Why transforming IAM to CIAM is an asymptotic fantasy

It has been more than half a decade since people have tried to understand the concepts of IAM and cIAM. There is very little awareness of identity management and it can be difficult to understand the difference between eIAM (enterprise identity and access management) and cIAM (customer identity and access management). It’s been quite a while since people are trying to clarify the difference between eIAM and cIAM, but all efforts seemed futile. So let’s clear things up and be on the same ground. The writing on the wall is bold and clear.

“It is difficult to transform eIAM to cIAM”

You want to know why? There are a few facts that I’m going to show you, but before that, let’s go over some identity management concepts.

Identity: Defined

Anything that helps identify oneself in a physical world can be called an identity. Generally, government identification cards are used to serve the purpose. Therefore, an identity card is issued for the purpose of allowing privileged access to a legitimate person and can be used in various segments of society.

Digital identity: defined

Digital identity is your recognition online. It helps to identify as a person in the real world. A person can have multiple digital identities depending on their needs. But, digital identities are only considered for a particular website or network, which means that a Gmail email address can only be recognized on the Google network. Thus, a digital identity (an individual) gets approval to access the website. This is how a website performs the authentication process.

Access: Defined

When you enter a facility to use its resources, it is called gaining access. Also, the sensitivity of the data decides the degree of permission provided. Therefore, public data, such as data on websites, is easy to access, while private messages, such as emails, require special authorization (called a login). A successful login is proof of a person’s validation.

Introduction to enterprise identity and access management

Enterprise Identity Access and Management is a technology used throughout the organization for internal employees, contractors, and partners. The process is to provide identities, authenticate identities, and then provide them with access to resources. As its name implies, the technology focuses on internal employees and other members related to an organization. The technology focuses on security aspects in an organization, such as restricting resources to internal employees, providing access to employees and other members according to their profile, and helping them collaborate to work with each other. Therefore, Enterprise IAM promotes security in an organization.

Introduction to customer identity and access management

Customer identity management focuses primarily on end users. They are intended for consumers, which are totally based on a different architecture, i.e. consumer-centric. Many other aspects are added to cIAM to make it capable of handling challenges in real time. It strikes the perfect balance between satisfying the needs of consumers and the prospects of a business. Let’s review these insights briefly to learn more about cIAM.

customer perspective

Customer always prefer user friendly environment and cIAM offers excellent user friendly environment resulting in good customer experience. Many services like single sign-on, social login and secure environment in terms of handling your personal information win the trust of consumers. Furthermore, the technology is device and geographically independent. It is highly responsive and available. These features make cIAM easily acceptable, as no company can survive for long without these factors. Therefore, it leads to a poor customer experience and ends in lost revenue.

Therefore, cAM meets the need for companies to adopt a customer-centric approach. The transaction and the service are treated equally with the quality of the product. Therefore, cIAM is more than a customer database. It really strengthens ties with customers.

commercial aspect

When it comes to business, cIAM remains an undisputed champion. Aside from getting customer information from cIAM, it increases the probability of providing customers with a unified customer experience. Personalized attention to clients and the promotion of the brand-client relationship are some of the advantages of cIAM. In addition, CRM, segmentation, and CMS technologies gain an advantage by working in collaboration with cIAM technologies.

know the difference

Being a cIAM, for an IAM company is almost impossible. And these are some presentable factors.

• Created an enterprise identity management solution to manage comparatively minor identities with respect to cIAM. An enterprise IAM can only manage a few thousand identities. But, with cIAM, the number can reach the billions.
• The user experience of your users is defined in enterprise IAM through the level of access provided to users. In other words, the permissions granted to the user determine the ease of their online experience. cIAM promotes the user experience based on personalized data received as inputs through clients. Users voluntarily provide information when registering on your website. Additionally, users are assisted by various touch points to log in to your website.
• An enterprise IAM needs to focus on its security aspects while tuning its performance. An enterprise IAM does not see the service and the transaction as important factors for the business. cIAM fully supports a customer-centric environment that is beneficial to business. Self-management services in cIAM, such as password recovery and other account-related options, are the best examples of cIAM’s customer-centric approach. Unfortunately, Enterprise IAM does not come with these facilities.
• Enterprise IAM is designed for internal organizational activities and does not support cross-channel interaction or cross-device deployment. It means that customers cannot interact with your business through multiple channels (social networks) or using different types of devices. Support for cross-device and cross-channel interaction is one of the USPs of the customer identity management solution.

Therefore, there ARE problems with the transformation from eIAM to cIAM. It is nearly impossible to redesign an entire architecture, and eIAM lacks some of the key features of cIAM. Also, an eIAM design is not intended to foster customer relationships. So transforming an eIAM into a cIAM is an asymptotic fantasy.