The 48 minutes per month that users waste on login issues isn't just an annoyance; it's a direct productivity loss for the "extended enterprise." For a company with thousands of suppliers, this reclaimed time represents a significant ROI for investing in seamless, passwordless access.
Digital trust with partners requires embedding privacy considerations into their entire lifecycle, from onboarding to system access. This proactive approach builds confidence and prevents data breaches within the extended enterprise, rather than treating privacy as a reactive compliance task.
Brands must view partner and supplier experiences as integral to the overall "total experience." Friction for partners, like slow system access, ultimately degrades the service and perception delivered to the end customer, making it a C-level concern, not just an IT issue.
Security and user experience efforts often focus on employees and customers, but research reveals that almost 50% of users accessing corporate data are external. This massive, overlooked user base represents a significant security and productivity blind spot for most organizations.
Managing human identities is already complex, but the rise of AI agents communicating with systems will multiply this challenge exponentially. Organizations must prepare for managing thousands of "machine identities" with granular permissions, making robust identity management a critical prerequisite for the AI era.
Instead of managing individual external users, host organizations should provide partners with user-friendly tools to manage their own team's access. Partners have better "intimacy" regarding who has joined or left, allowing them to revoke access promptly and reduce risks like orphaned accounts.