Why Organizations Must Use API-Driven CIAM for Digital Agility
Digital agility is the ease with which any organization can adapt to changing business needs – by enabling or changing their business processes. For a successful digital transformation, organizations need to invest in resilient business operations, consumer experience initiatives, and technology.
In today’s constantly changing world, agility is an absolute must for transformation. Any small or large organization can no longer avoid – or even delay - digital transformation as they try to remain competitive in an evolving business climate. As aptly stated by Aaron Levie of BOX, “the next 10 years of IT will be about transforming your business.”
Just like agility is the “way to move quickly and easily,” digital agility is now the means to adopt digital transformation quickly and easily through the right tools and processes.
What exactly is digital agility – and how do you go about achieving its objectives? These are the key questions that we shall try to address over the next few sections.
What is Digital Agility
In simple terms, digital agility is the ease with which any organization can adapt to changing business needs – by enabling or changing their business processes. Meredith Whalen of IDC believes that "the more we get into a digital economy, it is all about adapting and responding quickly as an organization to disruption and changes."
Simply put, for a successful digital transformation, organizations need to invest in resilient business operations, consumer experience initiatives, and technology. For instance, the creation of an identity-driven digital transformation strategy enables various users – including internal & external – to have the right access to the right technology for the right purpose.
How do you go about achieving your business objectives in digital agility? Among its major building blocks, identity and access management (or IAM) can help in bringing business agility into any organization.
Traditionally, IAM has always been viewed as an effective security solution that is necessary for software applications and mobile apps. In short, it has been used solely to “keep the bad guys out.” This is true – but the fact is IAM is now much more than simply acting as an authentication tool.
Among its major benefits, flexible IAM technology can also be used to add to the digital agility progress of any firm. How does IAM technology work in boosting digital agility? Let us discuss that in the following section.
IAM and Digital Agility
Traditionally, IAM technology has been embedded into applications and frameworks such as AngularJS and React. The constraint of this approach is that IAM-related capabilities remain limited to the specific application or framework. As a result, it is a challenge to integrate these applications with external systems.
To create a successful digital strategy using IAM, you need to focus on:
- Which users or identities require access rights to the applications?
- How can they go about utilizing these applications?
- What resources do they need for access?
- How can you prevent unauthorized access to the applications?
Business leaders must plan on having a flexible IAM solution in their working environment that can be both distributed and dynamic for changing business needs.
For effective digital transformation, technology-enabled companies must move from a fixed and rigid IT infrastructure – to a more flexible and component-based API architecture, which can easily be reconstructed or reused. Next, we shall see how an API-based consumer Identity and Access Management (or CIAM) can be the foundation of digital agility and transformation.
Importance and Benefits of API-driven CIAM
A recent PwC report concludes that 32% of consumers will abandon a product or brand – after just one bad experience. This shows a good consumer experience is not just desirable – but essential for business success.
CIAM technology essentially combines both these requirements. No matter which medium consumers are using to engage with a brand – be it physical, online, or mobile, CIAM solutions ensure a secure and seamless experience. Plus, using their API capabilities, CIAM solutions can be embedded into on-premises software or cloud-based applications.
Listed below are some of the benefits of CIAM as compared to traditional IAM solutions:
- A unified consumer experience that is consistent across all channels.
- Advanced data authentication that can secure your consumer data from online security threats.
- Consistent performance and scalability with an exponential increase in consumer identities.
- Data privacy-related compliance ensures that your consumers have complete control over who and how their data is shared.
How the LoginRadius CIAM Solution Can Help in Your Digital Agility
As a leading provider of CIAM solutions that works for any business model, LoginRadius ensures digital agility along with a seamless consumer experience. With the LoginRadius identity management platform, you can achieve digital transformation by connecting your consumer data to a host of API-driven tools in analytics, business intelligence (BI), and consumer relationship management (CRM).
Using the LoginRadius consumer identity APIs, you can easily validate and automate your consumer identification process and prevent the creation of any spam or fraud accounts.
With its preconfigured integration with third-party tools and applications, you can pull your latest consumer data – thus eliminating data silos and generating valuable insights.
Conclusion
Organizations need to maximize their digital footprint – to stay relevant in today’s connected world. Are you still working with outdated IT systems and processes? Then it is the right time to go for digital agility that can transform your business. In addition to user authentication, IAM solutions can go a long way in elevating your consumer experience.
Built using extensive API functionalities and open-source SDKs, LoginRadius CIAM provides the best of customization and security – that can work for your business needs.
Originally published at LoginRadius
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