Delivery Hero and n8n: account-lockout recovery automated in a single workflow
Delivery Hero's global IT service delivery team automated employee account-lockout recovery with one n8n Enterprise workflow: the employee's manager approves, and API calls to Okta, Jira, and Google restore access. Per n8n's case study, about 800 lockouts a month averaged 35 minutes each; automation cut the average to 20 minutes, 200 fewer hours locked out per month, with a 5-hour deployment. Every figure is vendor-published; the client's IT director is named and quoted.
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Account-lockout requests per month | about 800 | |
| Average time to recover a locked account | 35 minutes | 20 minutes |
| Total employee time locked out per month | 200 hours less | |
| Time to deploy the workflow | 5 hours |
The problem
At a company of Delivery Hero’s size, “the world’s leading local delivery platform, operating in over 70 countries with over 53,000 global employees” (source), account lockouts are a constant tax: “The company saw around 800 such requests per month and on average it took 35 minutes to complete the recovery process” (source). The bottleneck was IT sitting in the middle of every recovery.
What was built
The fix moved approval to the person who actually knows the employee: their manager. “Under the leadership of Dennis Zahrt, the IT service delivery team, which includes Slimani Ghaith (Software Engineer) and Dorina Ababii (Data Analyst), resolved to eliminate IT as the obstruction in the process… They also set up automated API calls to Okta, Jira and Google systems to trigger the actual account recovery as soon as the manager authorized it. All of this was implemented through a single n8n workflow” (source). Per the case study, time to deployment was 5 hours.
The outcome
From 35 to 20 minutes, 200 hours a month back. “With account recovery requests being handled automatically by n8n and managers doing the approval, the average time locked out dropped from 35 to 20 mins. This meant that employees were locked out for a total of 200 hours per month less” (source).
The result led to expansion. “Seeing such large time savings from a single workflow inspired Delivery Hero to identify and automate other manual processes using n8n, e.g. account offboarding and software license assignments” (source). Zahrt’s on-record framing: “n8n was the big unlock. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude are great, but n8n is the thing that allows you to integrate AI into your work and your processes in a safe and controlled way” (source).
How this was verified
This case carries a green badge under TIN’s current standard: independently validated by TIN against the public record. The structural caveat stays on the page: every figure comes from n8n’s own case study, which is marketing material, and no independent outlet reports these numbers. Green certifies the figures are reported exactly and with that provenance stated, not that they were independently re-measured. What makes the claims falsifiable is that the client, the team members, and the responsible director are all named on the record. Direct client confirmation, Delivery Hero confirming the request volume, the recovery-time drop, and the 200-hours-per-month figure and how it was measured, is the higher bar TIN grows into as the platform matures.
Sources
Cited in this case file. Tier 3 = vendor or first-party. Each figure was checked against the live source on 2026-07-07.
- n8n case study, “How Delivery Hero automated account lockout recovery” (Tier 3, vendor-published with the client team named and quoted). https://n8n.io/case-studies/delivery-hero/ · archived 2026-07-07
- Status
- verified
- Method
- Independently validated by The Internet Ninja against the public record: every figure below is quoted from the cited source and checked against the live page over the open network, with a web.archive.org capture on record, then reviewed and approved by TIN's owner. Green under TIN's current standard certifies the account is reported exactly and in context, including its provenance: the single source is n8n's own case study, vendor-published, with no independent outlet reporting these figures, and Delivery Hero's Director of Global IT Service Delivery, Dennis Zahrt, named and quoted on the record. Direct client confirmation, Delivery Hero confirming the request volume, the 35-to-20-minute drop, and the 200-hours figure and its measurement basis, is the higher bar TIN grows into as the platform matures.
- Verified on
- 2026-07-08
- Provider
- n8n, enterprise workflow automation
- Client
- Delivery Hero · Food delivery platform (Germany)
- Disclosure
- named
What did Delivery Hero automate with n8n?
Employee account-lockout recovery: the employee's manager approves instead of IT, and automated API calls to Okta, Jira, and Google restore access, all in a single n8n workflow deployed in 5 hours.
Are the Delivery Hero figures independently reported?
No. Every figure comes from n8n's own case study. The mitigating factor, stated on this page: the client team and its IT director are named and quoted on the record.