IT Managers
Cloud or on-prem, single sign-on, access enforced at the data layer, and a straight answer about the certifications we do not hold yet.
Who can see what, where the data lives, and what happens when something breaks.
IT at a two-hundred-person manufacturer is one or two people who also own the network, the CAM seats and the badge reader. A new system gets judged on three questions: where does the data live, who can see what, and what happens at six in the morning when the first-shift terminals do not come up. WorkCell runs cloud-hosted or on hardware you own, enforces permissions by role at the data layer with tenant isolation rather than by hiding menu items, and exposes a REST API with webhooks so an integration is a sprint rather than a professional services quote. On the compliance side, the honest answer matters more than a badge: SOC 2 is in progress and not complete, there is no published penetration-test cadence, and there is no contractual uptime SLA. If any of those is a hard gate for you today, we are not yet the right fit.
Your current system was on a server in the closet, and now the vendor's roadmap says cloud and the renewal says the rate is going up. The position is common and reasonable, phrased on the machinist forums as plainly as it gets: I will not use it in the cloud. Being told that is no longer your decision is the part that stings.
The role hides the menu, and then someone points a report at the database and gets every row anyway. Access that is enforced in the interface rather than at the data layer is not access control, it is a suggestion, and you are the person who has to explain that distinction when somebody sees a number they should not have.
The shipping system, the time clock and the CAM post all need to talk to the business system, and each one is a quote. A shop with a reporting stack built on an ODBC pull against the old SQL database discovers at migration time that the new platform has no equivalent, and the reports that ran the business quietly stop working.
The software was bought by operations and the tickets come to you. When it is clunky and hard to use for a new employee, that is your inbox, not the vendor's. Anything that is bloated with modules nobody uses becomes training surface you have to support without ever having been asked whether it was a good idea.
You send the standard set of questions and get a page of logos. Finding out which certifications are actually held, which are in progress, and which were implied by a badge on a website takes three calls, and the answers change depending on who you reach. You wanted a yes or a no and got a brochure.
Cloud or on-prem is your call, not ours
WorkCell is offered hosted or deployed on hardware you control. Shops with export-controlled work, a hostile internet connection, or a policy against the data leaving the building get the same product rather than a cut-down edition, and the deployment choice is not reopened at every renewal.
Single sign-on
Single sign-on is supported, so accounts live in the directory you already run and offboarding is one action in one place rather than a checklist item that gets missed. Bring your identity provider to the first technical call and we will confirm the specifics against your setup instead of guessing in a datasheet.
Permissions enforced at the data layer
Role-based permissions and tenant isolation are enforced where the data is read, not in the interface on top of it. A user without rights to costing does not get costing rows back from any path, including the API, which is the only version of access control that survives contact with a curious power user.
A REST API and webhooks you can build against
There is a documented REST API and webhooks for events, so the shipping integration, the internal dashboard and the time-clock bridge are things your team can write. No direct SQL connection into a hosted database, which means your integration surface is versioned and does not break the next time the schema moves.
Unlimited users on every plan
Every plan includes unlimited users, so you are not rationing logins or sharing a floor account because licences cost money. Shared credentials are the most common reason an audit trail is useless, and per-seat pricing is what causes them. Removing the incentive is cheaper than writing a policy against it.
A straight account of our security posture
SOC 2 is in progress and not complete. There is no published penetration-test cadence and no contractual uptime SLA. Those are the facts as of today, and you will get them from us on the first call rather than discovering them in diligence. Honesty here is the point, not an apology for it.
| Task | What Changes |
|---|---|
| Decide where it runs | Pick hosted or on-prem before anything else, because it determines your network work, your backup responsibility and your conversation with whoever asks about data residency. Making the call deliberately in week one is better than inheriting a default and arguing about it at the first renewal. |
| Wire up single sign-on | Point it at the directory you already run so that accounts, password policy and offboarding are handled once. Doing this before the first wave of users exists saves you the migration later and means there is never a period where the system has its own orphaned password list. |
| Build the role map | Write down which roles see cost, which see pricing, and which see only their own work, then configure that before anybody logs in. Retrofitting permissions after a hundred people have gotten used to seeing everything is a political problem rather than a technical one. |
| Stand up one shop floor terminal | Put a single terminal at one machine and run a shift against it. You will learn what the floor hardware needs, how it behaves when the network blips, and what the six-in-the-morning failure mode looks like while it is still one station and not twenty. |
| Call the API once | Authenticate, pull a job, and subscribe a webhook to one event. An afternoon of this tells you more about future integration cost than any datasheet, and it tells you early whether the reporting your business runs on can be rebuilt on top of it. |
Users, roles, and the permission map that decides who sees cost.
ProductionThe shop floor terminals your first shift depends on at six in the morning.
AnalyticsDashboards and reports that replace the ODBC pull you are maintaining.
AccountingThe data finance cares about most, and the access boundary around it.
The person who signs for it and asks you whether it is safe.
ControllersThe data behind the tightest access boundary you will configure.
NIST 800-171What the 110 requirements ask of the systems you are responsible for.
CMMCHow assessment against those requirements affects your deployment choice.
Is it cloud only, or can we run it on our own server?
Both are offered. You can run WorkCell hosted or on hardware you control, and it is the same product either way rather than a reduced on-prem edition. Shops with export-controlled work or a policy against data leaving the building choose on-prem regularly, and that choice does not get revisited every renewal.
Does it do SSO, and will it work with what we already run?
Single sign-on is supported, so users authenticate against the directory you already operate and offboarding happens in one place. Rather than list providers we have not tested against your configuration, bring your identity provider to the technical call and we will confirm the specifics for your environment.
Are you SOC 2 certified?
No. SOC 2 is in progress and not complete, and we will not imply otherwise with a logo. We also do not publish a penetration-test cadence, because we do not have an established one. If your diligence requires a completed report today, that is a legitimate reason to wait on us.
What is your uptime SLA?
There is no contractual uptime SLA today. We would rather tell you that than quote a number nobody is on the hook for. If an availability commitment is a requirement for the shop floor terminals, raise it on the first call and we will be direct about what we can and cannot sign.
We have reports running off an ODBC connection to our current database. What replaces that?
A documented REST API plus webhooks, rather than direct SQL access into the hosted database. Those reports get rebuilt against the API or against the built-in dashboards. It is real migration work, and worth scoping before you commit, but the resulting integration does not break when the schema changes.
Who owns the data, and how do we get it out if this goes badly?
You do. Your data is reachable through the REST API and exports at any time, and on-prem it is sitting on your own hardware under your own backup regime. Ask us directly what the arrangement is for the hosted option rather than taking a number off a marketing page.
See it from your seat.
Bring your identity provider, your deployment constraint and your security questionnaire to the first call, and we will answer each line honestly, including the gaps.