The six big benefits of CIAM for business

Customer identity and access management (CIAM) is a necessity for business today. But, the wrong solution is seeing increased pressure on in-house IT and developer teams. After all, CIAM includes not only the sign-in/login experience but also the registration and sign-up process throughout an entire customer journey. This gives teams a huge spectrum of capabilities to implement, continually manage, and update.

The question is, can businesses deploy the CIAM that delivers value to both them and their consumers? The answer is yes. In this article, we’ll explore how its correct implementation can alleviate burdens in your organization and bring significant business benefits.

What is customer identity access management?

Usernames and passwords are the most visible forms of CIAM for consumers. But Captcha forms, magic links, verification passcodes, and facial recognition are also common for logging into sites, apps, or portals. They reassure consumers about data protection and enhance their experience (CX), but also offer substantial business benefits.

CIAM provides a digital identity layer into your customer-facing apps, websites, and portals, helping identify who your customers are and what they access. That in itself is hugely valuable information for your business, but there’s more in store for those who commit to integrating the best CIAM solution they can into their workflows.

What can customer identity access management offer business?

The most capable CIAM solutions will offer six key advantages to a business that aren’t always seen by customers, but offer significant value:

1. A centralised source of truth

The ability to identify your consumers and generate a clear picture of your customer base is great – but can only be achieved if your data is in order. Disorganised, siloed, or inaccurate data prevents clarity into who’s interacting with your company. 

You need a CIAM solution that unifies your consumer profiles and metrics into a single space, allowing you to more easily spot the insights within.

2. Scalability

It may not seem obvious, but better CIAM offers your business the chance to support more users. CIAM solutions can easily support millions, even billions of users at a time. They’ll scale as and when you need them; for an expected sales event or in case of unforeseen demand, keeping your sites, apps, and portals up and running – and you in business.

3. Security/privacy and compliance

Securing customer data and maintaining compliance is crucial to avoid the financial and reputational damage of cyberattacks or breaches, imposed by the likes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

Invest in a CIAM solution with strong security features that protect both you and your customers while ensuring compliance with legislation. Features like multi-factor authentication prevent access even if a user's credentials are stolen, and brute force protection blocks fraudulent login attempts that could crash your site.

Leading CIAM solutions also update proactively to keep you compliant with evolving data privacy laws across jurisdictions.

4. The ability to meet external expectations

Consumers or partners will always have expectations of your business if you are to keep them engaged. Consumers expect to move seamlessly across your portals and services on any device, through minimal logins and credentials. Partners, meanwhile, often seek similar, but with the possibility of varying levels of authorization for their staff, external logins, and perhaps even their own dedicated/customised version of your CIAM.

The right CIAM solution will meet the expectations of every one of your users. It’s why Okta’s Customer Identity Cloud has such a huge range of prebuilt integrations and no-code connectors that enable significant customization opportunities and…

5. …Lower reliance on developers

This doesn’t mean putting developers out of a job. Prebuilt integrations and no-code connectors free developers to more easily create the CIAM solution you need before moving on sooner to other more value-driving projects and product work. And, whether you use contractors or your own in-house development team, the time and cost savings can prove immense. Which neatly leads us to…

6. Overcoming in-house limitations

Typically, a business will outsource its CIAM creation because: 1. Its in-house team is too small to cope with the project, or 2. It doesn’t have the capability to achieve what’s needed. A prebuilt CIAM solution instantly overcomes both issues; IT and development teams need far less specific CIAM knowledge. Solutions such as Okta’s Customer Identity Cloud offer virtual ‘plug and play’ builds.
And, given the copious automation within Customer Identity Cloud, your teams spend a fraction of the time overseeing your CIAM’s ongoing management. Instead, their time is spent on the projects and core competencies you hired them for, giving you far greater value per hire.

A great CIAM solution adds up to a solid foundation upon which you can:

• Centralise and secure your consumer data
• Meet user expectations of your services in every interaction
• Achieve greater value thanks to time savings and resource redeployments

To help you understand more of the capabilities of CIAM and what to look for when selecting yours, we’ve prepared some further resources to help guide you in your journey to CIAM excellence.