The Main Components of an Excellent CIAM platform

By Rajat Kesarwani| Wednesday, August 07, 2019 15:20 PM | 6 min read

Highlights:

• 48% of globally recognized companies are aware of the benefits and uses of the fairly new, customer identity and access management platform. The remaining 61% using IAM systems, are yet to join the league.
• As a certified and internationally preferred cloud-based Salesforce partner, Dreamstel recommends Salesforce CIAM, an identity platform with an advanced user experience technology.
• 75% of businesses that are strictly using an IAM solution for their employees, are likely to consider improving the experience of their customers as well with a Customer Identity Access Management solution.

What is a CIAM?

A Customer Identity Access Management platform primarily streamlines the process of providing users with a personalized experience of logging in and using a business website. It also strengthens the security system of the website, without restricting the users from accessing information or using the services that they are entitled to, as customers.

Businesses that are using IAM (Identity Access Management) are gradually incorporating the Salesforce CIAM platform in their websites for an improved user experience. This is because of the significant difference between the two solutions. CIAM providers enable your website to offer tens of millions of uses in the B2C environment, controlled access to accounts through multiple applications.

• Handle digital identities and customer data more efficiently and improve customer experience with a secure, reliable and strongly recommended Salesforce CIAM platform.
• Experience an IAM solution with a single sign-on (SSO) system and a fast and flexible customer authentication feature through multiple identity providers such as Facebook and GMail.

For businesses that are still unsure about which access management solution to choose from the myriad of consumer identity and access management providers, the following points might help in making the right decision.

We bring you the the main components of an excellent CIAM platform:

1. Advanced Security: Security is one of the key features of a CIAM solution. Customers who visit your website are hesitant to fill in their third-party app login details if the security service does not look promising to them.
>> A perfect identity platform is transparent and careful about how the data is procured, and how it is managed.
>> A powerful customer identity access management provides autonomous authentication and authorization among users.
Apart from the basic identity levels such as Single Sign On, policy enforcement, etc., secure flow of information among networks should be a priority.

2. Benefits of Integration: Integration aids the process of improving communication, sharing, convenience and user-friendliness of a website, an application or a software.
>> An effective CIAM platform integrates with CRMs, payment software, internal IAMs, eCommerce, BI and BA tools and more.
>> It facilitates comprehensive messaging and smooth transporting of data across multiple platforms and networks, instantly.
Integration automates the process of people connecting to things, and things connecting to applications and other things.

3. A Customer Centric Approach: Long gone are the days when identifying a customer used to be based on the device they use. No multiple users operate on a single device and a single user uses multiple applications and login information on multiple devices. The approach towards a mobile friendly use is now customer centric.

The best CIAM providers now focus on a seamless user experience that lets customers register in the manner that they prefer, no matter what interface the device operates on. Customers perform high value transactions, customize their preferences and choose the security options according to their own convenience.

4. Self-Management Options: One of the major reasons why IAMs cannot keep up with the incredible performance of a CIAM platform is, flexibility.
>> The latest access management solution allows customers to make changes to their account management settings.
>> Customers look for complete self-service features and privacy management so that they can collect and use their own personal data as and when they want to.
The Salesforce CIAM platform helps customers to manage their choices and set preferences manually.

5. Privacy Management: Privacy is a integral part of customer security. Users feel more comfortable with a website when they have a choice to manage their privacy on the platform. Most of your customers like to be greeted by their name, but there are still a few who would rather keep their identity private.

A perfect CIAM solution would offer both the options freely to the customers. The objective should be to guarantee a personalized experience and full privacy controls while adhering to the privacy norms of the company and country.

6. Multiple Identity Management: A competitive identity platform would have the resources and space to manage millions of identities with their preferred login choices and data for as long as the customer continues using the website.

Multiple identity management entails handing ghost accounts, duplicate accounts and original accounts from the date of registration. The management process involves provisioning, unlocking, tracking, resetting, suspending and deleting of login and other data to suit the customers’ needs.

7. Data Analytics: The interaction between your customers and your support team is valuable data. The analysis of this data can help you offer them a better customer experience. The cloud-based customer data and digital identities contribute towards improving the opportunities for your business, and enhances the number of sales by giving you ideas for effective marketing. With advanced analytics you’re enabled to understand your customers’ behavior and improve your services accordingly.

8. API Integration: Most of the identity platforms for customers are integrating API’s so that customers can quickly integrated data into third-party software. Users might not even have to login to multiple applications for certain information if they can get it on your website. It gives your users a single view of all their necessary data. They can now create a user-friendly cloud-based identity platform for a completely outstanding CIAM system experience.

9. Scalability: As users grow data grows, and only a scalable access management solution can meet the demands of the constantly increasing number of customers. A robust CIAM platform would offer your customers frictionless and instant access to the services they came looking for. The speed and performance of your website should not be affected by the increasing data and number of new registrations even when the usage is at a peak level.

The Importance of CIAM

Apart from being able to allow your customers to simply sign on and use the company’s application or website, with the Salesforce CIAM platform, you are enabled to help them manage their accounts and preferences. You can track their data, get reports and develop a more user-friendly customer experience platform for them. All this, while allowing them complete privacy and multi-factor authentication security. Monitoring and managing your customers was certainly never this easy.

CIAM is strongly recommended for small, medium and large businesses that believe customer experience should be give priority and constantly improved along with technological advancements in the business world.