If you’ve been keeping up with the enterprise world, you’re probably noticing a bit of a trend. On-premise infrastructure isn’t popular nowadays, and instead, enterprises are moving to the cloud. It can provide a lot of benefits, it’s more secure, it’s more scalable, and it is more useful in general. And if your enterprise hasn’t realized this so far, it’ll have to soon, because that’s where things are headed.
That being said, moving to the cloud isn’t that simple. True, this does depend on your enterprise specifically and all it entails, but in most use cases, there are a few things that need to be taken care of. For instance, you might need to swap out some of the apps and services you’re using, and each one will require a sign-in from your employees (and possibly users). Think about it – do you know how many authenticate credentials each employee will need to remember? Too many.
The answer lies in a single sign-on solution, one that will authenticate your users and employees without them needing to remember hundreds of passwords. But if you aren’t yet convinced, let’s take a look at what it is and some of the benefits of single sign on solutions – that should more than seal the deal for you.
Before We Get into the Benefits of SSO – What Is It?
A single sign-on solution is a way to authenticate users throughout applications and touchpoints, all within the enterprise, without them needing to provide and use their credentials or passwords for login every single time. The gist of it is, it ties every application or touchpoint to a centralized system that will authenticate user credentials against that. If a user has been authorized for one application, they will be authorized for all of them.
This nets you a lot of advantages, but the main ones are a streamlined user experience, improved security, and a boost in productivity. Let’s take a closer look at each.
Security Is One of the Key Advantages of Single Sign On
This is arguably one of the most important aspects for each enterprise owner, and it’s quite understandable. You want any software you use, any application, to be as secure as possible, especially if it needs to have access to passwords and deal with identity management for your employees.
Now, some users believe that this is actually one of the disadvantages of single sign on – how can one password for multiple apps be safer than having separate ones? And while to some extent, the question holds true, the answer is very simple. Not only is everything encrypted and incredibly secure, but at the base level, if you only have a single password to remember, you’ll be a lot more inclined to make it as complex as possible. You’ll be adding numbers, special characters and symbols, mixing lowercase and uppercase characters, and you still won’t forget the password because it’s only a single one.
To add to this, another one of the benefits of single sign on is the fact that you can combine it with a two-factor authentication software and an identity management system, and make it even more secure.
User Experience Sees a Huge Improvement
If you’re working with multiple logins at the moment, chances are your employees aren’t huge fans of that. To make matters worse, most modern apps that enterprises use will overcomplicate everything without a real need for it, which makes for a difficult user experience, to say the least. In the enterprise world, you’re working with multiple applications, and having something be more complicated than necessary will reflect on the entire workflow.
Here’s a simple way of putting things in perspective – hundreds of thousands of online shoppers will abandon their cart if the sign-up process is difficult. We’re assuming you don’t want that happening within your enterprise, which is why one of the benefits of single sign on is a streamlined user experience. When your employees notice that they’re already logged in to all your apps and don’t have to switch through them, they’ll love it. And that will definitely reflect on morale.
This will also translate into an improved software adoption rate because you don’t have to care if an application has a difficult sign-up process. Your SSO solution will take care of that, the only thing you do need to worry about is whether or not the solution is compatible with the app you’re implementing. If you get the right SSO software, it’s going to be remarkably easy to take care of that too.
An Always-Welcome Productivity Boost
Here’s something for you to do. Head to your tech support department and ask them what the most common question they get from your employees is. We’re all but willing to bet that it’s something along the lines of “Can you please reset my password?” Your support department probably hates wasting time on something that shouldn’t even be their problem. To add to this, your employees also probably hate having to even ask.
Well, if you’re using an SSO solution, especially if it’s integrated with an identity management solution, one of the benefits is that they’ll only need to remember a single password, and this is a problem nobody will need to deal with anymore.
Weighing the Single Sign On Advantages and Disadvantages – Should You Go For It?
At the end of the day, a single sign-on solution is something each enterprise should at least consider. And for some, it may not seem like too good of an idea at first, but once you start looking into the benefits an SSO can provide, you realize that it’s an excellent idea, one that will improve your enterprise and how it performs and will make the switch over to a cloud-based infrastructure a lot easier.
Now that you know what all the benefits of single sign on entail, all that’s left for you is to implement the right solution.
