Stay ahead in 2024: The definitive list of essential CIAM capabilities

Whether you’re either building momentum toward those new year goals or considering a pivot -- if making customer sign-in easier is on your to-do list for 2024, the weeks are ticking down.

Look, most companies don’t know what great customer identity and access management (CIAM) can do for them. They struggle with workforce IAM platforms and klugey, bolt-on features. They resign themselves to subpar branding options, enhancements that take months to deploy, and performance that can’t scale when they need it. And their customers – and their revenue – suffer for it.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

CIAM that delights

Just like 10x vs 2x goals, rethinking CIAM is all about mindset.

It starts by setting aside limiting ideas about what’s possible – which tend to be over-informed by what your current solution can do or how workforce IAM solutions handle login journeys.

It goes beyond asking what your customers expect, what your CISO will approve, what your IT team can support, and what your marketing team will accept. Those are important questions, for sure, but they don’t go far enough.

Instead, the driving question is: what would delight my customers, my CISO, and my marketing and IT teams?

To help you imagine what that looks like, we’ve compiled this list of 15 capabilities that make CIAM truly delightful – that is, frictionless for customers, uncompromisingly secure, data-rich and capable of synching with your customer intelligence systems, and easy to configure and customize.

The 15 key CIAM capabilities you should evaluate

Of course, everyone is at a different spot in their CIAM journey. We’ve arranged capabilities into three groups. If you’re just getting started you’ll want to begin with the “table stakes” capabilities. Or, if you’ve got a running start and are looking to improve, take a look at the advanced and innovative features.

CIAM table stakes

These are capabilities that most CIAM solutions have but are often way harder to deploy than they should be.

TL;DR Get the full list of 15 CIAM capabilities now by downloading the Essential CIAM Capabilities eBook.

Advanced CIAM

These are capabilities that support more complex business needs, but which vendors often bolt on – either by acquisition or via partners – because their CIAM solution doesn’t offer them.

Innovative CIAM

You might be surprised to see what else CIAM can do. Here’s a few capabilities that very few vendors offer even though they can really accelerate your business.

If you’re contemplating a CIAM revamp this year, we encourage you to use this list to guide your selection criteria. While it may seem that the top providers offer similar capabilities, the approach they take to implementation can differ enough to affect your speed to market.

In our next blog, we’ll take a close look at why CIAM architecture matters and how to choose a multi-tenant vs single-tenant instance.

In the meantime, if you’re ready to see what an industry-leading CIAM solution looks like, schedule a call with our friendly demo team. We’d be delighted to talk.