Editing and Creating Roles in fireTMS
Clear and Easy Permission Management
In larger transportation and forwarding companies employing many people with diverse responsibilities, one of the key challenges is maintaining efficient team operations and ensuring the security of stored data. This problem often appears when organisations use older transport management systems, which frequently offer limited capabilities for assigning appropriate roles and access rights to employees. One such company faced exactly this challenge. For years, it operated within an order-management system in which users either had full access to data and features or were limited to a narrow set of options aligned with their position. As the organisation grew, this gap in access control became increasingly visible, affecting both data security and daily team workflows.
Business Challenge
The lack of roles and a coherent permission structure for employees began generating serious issues, including:
- Some users could view confidential financial and administrative data regardless of their position, while others lacked access to functionalities essential to their role.
- The risk of accidental changes and errors increased in areas unrelated to employees’ responsibilities.
- The administrator had no clear overview of who had access to what information.
- The company struggled to scale its team without losing control over information security.
Solution: A Structured Role and Access Model in fireTMS
Permission Segmentation Aligned with the Organisational Structure
The administrator began by analysing the responsibilities of each department, as no previous permission standard existed.- Based on that, fireTMS roles were defined as complete sets, including operational roles (freight forwarders), financial roles (accounting), managerial roles, administrative roles, auxiliary roles with restricted permissions.
- Each role was configured to match the actual tasks of each employee group.
- This eliminated full data visibility by default and replaced it with carefully tailored access for every user in the system.
Centralised Management and Access Updates
- The next step was transitioning from manual access modifications to a centralised role-management model in fireTMS.
- From this point forward any change to a role automatically updated the access of the entire user group upon their next login, permission consistency within positions became clearly defined, accidental discrepancies in access between employees were removed.
- The administrator no longer had to spend time editing individual accounts. Permission management became controlled, predictable, and easy to scale as the company grew.
Protection of Confidential Data - Implementing the Principle of Least Privilege
- With fireTMS data-visibility settings, the company introduced a need-to-know access model.
- In practice this meant confidential financial data (rates, limits, settlements, partner finances) became visible only to dedicated roles, operational employees could see only the information required to handle orders, administrative and configuration modules were secured against unauthorised changes.
- The administrator gained full control over information flow within the system, and the organisation aligned with best-practice security standards.
Efficient Onboarding - Proper Access from Day One
- After implementing roles, the administrator was able to fully streamline the process of adding new users. Now, assigning a role automatically grants the correct permission set, the risk of excessive access disappears.
- The company gained a repeatable, secure onboarding mechanism, reducing adaptation time and eliminating errors caused by manually assigning permissions.
Key Business Outcomes
1. Increased Information Security
Confidential data is protected, with access controlled directly within fireTMS.
2. Reduced Operational Risk
Employees no longer interfere with areas outside their role or scope of responsibility.
3. Standardisation and Predictability
A unified role structure ensures consistency across the whole organisation.
4. Easy System Administration
Granting or modifying access for new or existing employees is now simple and centrally managed.
