A New CIAM focus from Cost Center to Business Differentiator
I recently wrote an article about the differences between Enterprise IAM (EIAM) and Customer IAM (CIAM) and the challenges with converging or diverging those strategies. I explored the critical capabilities and best practices for a modern CIAM program, including:
- User Experience
- Integrations
- Security and Privacy
- Scaling and Redundancy
- Analytics
All this combined leads to driving business value (see Figure below).
Customer IAM (CIAM) Program Capabilities
Since the writing of this article, I took a step back and started evaluating what makes a successful CIAM program. In the past, businesses viewed CIAM as just another tool that they could leverage to achieve their goals. However, we believe that this is changing, and that CIAM can now be a driver of business value and differentiation, while delivering optimal customer experience.
Done right, a successful CIAM program can enable a frictionless and secure customer experience, instill trust, and provide operational resilience, all while working with agility at the speed of the business.
I talked with co-workers, friends, and customers, did some research with some of our partners, and came to the conclusion: the market and how people are utilizing requires a re-evaluation of what those critical capabilities are.
We then identified where people were having success turning capabilities into real business differentiators alongside emerging trends and created the critical capabilities and best practices for a CIAM program that delivers optimal customer experience and drives business differentiation.
IDMWORKS has now launched a new focus on CIAM critical capabilities (see figure below).
Customer IAM (CIAM) Critical Capabilities in 2023
The main capabilities and best practices for a successful CIAM program include:
1) User Experience:
- How are you providing a frictionless user experience in securing the user interactions?
2) Integrations:
- Does the solution provide a unified and singular identity to the Customer while integrating with the company’s services?
3) Trust:
- Does the experience instill trust that the user’s data is properly collected, protected, and used appropriately based on the site and is not overly onerous?
4) Operational Resilience:
- Is the solution designed to ensure availability and grow with the business so is resourced when needed rather than a cost center for the business?
The focus with this new model is still driving business value, but we’re taking a different approach of getting there. In the previous view of Business Value, it specifically looked at how the business leveraged existing capabilities. But, thinking of it that way assumes the business is reaching out to the IAM team and looking at it as just a tool.
What we want to drive with the new view of Business Value is how CIAM is enabling the business value and driving capabilities. With this, it is not a component of the digital experience for customers, it is the main driver of enabling the experience, additional functionality and working with agility at the speed of the business. Done right, this is now a service that differentiates your brand, business and allows the IAM team to focus on enhancements and emerging technology, not just supporting an existing tool.
Stay Tuned in a series of upcoming blogs I’ll be digging into each of the capabilities needed to build a successful CIAM program that delivers optimal customer experience and drives business differentiation.
If you like what you see so far and you’re eager to start your Customer Identity Access Management journey, I encourage you to reach out and schedule a workshop with our advisory group. In these workshops delivered over a two (2) hour period, we’ll dive into your environment and capabilities today and give you some quick feedback on where we would recommend you start (and, its free).
Author: Nick Hunt, IDMWORKS, Identity Program Architect