for the enterprise is a cost — but don’t forget to consider the costs of not offering these value-adds.
- Lower adoption rates: Certain customers simply won’t work with you if you don’t offer federated identity. You must be able to support any type of enterprise federation your customers ask for.
- Lost revenue: In addition to revenue loss due to lower adoption rates, not offering federated identity costs you opportunities to generate more revenue through upsells and premium offerings.
- Missed standards: Without the security and governance requirements that enterprise buyers look for, you’ll have trouble increasing adoption rates.
- Poor user experience: Without federated identity, users have the pain of remembering a username/password combination — which isn’t the most secure way of authenticating identity anyway. Supporting SSO increases security and reduces friction for customers.
- Additional support costs: Handling authentication questions and resolving customer issues places a heavy burden on your support team. The conventional wisdom is that you save $70 for every help desk call you avoid — and those costs add up quickly.
