It’s 9 AM in London, and you’re sitting in your hotel room logging on to check your email and give your presentation a final review. You’re expected at the prospect site in an hour, and you think you’re ready to go — that is until you realize that you can’t log in because your system won’t accept your password. You reach for your phone to contact IT and your call goes straight to voicemail. That’s because it’s 4 AM in New York, and your entire IT staff is slumbering soundly. There’s nobody available to help, so, if you don’t have self-service password reset capabilities at your fingertips, you’re scrambling.
It’s undeniably frustrating when something as simple as a problem with a password trips you up, and it can be risky when you’re dependent on the Help Desk to resolve problem issues. Your hands are tied, you are limited in doing your job and you prefer to not tell your prospect that you’ve traveled 3,500 miles to deliver a presentation that you can’t access because your password isn’t working. You’d feel — and look — like an amateur.
Especially vexing is the simplicity of the solution — automatic self-service password reset software. When you consider the time and money that you and your company invested in your trip across the Atlantic only to be foiled by something as mundane as a password problem, the benefits of automated self-service password management become painfully obvious.
From your company’s point of view, the expense incurred around the Help Desk servicing routine password reset requests is cause for significant consternation. It’s exorbitantly expensive — each time it happens it costs on average $24 per call. However, if your star salesman can’t access IT support after hours to reset his password and access his sales presentation, the lost opportunity represents an immeasurable loss with unknown potential.
Why would any organization allow these expenses and lost opportunities to run amok? Because the undeniable benefits of self-service password reset capabilities aren’t on the radar screen. Password reset requests are so routine they just don’t percolate to the top of the heap as a key driver of operational efficiency.
But these surefire wins are the cornerstone of IT operational success — it’s always prudent to look to where you can save and make a significant impact before you start investing in programs that may or not pay off in the long run. The return on savings is assured — the return on investment, not so much. Of course there are worthy, valuable investments to be made especially those prudently funded by cost savings from workflow automation and self-service processes.
While it’s unquestionably more exciting to invest in glamorous IT initiatives, the biggest — and least risky — wins are assured cost savings. Sometimes they end up being the most impactful too. Self-service password management software fits that bill — it not only saves money, time and aggravation for the organization but also empowers your people to do their jobs better, more confidently and with greater potential for success. Save money. Empower people — invest in self-service password reset software.
Watch the video to see how senior security analysts at Gwinnett Medical Center discuss their active directory password reset success:
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