portal that automates permissions through Microsoft Graph API. The utility now manages contractor access and training compliance through one application, onboarding vendors faster.

Situation

A utility company relies on a large contractor workforce for field operations including power line maintenance and repair. Each time a contractor needed access to internal tools, the request had to be routed through IT for manual provisioning through Azure, with no centralized way to track whether required training had been completed. The process created bottlenecks and administrative overhead every time a new vendor needed to be onboarded.

Solution

Ollon designed and built a vendor access management portal from the ground up. The application allows contractors to submit access requests for internal tools, tracks the completion of required training, and gives the utility's staff a single interface to review and approve or deny requests. Security group and permission management was automated through Microsoft Graph API, removing what had previously required direct IT involvement on every request.

Results

The utility now manages contractor access requests and training compliance through a single application, replacing a process that previously required manual coordination across multiple teams. Vendors can be onboarded faster and with less administrative overhead, giving the utility clearer visibility and control over who has access to their internal tools.

Technologies

React, Node, Express, Azure, Microsoft Graph API

Our Expertise in Action

Custom application development

A utility's field operations team had no single tool to manage contractor access requests, training compliance, and approvals together, so staff pieced the process together across email and manual IT tickets. Ollon built a new application to fix that, pairing a React front end and a Node and Express back end with Azure hosting alongside the client's existing infrastructure, so contractors can submit access requests directly and staff can review and approve them from one screen. Onboarding a new vendor now takes one submitted request instead of a separate manual step from IT for every tool involved.

Business System Integrations

Utility field contractors need access to more than one system to do their jobs, including Salesforce and the time reporting and expense tools tied to field operations, and each one used to require its own separate access grant from IT. Ollon connected the vendor portal to each of those systems, so a single approved access request grants a contractor entry into every tool it applies to. A contractor approved once now shows up with working access in every connected tool.

Microsoft Graph API

Provisioning a contractor's access in Azure used to be a separate manual step IT had to complete after every approval, with no direct link between an approval decision and the account changes it required. Ollon connected the vendor portal directly to Microsoft Graph API, so an approved request turns into working access automatically, covering the underlying management of permissions, roles, and security groups that made this the most technically involved part of the engagement. The same integration handles revocation, pulling a contractor's access back through the API the moment a request is denied or a contractor no longer needs it.

Energy

Utility and energy field operations run on contractors who move between short term jobs, often for power line maintenance and repair, and need system access only for as long as that specific job runs. Ollon built the vendor portal around that reality, tying a contractor's access to whether required training is complete, not to a standing account that IT has to remember to disable once the job ends. That means a contractor who moves on to the next job doesn't leave an active account behind, closing a gap that matters most in field operations where crews rotate constantly.

Identity and Access Management

A utility previously granted contractor access to internal systems one request at a time, with no defined role or permission model behind each decision. Ollon built role and permission structures directly into the vendor portal, using Azure security groups to define exactly what each approved contractor can reach based on their specific request. Contractor access is now scoped to exactly what was approved, not to whatever a one off manual grant happened to include.