How LaunchNotes is getting enterprise ready with Okta
faster to implement SSO vs building similar features in-house
faster onboarding of new customers
time saved in managing password policies for enterprise customers
faster to implement SAML vs building similar features in-house
“Typically in a feature build or implementation, things go from taking weeks to taking months, not the other way around. With Okta, we saw meaningful time savings, and that we can invest back into new feature development that directly benefits our customers.”
Jake Brereton | COO and Co-Founder
In today’s digital world, product and development teams move quickly in order to meet release dates and go-to-market goals. For the teams they work with, it’s difficult to stay in sync, but LaunchNotes is making it easier.
“We’re designed and focused on re-establishing the communication and the consistent cadence between technical and customer-facing go-to-market (GTM) teams,” says Tyler Davis, CEO and co-founder.
LaunchNotes not only bridges the technical gap, but also helps teams more consistently communicate upcoming product changes with their users. The startup made its platform generally available in May 2020, and just six months later, it received $1.8M in seed funding, co-led by Cowboy Ventures and Bull City Venture Partners. Over 200 companies have adopted the product communication platform, including Atlassian, Twilio, and Loom, but a challenge arose early on.
LaunchNotes’ home-built authentication needed an upgrade to earn the trust of high-profile customers and become truly enterprise-ready.
Making the choice to outsource authentication
For “almost all” enterprise customers, LaunchNotes had to demonstrate high login security standards and offer functionality like Single Sign On (SSO). They have a lean development team with an ambitious roadmap, so they looked for a third-party solution to preserve their development focus.
“Our core focus is building a service that helps organizations better coordinate and communicate product change between dev teams, product teams, and GTM teams, and ultimately their customers - it’s not authentication,” explains Davis. “We use a microservices approach, so this is an area where we find value in partnering with an expert.”
LaunchNotes quickly began evaluating authentication providers. After testing four, they selected Okta Customer Identity Cloud, powered by Auth0, for its simplicity and ability to deliver the authentication functionality needed to close deals.
“We had a proof of concept setup in an hour,” says Davis. “Okta Customer Identity Cloud was well designed and offered everything we needed to get up and running fast with a partner we could go the distance with.”
Modern authentication in under three weeks
LaunchNotes went into production with their Okta use case in less than three weeks. Within one week of going live, LaunchNotes had its first enterprise contract and more than 10 customers re-engaged with the startup.
Davis compares the easy implementation of Okta to the time-consuming rollout of authentication “in a previous life,” where it would take at least three months and still lack “a number of features” that Customer Identity Cloud provides out of the box.
LaunchNotes saved five weeks of developer time initially setting up SSO so customers could benefit from a frictionless, secure authentication experience. On an ongoing basis, the team saves 95% of developer time in the management of password policies for their B2B customers.
Okta also provides additional flexibility and time savings in easily implemented features like Social Logins which take minutes to turn on, as opposed to days of developer work.
These savings also extend to new customer onboarding as Okta reduces ongoing complexity resulting in 15-20% faster implementation times. “It’s a win-win,” says Jake Brereton, COO and co-founder. “With Okta, we get happy customers from a good onboarding experience, and more efficient use of engineering resources.”
”We’re the stewards of a lot of sensitive information for product teams,” says Davis ”It’s highly competitive information, and Okta Customer Identity Cloud helps us control who is granted access to it.”
About Customer
Hundreds of industry-leading organizations across the world trust LaunchNotes as their single source of truth for product change. LaunchNotes empowers product and engineering teams in software-driven organizations to coordinate, communicate, and connect different teams and activities in one space. With LaunchNotes, organizations can align their product and GTM teams, standardize their customer communication process, and turn every release into an opportunity to delight users, drive higher engagement, and create efficient, repeatable business value.