When access decisions no longer depend on handoffs.

Siemens — IAM Processes and Digital Credentials

Imagine a verification happens once. The result is available. And at the next step, at the access system, at the IAM, at the target system, nobody has to start over. That sounds obvious. In most large organizations, it is not. And that was exactly the starting question in the project with Siemens.

The problem was not the verification. The problem was everything that happens afterward.

In large organizations, onboarding rarely runs in just one system. Identities are verified, access prepared, entitlements assigned, approvals documented. Security is there, traceability usually too. But the path to get there is often laborious.

At Siemens, this was very concrete. Manual identity verification, physical cards, temporary access, and coordination between multiple parties meant that an inherently clear process generated unnecessarily high handover effort.

The problem with onboarding is not the verification. The problem is that nobody uses its result afterward. With the EUDI Wallet, this gap becomes strategically relevant.

Three situations in which the difference became visible.

To keep the question from remaining abstract, the showcase was played out in three typical situations.

New employees: after a successful digital onboarding, a temporary access should be activated quickly and traceably, without multiple manual handovers.

Retired employees: anyone who should continue to access the alumni portal does not need a workaround outside the actual process. The relevant status must be usable as a credential.

New units within the company: when new departments or integrated teams are onboarded, a long chain process of individual decisions is not needed. Verified information must be able to be bundled and transferred traceably into existing access processes.

Three situations, one pattern: a verification happens once. The result is made available as a credential. The credential is used in other systems.

This is where a verification becomes a credential.

In the showcase, exactly this step was made visible. Verified information was made available as digital credentials, held in a wallet, and incorporated into existing IAM processes when needed. Instead of collecting the same information again or reconciling it manually, the credential was verified and taken directly into the existing decision.

SOWL handled the connection between issuance, verification, and integration into the existing IAM logic. Directories, role models, and target systems did not need to be replaced. What was new was not the landscape itself, but the foundation on which it makes decisions.

Why this does not remain a tech demo.

What is interesting about this project is not just that the workflow functioned technically. What is interesting is what became organizationally visible as a result.

As soon as a credential plays a role in an access decision, it is not enough for the technology to run cleanly. It must be clear who issues, who verifies, who is trusted, and how a revocation remains traceable. Only once that is clarified does a credential become a solid foundation for audit, compliance, and future decisions, rather than just a new container for data.

What this project shows and what it leaves open.

The Siemens showcase is not a production rollout. It is a structured investigation, and that is its strength. It shows what is technically possible, but also which organizational questions need to be answered before the technology reliably holds up.

For every organization that runs onboarding processes, verifies identities, and manages access, the same question arises: how many of these verifications happen multiple times simply because their result is not reused as a credential? The Siemens showcase shows what the answer can look like in existing systems. Without rebuilding. Without switching systems. With a different foundation for decisions.