Meet Lyvoc, Driving Organisational Growth + Securely Connecting Employees and Customers

In cybersecurity circles it’s common to hear the axiom “your security is only as strong as your people”. Why?  Cybercriminals increasingly target users of company networks to access their infrastructure chains. Secure web gateways, antivirus tools, malware scanners, spam quarantines, and other technologies help to filter out malicious content and defend against a growing variety of threats, but to truly protect users against cybercriminals requires human insight as well as the right technology.

Sharing this vision, a team of passionate cybersecurity experts founded Lyvoc in 2017. Today, the company is Okta’s preferred services partner in France and helps companies strengthen their cybersecurity posture by placing people at the centre of their strategy. We spoke with Lyvoc’s CTO Ruthy Seng, and Project and Change Director Pierrick Barreau about the company’s rapid growth in just four years of working with Okta, and learned about its distinct approach to establishing long-term, trusting relationships with customers.

Q: So, Ruthy, as one of Lyvoc’s co-founders, tell us about the vision behind the company: What motivated you to apply your cybersecurity expertise to HR and customer systems in particular?

Ruthy: In a world where employees and customers increasingly interact online, we noticed a trend: Many of the challenges our customers are facing can be solved by establishing appropriate housekeeping processes around employee and Customer  Identity and Access Management (IAM/CIAM). The most efficient and secure way to help our customers establish these processes internally is to help them establish HR as a source directory for employee identities and to automate its synchronisation across all other systems of a company. To help them do this, we selected Okta as our exclusive technology partner.

Q: When Lyvoc made this decision, Okta was still in its early days of entering the French market. What was it about Okta that stood out to you then?

Ruthy: We assessed several solutions to support Lyvoc’s vision, with a few key criteria in mind: We wanted cloud-based tools, intuitive functionalities such as Multi-Factor Authentication, and integrations that wouldn’t require our customers to completely change how they work. We found that Okta not only does all this, it’s also the best in the market. Since making that choice, we’ve never looked back.

Q: That’s great to hear. Pierrick, please tell us about Lyvoc’s people-first approach to technology: what does it mean in practice?

Pierrick: The Key to our approach is to maintain customers’ business priorities and everyday needs in mind when proposing solutions. It is our understanding that tightening security practices doesn’t mean compromising on user experience – in fact, we believe in helping customers not only secure their processes but guarantee good customer retention and employee productivity by improving their experiences. In practice, we must start by ensuring that user identities are stored accurately in a source directory, and using that to synchronise multiple information systems used by different departments, with no disconnect between them. Using Okta to automate the flow of information within the company, we eliminate the need for double entry and the risk of delays, and we enable employees to gain quicker access to the information and tools they need. That’s one way of using technology to put people’s needs and wellbeing at the centre of IAM processes.

Q: And you use a similar approach to help your customers improve the experiences of their own customers?

Pierrick: That’s right. A disconnect between systems presents challenges for a company, especially as its customer base grows. If you have 10 customers, you may be able to listen to them individually and address their concerns manually. But if you have thousands of customers, you need to solve problems at scale, frequently, quickly, and now also digitally. To make this easier, we help companies to establish a single source of truth for customer information that multiple departments might need and use Okta to automatically synchronise it with all relevant CRM systems and directories used for interacting with customers, keeping them automatically up-to-date. This means that companies can better address customer feedback, concerns, or complaints from any touchpoint, without having to ask customers to provide their details every time they need support.

Q: Lyvoc believes in delivering Okta with minimum customisation for customers. Why is that?

Pierrick: Our goal is to empower our customers to administer their use of Okta and their IAM/CIAM strategy on their own. We want to deliver solutions that are sustainable for our customers, without having to rely on us to use and maintain them. In part, this means ensuring that the tools our customers are using are highly available so that even without us, they will continue running. It also means training our customers so they know how to manage their own setup autonomously. Finally, it means delivering Okta with minimum customisation because customised features are more likely to require maintenance from us, which means customers wouldn’t be as autonomous in the long run. Okta’s offerings are widespread enough that we can usually integrate everything our customers  need as-is—no matter what applications they choose to use. It all comes down to this: We want our customers to choose to talk to us, not because they rely on us to get their work done. This is the basis of our trusting, long-term relationships.

Q: One testament to the success of your approach is the fact that Lyvoc is growing so quickly. Can you share more about your plans? Where do you see your partnership with Okta going in the next five years?

Ruthy: Within four years of working with Okta, we’re proud to have established ourselves as Okta experts in France. We helped more than 20 joint customers to connect their IAM-to-HR or CRM sources to streamline and secure processes, and gained 15 technical certifications, as well as two sales accreditations and four pre-sales accreditations. Next, we’re looking to grow our team and expand worldwide, starting with EMEA.

Pierrick: As cybersecurity experts, we know that new threats and solutions emerge every day, and that digital transformation is an ongoing journey. Like us, Okta stays on top of things, releasing new functionalities regularly, empowering customers with IAM solutions that remain relevant and highly available through time. Our goal is to help more companies fully benefit from this, which is why we see a bright future for our partnership with Okta.

Read the full Lyvoc story here.

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