The pandemic nearly killed brick and mortar storefronts. Though they have not perished completely, the shift towards digital customer experience has reached a fever pitch. As such, businesses need to be investing into their digital outlets. This includes security concerns. Because each separate application is another expansion of potential attack surface, you need to look for a unified solution. CIAM solutions should be that answer.
This unified system relates more strongly to retail than perhaps any other industry. A robust CIAM solution offers you the means of establishing a solid centralized catalogue and multichannel digital storefront. It provides your customers with the self-service options which are the hallmark of competent digital marketplaces. Lastly, it offers them next-gen cybersecurity, placing a personalized perimeter around their individual identity to protect their sensitive information.
CIAM Solutions in User Experience
The impact of CIAM solutions starts long before a product reaches your shelves. It continues long after the product has been sold. By leveraging CIAM within your supply chain, your enterprise gains better visibility and control over your inventory. Linking every product to an identifier and connecting that to the customer who purchases it provides unprecedented recordkeeping. You might know this time-stamped record by another name: the blockchain.
Once your products are properly sorted by location, price, quantity, and any other pertinent information, your enterprise can link your in-store shoppers with their online experience. Many customers take features like real-time in-stock updates for granted. Lagging behind competitors in terms of quality-of-life features can quickly cause unfavorable comparisons. CIAM is concerned with customer satisfaction, and providing a good experience is the first and last step in growing customer loyalty.
What’s more, consolidating your information onto a centralized platform makes managing that information much easier. Siloed data solutions are clunky and prone to tripping each other up. Federated CIAM solutions keep everything under a single manageable lens. This enables smoother data entry, updates, and wipes. Besides moving your UI closer to a frictionless experience, these features can remove many headaches associated with regulatory compliance.
Enabling Customers through CIAM
Speaking of processes concerning the backend of the online retail process, a solid CIAM solution delivers substantial ROIs directly to the company. Firstly, there are the costs associated with producing a good UI which can be mitigated through CIAM investments. Not only is a CIAM solution going to provide you with a ready-made user interface for your internal users, but it will be primed and ready for use by your customers with minimal tweaking.
As previously stated, CIAM solutions also make systems more compliant with major regulations. CIAM meets many needs of EU-GDPR and PCI DSS automatically through collection of pertinent information, keeping it strictly confidential, and quickly deleting it should the need arise. PCI DSS violations can cost $1MN annually. Noncompliance with GDPR results in fines of €20 million or 4% of annual worldwide turnover.
Of course, the most obvious and enriching aspect of a CIAM solution comes in the form of self-service and automatic services. From user-driven password recovery to basic product searches, CIAM acts as a massive source of frictionless experience. This does not only make huge strides in improving customer experience. It also greatly reduces the cost and strain on your customer service staff. By eliminating issues at their source, they do not bother your customers or support staff in the first place.
Security Through CIAM Solutions
While mitigating cyber risks requires investment across your entire identity fabric, CIAM is a crucial security component therein. A 2022 Ping survey found that 43% of consumers have suffered from fraud due to identity theft. A customer who has a good experience might recommend your business. But a customer who had their information stolen because of your website will almost certainly become a bitter detractor.
But just because you have rails along a cliffside doesn’t mean a safety net isn’t also warranted. A strong CIAM solution includes strategies and programs for remediation and recovery in case of a data breach. If you pair the monitoring capabilities with the automatic policy enforcement capabilities of IGA, you can cover for customer information breaches. A unified security solution of this kind greatly aids an enterprise’s ability to reliably answer the six critical identity and access security questions. Thus, your customers receive an assurance of safety as well as service.
Frictionless security is rapidly becoming the new standard in customer experience. Features like adaptive MFA and SSO are two high-profile enablers in this regard. Your customers become much safer with them, but both actually enhance their experience instead of hindering them. SSO means they can reliably use interconnected apps while MFA provides scalable authentication protocols to aid in password recovery and similar happenings.
Though the attributes of successful CIAM solutions are universal, their implementation is unique to each enterprise. The scale, optimal tools, and budget of an identity rollout can often be difficult if not impossible for a business to carry out themselves. A managed identity service can assess your current state, implement their expert solutions, and maintain your identity fabric at peak performance.
Contact an Identity Advisor now and see if Simeio is the best managed service provider for you.
