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.
