The pressure is real. You have all heard or read things like these following statements: “Work smarter not harder.” We want to see results from the digitalisation efforts by the end of the quarter. Our closest competitor and our closest partner have lost millions by that new security breach. The latest report cannot lie: customer satisfaction has plummeted to historical levels. Our best selling product is stuck in the 2000s and the UX sucks.

Boards of directors, shareholders and the media push and pull top executives on many fronts today. Some decision makers are lucky enough to be able to count on a well-informed team, but others don’t have that luxury. Many others still don’t realize that a key element that solves these challenges and steers the business in the right direction is a modern ID system. Or maybe you are just looking for a top 5 list to see if it matches your own gut feeling.  Here’s our top five business benefits of a modern ID system.

1. Ease of digitalisation

Do you remember the days when if you needed to register yourself as a customer to any company you had to fill in a printed form, sign it and send it by post or even by fax? Surprisingly some businesses are still stuck in dated processes and business models.

In the recent years,organisations have embarked into digitalisation. No enterprise or organisation seems to escape from this ongoing phenomenon, but now it’s a web form instead of paper.  Not much better.

Transforming a discordance of processes into efficient and user-friendly digital services is more challenging than what it appears. An ID system based on Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) comes here to help. Early adopters took the lead and started reaping the benefits that a modern ID system offers in digitalisation:

  • Fast deployment thanks to a well-designed REST API that allows implementing new functionality and integrating external services in a breeze. Modern ID systems are built on well-adopted standards: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, and REST APIs. (For more information, download our SAML vs OAuth vs Open ID Connect white paper.)
  • Designed with branding support. Your customers can use a single identity across all your different brands. With an authentication mobile app customers can buy in supermarkets, place orders on clothing shops, make bank transactions, and pay online on service stations. This strengthens the omni-channel experience.
  • Out of the box CIAM workflows that satisfy the most common use cases: self-registration, self-service, delegation, password recovery, etc. Modern ID systems bring their long experience from serving millions of end users in both B2B and B2C use cases.

2. Decrease support costs + Minimise legacy IAM operating costs with improved efficiency

Hundreds of calls to your customer desk every day. Most of them asking: “I forgot my password, how do I regain access to the service?” or “I just moved to a new house and I need to update my information on your database so the mail comes to the new address.” All these operations take a lot of time out of your personnel, and ultimately your company incurs into high costs. To make things worse, your customers waiting on the line lose their patience and complain on social media. Customers have every time less patience and expect immediate help.

By using self-service workflows, a customer takes control of her user account and solves the problem in a few minutes. The best thing: never had to call you. With thousands of cases like this, you can save millions per year in service desk.

A modern ID system also integrates your internal and external applications, so customers do not need to handle many pairs of users and passwords. Because of this, there is no need of separate user repositories so your company has fewer expenses in physical servers, licenses, and their inherent support and maintenance costs.

3. Achieve security and privacy policy requirements

With the advent of GDPR and soon the “California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018” which will come into effect early 2020, organisations that either collect or process personal data must comply with stricter legal restrictions. A modern CIAM system has a consent management component that not only guarantees your compliance but also instills trust in your customers.

What would be the optimal case of a modern ID system used to follow privacy regulations? Imagine a customer visits your website for the first time and creates a user account. A page informs her in easy language that in order to use this service, some personal information will be stored. It also gives her the option to opt-in or decline for receiving marketing messages by your company or a third party. Your customer feels that your service is transparent in what it will do with her data and gives a feeling of trust.

In terms of security, a modern ID system uses OpenID Connect for connecting among external services. To ensure secure data transmission it relies on Transport Layer Security (TLS), in practice HTTPS: the green padlock you see on your browser when you visit a trusted website. Where user authentication is concerned, your system relies on strong authentication methods (Mobile Connect, national ID systems, bank ID systems) and reduces the use of passwords.

4. Increase conversions and engagement with a consistent customer experience – Enabling self-service management

A fully modern ID system will be comprised of CIAM – not just internal user identities, but also external, or your Consumers.  Utilizing a modern ID system allows you to ease the “Know Your Customer (partner)” process. Your contract or CRM system can be integrated to authorize customers, partners and employees. This helps your employees know precisely who from your customers or partners can access what data of your company, helping to make your company seem more welcoming to customers and partners while reducing the risk of phishing or social networking caused data loss. This consistent customer experience (CIAM, not just IAM) permitting individuals to access content that they want to be able to see, when they want to see it makes people feel welcome, almost like they are “at home” already. And we are all happier when that “new thing” is easy.

5. Delegation of business roles

Following on from the conversion above, a good ID system will permit the delegation of business roles. You know, the time your boss finally decides to take a much needed vacation but someone needs to manage some of her tasks while she’s away. Or when your boss is mentoring you, giving you access to a harder task or more complex program or process so you can advance in your career. In both of these cases, the person in a superior role would need to delegate access to you – there are others, but these are simple examples. If your company has implemented a good ID system, this delegation is straight forward. If your company has implemented a great CIAM ID system, then you can even delegate the business role to an external partner; think your building maintenance company hiring a plumber who needs access to fix something after hours – do you really want that phone call go grant the access, shouldn’t your maintenance contract handle that for you? With a CIAM ID system you can delegate tasks internally and externally.

Extra: Meet EU driven regulation such as GDPR and PSD2

This last one is a small “gimmie” as a follow on from our second and fourth points. Utilizing a modern ID system to create consistent customer experience means putting your customer or partner in the driver’s seat. It lets the person tell you which way and where you can contact them, what data they permit you to record and even if you can market towards them. And allows your customers or partners to identify themselves and pay invoices from their EEA (European Economic Area) country to your account. This all comes down to KYC, Know Your Customer. Rather than a hard sell, arm-twisting exercise, you have access to willing participants. You get to communicate with the people who want to use your service. Think of this as a Quality versus Quantity approach, that just happens to have the benefit of conforming to complex regulations. A properly implemented CIAM system puts your Consumers in the driver’s seat – and we are all happier feeling like we are the ones in control of any transaction – all the while your business ensures it is compliant and conforms to complex regulations.

Want to know more? Evaluate the maturity stage of your digitalisation strategy with this white paper or contact us and let’s discuss how to make your ID system the best it can be.

 

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