Delivery Hero: Boosting security and improving user experience by automating HR-driven processes

The way we purchase our food has changed exponentially in the last 10 years. Everything from the weekly shop to our favourite Chinese restaurant meal can be ordered and delivered to our kitchen table, often within the hour.  Consequently, the global food delivery market is now estimated to be worth more than $150 billion. One company taking a large slice of that pie is Delivery Hero, fulfilling more than 663 million orders in the first quarter of 2021. 

The Berlin-based online food delivery service operates via local brands in around 50 countries across four continents. Although food remains its core offering, it’s on a mission to deliver anything and everything, from flowers to medicine, straight to its customers’ doors. 

“We are experts in delivering food and other day-to-day goods to your home. What differentiates us from the competition is our growth model,” explains Kaja Mueller, Director of Employee Identity and Governance at Delivery Hero. “We are growing massively, mainly by acquisition.” Delivery Hero’s purchases in 2021 include Hugo, an app that covers food delivery and quick commerce verticals in Central America and the Caribbean in addition to South Korea’s largest online food delivery platform Woowa Brothers Corp.

As well as running a rapidly expanding global delivery platform that connects restaurants and shops with buyers worldwide, Delivery Hero also operates what have become known as ‘ghost kitchens’, where it prepares food sold under several different brands. And, to ensure that all of this runs like a dream, Delivery Hero turned to Okta.

Seeking a fast intuitive solution

Prior to Okta, Delivery Hero’s Identity and Access Management solution had a poor user interface that couldn’t be used intuitively. It was also costly to maintain. When users got locked out of the system, a single person on the helpdesk in Berlin had to let each and every person back in. It was a tedious and time-consuming process, particularly when the tickets were raised by people working outside of the European timezone. 

Delivery Hero knew it could run much more efficiently with a more advanced Identity and Access Management solution. So it began to look at the options, and Okta came out on top. “We chose Okta because it was the most flexible, trusted, secure solution out there. Plus the proof of concept (POC) that we ran as part of the selection process showed us that Okta would be the easiest product to install,” explains Izabela Tyszka, Manager, EIGA Product & Operations at Delivery Hero.

As predicted in the POC, the migration to Okta’s Workforce Identity Cloud proved to be incredibly smooth. “It really was a ‘piece of cake,’” says Izabela. “It was a really pleasant experience. We had great support from Okta and a month after signing the contract we had 25,000 people going live on it.”

Easy app integration with Okta SSO onboarding 193 apps 

What Izabela didn’t realise was just how quickly the Okta solution could integrate all of Delivery Hero’s apps. “We launched on Okta in September 2020 and it really simplified our SSO onboarding process.”

Security was a key driver for Delivery Hero. The Ponemon institute estimates that the average cost of a data breach is €3.8 million and the likelihood of that happening without Okta is 14%. With Okta’s SSO in place, the likelihood of a breach goes down significantly. As Delivery Hero moved onto Germany’s DAX 30 stock market index last year, its partnership with Okta has also ensured that it adheres to all the necessary security and governance regulations too.  

Delivery Hero now has 193 apps secured with Single Sign-On meaning that users only need a single password to access all the apps and parts of the Delivery Hero platform that they are authorised to use. This not only saves users time, it also secures all of Delivery Hero’s systems from data theft and account takeovers, while enabling remote access.

Okta offers more than security

While security was the main reason Delivery Hero turned to Okta, Kaja says its ability to take tedious manual tasks away from staff and automate them was another. Prior to Okta, Delivery Hero also experienced outages, typically two a year lasting up to three hours each, resulting in a loss of productivity. If these six hours of downtime only affected 10% of the company’s 52,000 strong workforce it could cost them up to  €274,000 each year, based on an average wage in Europe. 

“Our user experience is now so much better as a result of Okta,” Kaja adds. 

Delivery Hero has now added its entire 52,000 strong global workforce to Okta. “Everyday we move closer to our goal, which is to use Okta to enable our teams around the world to work as one central team with easy, secure, automated access to the parts of our platform they have authority to use,” says Kaja. 

Another reason that Delivery Hero decided to partner with Okta was the level of customer service on offer. As a result, Delivery Hero was able to go live with their Okta installation just one month after signing an initial contract. It also means that Delivery Hero is able to take advantage of new Okta features as soon as they are released.

“We’re usually the first customers asking Okta for specific features, and the support we receive is so responsive to our needs,” Izabela says. “That’s something really unusual in our experience and we really value this dedication. Thomas, our Customer Success Manager at Okta, always finds the best solutions for us, rather than focusing on making a sale for Okta, and that’s a rare thing.”