5 Signs Your Traditional IAM System Needs a CIAM Makeover

Introduction

If you're serving your clients online, you must be aware that almost 80% of online shopping orders were abandoned, i.e., not converted as per stats of March 2021. And this pattern isn’t new; it’s the new normal.

Your customers are already interacting with brands like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. They know what a great personalized user experience is. And if you’re not offering the same level of user experience on your online platform, you won’t be able to match their expectations!

Users will land on your website/app, browse a little, find what they’re looking for, and then a single lousy experience will force them to switch—resulting in cart abandonment.

But why do businesses face such issues? Are there any issues that are causing users to switch?

Undoubtedly, yes! Poor login and authentication with or without traditional IAM (identity and access management) are the most common issues that force users to switch.

Businesses are still relying on old-school login and authentication mechanisms, including organization-level IAM, which is why their business lags behind their competitors.

And the catch is that they aren’t aware of consumer identity and access management (CIAM) platforms that can help them overcome the challenges of low conversions and lead generation.

Let’s quickly understand the aspects of traditional IAM and why businesses need the true potential of CIAM.

Traditional IAM vs. CIAM- What’s the Difference?

Traditional identity and access management (IAM) solutions are traditionally used to streamline employee provisioning, manage access rights, assist in compliance reporting, automate approval workflows, fuel authentication, authorization, and numerous other security-relevant functions.

But out of convenience, businesses try to adopt this technology to manage customer identities as well. Unfortunately, internal identity management systems don’t have the right capabilities to manage and secure the hundreds of millions of users on consumer-facing platforms.

This is where customer IAM (CIAM) solutions come in. These solutions have been built to specifically handle the requirements for customer authentication, scalability, privacy and data regulations, user experience, and integration.

In comparison to internal management, a customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution improves the customer experience, reduces security risks, shrinks costs, and increases the availability of applications.

Since we’ve learned about the significant differences between a CIAM and conventional IAM, let’s closely look at some signs that depict that your business now needs a CIAM makeover.

Why Should You Make the Switch to a CIAM Solution?

#1. You have good traffic but no leads or conversions.

One of the most significant indicators of bad authentication and user management is that your website or mobile application has good traffic but isn’t converting.

Most of the time, users face friction in authentication, remembering passwords, or going through multiple registration stages. This annoying experience forces them to switch to your competitors, offering seamless authentication, registration, and login experience.

So, what’s the ideal solution for this dilemma?

Well, a cutting-edge cloud-based CIAM solution like LoginRadius can help you increase your conversions and generate more leads.

With features like Social Login, Single Sign-On (SSO), and Progressive Profiling, you can stay assured your users aren’t facing any hurdles from the moment they interact with your brand.

#2. You need more user data for improving sales & marketing strategy, but you’re clueless about where to get it.

Businesses collect consumer data, but it is often segregated among repositories and departments. The CIAM platform provides you with a wealth of information on your consumers’ identities and habits.

Unlike traditional IAM, CIAM allows building a detailed profile of each consumer, including personal information, purchase histories, and usage and purchasing patterns.

This data may be combined into a single consumer view, which may be pushed into other enterprise programs to improve sales forecasting, tailored marketing, and new product development.

APIs are widely used in the latest generation of CIAM platforms to link identity data and analytics into complementary systems like content management, ERP, and consumer experience management.

#3. You’re worried about sensitive consumer and business data.

Concerning the traditional IAM, authentication has been a simple decision based on the credentials supplied up until now. This was accomplished by using a username and password that were both relatively weak.

Though the invention of two-factor authentication (2FA) employing a second step such as an SMS message has helped, it is still vulnerable to hacking.

The CIAM, on the other hand, offers multi-factor authentication (MFA), which can include biometrics, geolocation, and user behavior, providing increased security. These features also enable the use of analytics to give additional capabilities like anomaly detection, which may be used to identify and address unexpected behavior swiftly.

The LoginRadius CIAM platform provides security beyond the client, including employees, partners, applications, and interconnected devices, to develop a comprehensive end-to-end solution.

#4. You don’t know how to meet global data regulatory and privacy compliances.

Data privacy is a critical component of any CIAM solution, especially when consumers are responsible for their data and profile management.

Unlike the traditional IAM, the CIAM platform offers your consumers visibility and control over how and where their data is shared. So it includes both consent and preference management, which allows your consumers to choose how their data is collected and used.

Consent management, for example, must allow your client to establish multi-level consent – where data can be used for one reason but not for another – that can be turned on and off at any moment, according to EU’s GDPR requirements.

The CIAM platform necessitates significant self-service features so that your consumers may manage their consents and preferences through their profile, as well as robust tracking and auditing so that you can meet other global compliances, including California's CCPA.

#5. You’re not making new customers.

You can’t ignore the fact that new customer acquisition is as essential as retaining current customers. If you’re not making new customers, it’s high time you must incorporate a CIAM solution instead of the traditional IAM.

Endless reasons, including a lengthy registration process, could lead to situations where you cannot convert new users and drop the overall growth rates.

By incorporating a CIAM solution like LoginRadius, you can leverage the true potential of progressive profiling that enables your customers to share their details gradually and not immediately when they interact for the first time with your platform.

Apart from this, creating personalized customer journeys by leveraging social media data and consumer behavior can also help increase engagement with your brand leading to more new conversions.

Looking Forward

Modern customers know exactly what they want, and to ensure they don’t switch, organizations have to stay ahead of the competition by pleasing their users right from the beginning they interact with their brand.

Also, the traditional IAM cannot meet the surging demands of today’s customers. Hence, it’s crucial to incorporate a reliable CIAM solution like LoginRadius that helps deliver a rich consumer experience and robust security and helps meet global compliance requirements.

If you’re facing any of the challenges mentioned above, it’s high time to switch to a reliable CIAM solution.