Identity Management Is A Crucial Ingredient, Not a Star — But Your Business Can’t Run Without It

As we prepare to announce the release of Clear Skye IGA 4.0, we'll also announce that we’re now part of the ServiceNow Flow Designer.

We’re happy to be part of Flow Designer for two reasons. One is that Flow Designer is pretty darn cool. It’s possible to take long, laborious business processes and automate them — even if they have to go from HR to Facilities to Sales to IT and back again. This streamlines workflows that are usually very inefficient, and it means workers spend less time on mundane tasks and more time on the higher-order thinking that helps your business grow.

The other reason that we’re happy to be part of Flow Designer is because it shows that identity is an integral part of the everyday businesses processes.

Why Identity Management Is Like Flour

I like to think of identity as an ingredient like flour. No one’s going to eat a plate of flour, but if you mix it with water, yeast, and a little bit of butter, you get a nice loaf of bread. Or you can make pizza dough, muffins, cakes, pies, or countless other delicious things.

Identity management is a lot like flour. It’s a vital ingredient in an enterprise’s technology and cybersecurity strategy. A lot of vendors will tell you that cybersecurity starts and stops with identity — but that’s the wrong way to look at it.

People don’t buy flour just because it’s flour. They buy flour because they can make something with flour. You may have noticed that King Arthur Flour recently changed its name to King Arthur Baking. That’s because they realized their customers are much more interested in what they can do with flour than with the flour itself. Very few people take pictures of their supply of flour, but everyone takes pictures of what they baked.

Likewise, enterprises don’t buy identity management solutions so they can have identity management solutions. They invest in identity management because it makes it easier for them to do the important things that matter for their business. They can delight customers with the best product and a frictionless, secure experience. They can recruit and retain employees with pain-free onboarding and easily adaptable business processes. They can minimize business risk by maintaining regulatory compliance and protecting intellectual property.

A Valuable, Versatile — and Vital — Ingredient

It can be a tough pill to swallow to realize that you’re just an ingredient, not a signature dish, but it’s important for the identity management industry to have this epiphany.

At Clear Skye, we’re happy to admit that we’re an ingredient. Being native to ServiceNow — and now being part of Flow Designer — makes us a valuable and versatile ingredient.

ServiceNow is an industry leader in workflow and process management, with visibility across the enterprise data plane. That enables Clear Skye to participate in identity management in a way that no other solution can. Instead of needing separate identity solutions (or ingredients) for customer experience, employee onboarding, compliance review, access requests, authentication, and so on, Clear Skye IGA is the one ingredient you need. We’re the all-purpose flour that can make bread, pizza dough, muffins — you get the idea.

The selling point for identity management shouldn’t be that it’s the star. But even if it’s just an ingredient, it’s a valuable one — and the dish just isn’t right without it.

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