Stop me when this sounds familiar: you have 15 browser tabs open, each with its own, specific username and password required to log in. Despite what you’ve been told, there’s the infamous sticky note on your monitor, reminding you of your most utilized passwords.
From the business owner's perspective, this mess always results in frustration and missed deadlines, and honestly, it’s hard not to blame your team members. Before you jump to conclusions, however, you should consider something.
Are You Enabling Your Team Members, or Dragging Them Down?
Excessive logins can create chaos in the workplace to the extent that they cause bottlenecks and substantial security vulnerabilities. Fortunately, this is one of those problems that can be fixed. We’ll go over how, but first, let’s put the situation in a greater context.
Convoluted Login Processes Can Rack Up Significant Costs
It’s true! There are a few ways that encouraging your team to embrace the scenario we explored above will only end up costing you more. For instance:
The Time is Expensive: Let’s assume that your team of 15 each has to spend five minutes, every day, trying to log in. It might not seem like a lot, but that adds up to 25 minutes—nearly half an hour—of productive time wasted each month. Now, think about all the different things that might create that kind of interruption with repeated login demands.
“Cybersecurity” Signage: Recycling passwords and keeping sticky note-based reminders highly visible are, as we should all know by now, terrible habits to get into. Take recycling passwords… someone else being compromised could lead to your password being breached, giving cybercriminals access to whatever else you used that password for.
Morale Takes a Nosedive: While it is a poor craftsman who blames their tools, tools and technology that directly make the job harder certainly don’t help productivity… or encourage those using them. Frequently, team members in this position are frustrated and burn out.
Software as a Service Sprawl is a Substantial Problem
SaaS sprawl is an insidious and too-common issue amongst businesses. Marketing uses one platform, while customer support relies on another. Meanwhile, sales uses their own software of choice. This situation results in a fragmented mess, filled with redundancy and wasted resources.
Give Your Team Their Power Back in an Organized Way
There’s a simple process that can allow you to cut through all the clutter and red tape we’ve discussed here, and all it takes is three steps to complete:
- Audit All Your Tools. Identify everything that is currently in use and—crucially—your business is paying for. Without this knowledge, you simply won’t know what can be trimmed away or where your waste is centered.
- Consolidate, Consolidate, Consolidate. With the knowledge of what is currently in place, see where you can reduce the platforms your teams rely on and instead use a single platform across the board. Consider the capabilities of Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, as both offer pretty comprehensive capabilities.
- Implement Single Sign-On. Single sign-on, or SSO, enables your team members to access what they need for their roles more securely and conveniently by maintaining a single authentication set.
Give Your Team the Efficiency You Expect of Them
If the convoluted digital chaos of the workplace is the true cause of your team’s inefficiency, you have the power to fix it, and we can help!
Reach out to schedule a time for us to review your technology and identify opportunities for improvement. Give us a call at (954) 575-3992.
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