IT professionals today intuitively understand the value of Single Sign-On (SSO) – improved productivity, reduced password administration effort, and a dramatic decrease in calls to the IT helpdesk due to forgotten passwords. Studies¹ have shown that password reset requests can make up to 30% of a company’s helpdesk calls. However, intuition and external studies might not be enough to get you sponsorship and or budget for an SSO project. You need to calculate the ROI based on hard evidence, and you need to show the business the immediate benefits of the solution.

Let us take two of the major cost elements when estimating the ROI of an SAP Single Sign-On solution:

a)     The helpdesk costs for password resets

b)    The lost business productivity due to locked accounts or forgotten passwords

The two metrics you need to have for precisely estimating these costs for your company are (a) the number of password resets for a given period of time and (b) the amount of time a user has to spend between the first login attempt and the unlocking or resetting of his password by a helpdesk agent. If you have these metrics you can generate a much more precise ROI calculation to support a Single Sign-On project.

This is where SAP can help you because it keeps a detailed record of all login activities, password resets, and locking/unlocking events in its records. Equipped with this data you will be able to realistically calculate the cost-saving effects that a Single Sign-On solution would have on your environment.

1. Study Title: Password Reset: Self-Service That You Will Love (Gartner Research Note T-15-6454)

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