The IT industry seems to overlook the needs of the small business sector, instead focusing mainly on mid-sized and large organizations since they are often the ones that face the greatest number of issues with licensing, accounts and identity and access management rights, for example. Those leading the efforts of small businesses realize that they often have many of the same issues faced by larger organizations, but unlike large organizations, small businesses often do not have the staff and resources readily available to easily handle management of these tasks. Thus, these issues either go unaddressed or require more time and money spent on managing them than is necessary.
Similar Password Issues
One of main issues large and small businesses have in common are password management for their employees. Smaller organizations, just like larger corporations, have to access many systems and applications to perform their jobs. For example, think of a credit union. Employees there need to access several different financial systems to assist their customers. Entering credentials for each of these systems is time consuming, not to mention very difficult to remember. Hence, the reason why many employees tend to write down user credentials and keep them close at hand.
Additionally, just like employees in larger organizations, they often get locked out of their accounts and need to frequently reset their passwords. Often this is time consuming since they need to contact someone to do it for them. When a customer has to wait for an employee to reset their password this can be a huge annoyance and decrease customer satisfaction.
To make these password issues even more difficult, small businesses often need to do more with less. In most case, the small businesses that I consulted and worked with don’t have an extensive budget to fix IT infrastructure or implement large, enterprise solutions to manage their processes. Instead, they need to find ways to be more efficient without breaking the bank; sometimes small business owners Frankenstein systems for the results they seek. This can often be difficult, though, since many password solutions are aimed at big business, and the thousands of employees that they have.
Additionally, small businesses compared to larger organizations often have very small IT or no departments. Sometimes only one or two people; sometime just themselves throw into everything else they must manage in their business’ daily lives. When an employee forgets their password or is locked out of an application they need to go through the process of resetting their passwords. If there is a help desk or IT department, having them focus on password resets can take away valuable time to focus on other issues. Even worse, if this issue occurs after business hours there may be no one to resolve the issue.
Case in point
Needham Bank in Needham, Massachusetts, is a private bank with fewer than 170 employees. Team members there need access to several different systems and applications to properly assist customers.
“Employees became frustrated at the number of disparate passwords they had, and the frequency they would have to enter the user names and passwords,” said James Gordon, vice president of information technology at the Bank.
It was also frustrating when employees had to stop what they were doing to contact the help desk and reset their password when they were locked out. Customers also became frustrated, as they had to wait for bank employees to sign into each application separately, which was time consuming.
To resolve its issues, Needham Bank implemented both a single sign-on solution (SSO) and a self-service password reset solution. SSO allows the organization to use a single set of credentials for all systems and applications needed to access and to help customers. The password reset solution allows employees to reset their own password without having to contact the help desk. Team members simply answer several security questions, which they previously provided answers for during initial enrollment, and are able to securely reset their own password.
Solutions such as these can assist small businesses with their access and identity management issues without them needing to spend big dollars on large, enterprise solutions that were not designed for them. Password management alone can have a huge effect on business for both large and small companies, which is why it is important to resolve the issues in the most appropriate way for the size of the organization.
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