How Digital Transformation Enables Business Adaptability

In response to COVID-19, 75% of CEOs have accelerated digital transformation, a recent Zscaler study found.

While the study specifically focused on work from anywhere (WFA) solutions, the need for digital change isn't critical just for employee access. As nearly every customer experience is driven online, your customers' digital experience is the major way they experience your brand.

Fortune noted that the crisis has quickly widened the performance gap between companies investing in digital innovations and those who weren't into a "chasm," saying "digital leaders were performing better through crisis." Companies need new technologies that allow them to activate new business models fully. In this environment, digital transformation initiatives may still be scoped over multiple years, but CIOs need to demonstrate value on a much faster timeframe.

And the need for rapid digital adaptability is surfacing as an even stronger driver amongst Auth0 customers, especially for those seeking B2B and Customer and Identity Access Management (CIAM) solutions.

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For many business leaders, the question is not just about how to add artificial intelligence and machine learning to new products, but how to keep their companies moving forward, given unpredictable global conditions. Others are wondering if it's too late to catch up — or even run ahead.

If you're willing to treat Identity Access Management (IAM) as a reusable service as part of your digital transformation strategy, it's not.

Reusable Services Speed Digital Transformation Success

Many digital transformation projects are executed over the course of several years, while everyone works through "rigid" monolithic I.T. infrastructures and apps created for specific moments in time. Replacing legacy technology with "componentized" digital technologies (think building blocks) that can be more easily reassembled and re-architected allows companies to adapt more rapidly to changing business needs.

Reusable services like online payments, communications capabilities, and identity management allow companies to speed their digital transformations and deliver scalable value to customers. Basically, these services give you the power to do what you need to do, when and how you need to do it.

As Pierre Alvear Foxler, Service Manager, IAM, for Northern Europe's leading farming cooperative, Lantmännen, points out, shifting from on-premises to services-based solutions like Auth0 have financial benefits as well as usability benefits. "We went from an on-premise solution that was capable, but complex and costly, to one that saves us money on infrastructure, IAM delivery, and application management," he says.

Strongly designed services can also make it easier to manage the complexity of the fragmented healthcare system, says Chris Carruthers, Principal Technical Program Manager, Providence, a nonprofit healthcare organization based in the U.S. "The healthcare industry is a complex landscape. Many customers have legacy applications and require highly secure vendor systems that meet patient data privacy requirements. Auth0's adherence to top compliance frameworks makes them a valuable identity partner for us."

Reduce Time to Implementation

The most effective business strategy in the world, expressed through well-planned business models, can easily stall (or die) due during change management. IAM can be a powerful tool for business leaders to speed implementation. Resolving IAM challenges with the help of a vendor focused on not only current, but potential business possibilities means that you can use the IAM discussion as a framework to drive consensus and momentum for their evolving digital transformation strategy.

Lifen: Contact Tracing in 5 Days

AI-powered Lifen, a solution that facilitates the secure transfer of medical documents between patients, private practitioners, and hospitals, came to Auth0 early in the pandemic with the goal of replacing their existing identity infrastructure — and rapidly spinning up a contact tracing solution. We delivered in five days.

You read that right — five days.

"It was in record time," says Lifen CTO Dali Kilani. "We've put it in the hands of multiple healthcare institutions."

But speed wasn't Lifen's only goal.

Especially in a global environment with an increasing number of data breaches, fast means nothing if your new solution isn't also more secure. Despite the rapid turnaround, Kilani is more than comfortable. "Auth0 maintains the highest level of security that is possible at this point. Every single doctor and patient that accesses our solution performs their authentication through Auth0. We've put Auth0 at the heart of our service."

Gymshark: Headless Commerce + Credential Stuffing Protection

For Auth0 customer Gymshark, a conditioning brand dedicated to fitness apparel, digital adaptability means making major shifts away from siloed logins that were spoiling their user experience. "We're going down a headless commerce route, doing much of our ops and infrastructure through serverless technologies with cloud partners such as AWS. We're kind of rebuilding the whole back office of the company from the ground up," says Dan Lake, Gymshark Engineering Director.

The complexity of managing a digital transformation alongside a social media following of 10+ million and customers in over 170 countries could have made customer identity and access management (CIAM) changes extremely challenging.

Instead, Auth0 saved time and effort.

"The ease of implementing Auth0 was brilliant. It saved us months of time, salaries, effort in finding the right engineers, obviously ongoing support, and also probably given us back a few years in our lives as well through stress," says Lake.

Lake also points out that Auth0 has added benefits. "Auth0 protects us against credential stuffing. You don't realize how valuable credential stuffing features are until it happens. Those are the kind of features that we relish at the moment, things we see that our customers don't."

Scale Quickly Across Multiple Applications

Global technology powerhouse Siemens AG plays a pivotal role in everything from digital enterprise to energy to financial services and operates in nearly every country in the world. Performing on a global scale can get extremely expensive when apps are measured across multiple divisions. Creating a uniform login experience for customers and partners allows Siemens to sustain a focus that benefits their business.

"It was of the utmost importance to have a secured, stable and reliable authentication platform, [so that] our clients and partners can focus on their business instead of focusing on how to log into hundreds of Siemens' applications available in the market," says Hugo Francisco, Service Owner of Siemens ID, Siemens.

Make Sure Your UX Keeps Pace With Your Business Innovation

With 170 superstores across the U.K., Dunelm prides itself on style and affordability — and is transforming their digital experience to keep pace with their tangible one.

Moving to a modern, flexible cloud platform is a critical part of that business strategy.

"One of the key things we wanted to do was move over to a cloud platform, AWS, where we could scale up and down and build the best in class for our online customers," says Antony Sohal, Head of Data Platforms for Dunelm.

But instead of building that digital experience in-house, Dunelm created the customer experience using a componentized approach. "One of the key decisions was to focus on what we're good at and single out what we're not good at. We built a product service, a pricing service, we bought authentication, we even bought search as a service. We bought the infrastructure we needed," explains Sohal.

Buying identity-as-a-service means that the effort that would be spent on authentication can instead be spent on core functions and, with the right identity partner, used to customize the user experience. This means there's no need to sacrifice digital innovation for time-to-market. A flexible, extensible identity platform means you can get to market faster and ensure future adaptability.

Treating identity as a reusable service can help your new products get to market faster — and strengthen your ability to adapt once you're there. As Lake explains, "The largest shift and growth at Gymshark is we've become a tech company through our aim to unite the conditioning community. We're building the foundation for where we're headed, and it's just going to get bigger and bigger."

Carruthers says Providence turned to Auth0 for help creating a seamless, consumer-facing digital experience for patients. "We're years ahead of where we would be if we were to build identity ourselves," says Carruthers.

If you'd like to learn more about how Auth0 could help your company continue to adapt and grow, please reach out to an Auth0 resource.