Synchronizing E-commerce Permissions for Automotive Marketing Agency (Order My Gear)
The Client
A specialized marketing agency that provides branded merchandise and uniforms to car dealerships nationwide. Their services include:
- Custom uniforms for dealership employees
- Branded merchandise for customer promotions
- Marketing materials and dealership swag
- Corporate gifts and promotional items
The Challenge
The agency uses Order My Gear (OMG) as their e-commerce platform to serve thousands of dealership employees across the country. Each dealership has unique pricing arrangements and product access levels based on their relationship with the manufacturer.
The platform uses SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) for Single Sign-On, allowing dealership employees to access OMG using their company credentials. While SAML handles basic authentication well, it couldn't pass along crucial dealership-specific information needed for proper permissions.
Key challenges included:
- New dealership employees need immediate access to order uniforms
- Different dealerships qualify for different promotional items and pricing
- Employee roles and dealership affiliations change frequently
- Manual permission management was becoming unsustainable
- Each dealership's special pricing needs to be accurately reflected
The Solution
We developed an efficient synchronization system that:
- Uses SAML for secure user authentication
- Monitors when users log into the OMG platform
- Queries the manufacturer's database for current dealership affiliations
- Updates access permissions within 60 seconds
While OMG's platform lacks webhook capabilities, our polling-based solution provides near real-time updates without requiring constant synchronization of the entire employee database. The system only manages permissions for active OMG users, making it both efficient and cost-effective.
The Results
- Dealership employees get immediate access to correct pricing and products
- Marketing agency saves time on manual permission management
- Accurate access control ensures proper pricing for each dealership
- Seamless user experience for ordering branded materials
- Reduced administrative overhead for both agency and dealerships
Broader Applications
This solution represents a common business need: keeping user permissions in sync across different platforms. Similar use cases include:
- Enterprise Systems: Synchronizing Slack permissions with Google Workspace roles, ensuring managers have appropriate access across platforms
- Educational Institutions: Keeping student access levels consistent between learning management systems and digital resource libraries
- Healthcare Organizations: Maintaining staff access levels between scheduling systems and patient record platforms
- Retail Chains: Managing store manager permissions across point-of-sale and inventory management systems
The core principle remains the same: when user permissions need to be maintained across multiple platforms, automated synchronization ensures accuracy and reduces administrative burden, while secure authentication protocols like SAML provide the foundation for safe access.
Tech Used
- Order My Gear (Order My Gear)
- Car dealership’s private API
