The modern customer journey relies on many systems working together, and IAM is crucial in making sure this can happen seamlessly
The words "digital transformation" are a bit passé these days, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still happening all around us.
The last few years have demonstrated an irreversible trend towards digitisation across every industry, and that - said Luis Lancos, keynote speaker at Computing's recent Deskflix: Identity and Access Management event - will have "massive consequences" for the future.
"Digital transformation doesn't just affect one industry but the whole economic and social fabric of society," he said, pointing to the emergence of super-apps like China's WeChat and AliPay as examples. With the rise of transformational future technologies like blockchain and digital currencies, we may see similar apps gaining ground in other countries.
How does this play into identity and access management (IAM)? Simply, because IAM is a key piece of the digital transformation pie on the customer journey - ‘customer' in this case meaning any sort of end-user, from a member of the public to an employee.
"Customers today demand highly personalised, seamless journeys - fragmented customer journeys are no longer good enough," said Lancos.
In the past, it might have taken several weeks to onboard a new employee and finish setting them up with the applications they need. Today, "the expectation is minutes" - and if the process takes much longer, red flags start to fly.
The customer expectation is understandable but presents challenges, especially when you have to rely on partners and service providers - which nearly every company does for some aspect of their IT. That means that, "as we make digital journeys more seamless and raise integrations, complexity is also rising."
A single user journey can involve several actors within the digital ecosystem - people, companies, APIs, interfaces, environments - and making sure they all play together is a key role for IAM.
"We live in a hyper-connected digital process era, where a single journey is no longer contained in a single digital company.
"This is only possible if everything - from security to automation to compliance - is smooth across the whole spectrum."
