Written by tech entrepreneur Rakesh Soni, THE POWER OF DIGITAL IDENTITY: Winning Customer Trust and Transforming Experience is an unabashedly B2B (business-to-business) book.
Soni lauds the advantages of CIAM (Customer Identity and Access Management) solutions, persuasively arguing that this paradigm and its accompanying technology are crucial for any modern business to attract and retain customers. He also asserts, more suspectly, that CIAM will be adopted by governments to make life better for their citizens.
The 236-page book comprises 21 chapters, addressing every possible question a business owner or C-suite executive might have about CIAM, including how to tailor the technology to their company’s specific needs. Soni defines digital identity as “a set of properties about a consumer that can be conveniently calculated and documented digitally.” CIAM (which Soni says is only about a decade old) integrates this identity across platforms and devices, and will “meet the growing expectation around user experience and win back consumers’ trust.”
There are two crucial questions Soni says every company must ask: (1) How do we deliver an experience that fulfills the human element of the digital journey, and (2) how do we secure the data and identity of our users?
He identifies six consumer trends that make CIAM essential: experiences that are connected, personalized, contactless, voice-activated, and committed to consumer privacy and security. The three key issues that arise for companies from these trends are meeting consumers’ experience expectations, keeping pace with new regulations, and keeping up to date with new technologies.
“Companies can either develop solutions in-house or they can partner with outside experts,” Soni writes, which raises the book’s first red flag. He devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 18: Building vs. Buying) to this issue, concluding that buying is always better. But, since he owns a CIAM provider business, his motives are suspect—even if his argument is solid.
He waves an even bigger red flag when he praises China, lauding that country’s Personal Information Protection Act, as though the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) actually respects individual rights and does not use social credit scores to keep citizens in line. So, while Soni insists that “consumers should have strong privacy rights,” he elides the fundamental problem of government overreach.
Apart from that, Soni’s management solutions are well-presented. He writes with admirable lucidity, never descending to tech speak or even business jargon. Overall, THE POWER OF DIGITAL IDENTITY provides a sound foundation for any company facing these challenges.
THE POWER OF DIGITAL IDENTITY: Winning Customer Trust and Transforming Experience is a lucidly written and comprehensive guide for businesses looking to improve their customer service software. Rakesh Soni explains how and why seamlessness and security are essential in the new digital marketplace.
~ Kevin Baldeosingh for IndieReader