eMarketplace Benefits of Single Sign-On: Case Study

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Multilocation and Rapid Growth

A Need for a Scalable Online Platform

This article is about a case study, or an example, of when we (the Clarity Ventures team) implemented single sign-on using Okta. This is for a very large fast-food franchise that has a supplier network that uses our eCommerce marketplace platform to bring in their different product offerings and enable a group buying interaction for the different franchise locations that purchase from different vendors on the online platform.

We integrated with Okta for this particular scenario. This fast-food franchise has thousands of locations in the US and has a very rapid growth rate. Because of this, they’ve really needed an enterprise scalable emarketplace platform that they can leverage for their internal purchasing and acquisition. One of the biggest things they were looking for with their security and authentication was single sign-on with Okta.

The Online Platform Approval Process

Okta SSO Integration Enables Specific Access

Okta SSO Integration

The different vendors in the eMarketplace online platform are external to the organization while the franchises are internal; and everyone needs to be able to use Okta to interact with the system. For the external vendors, whenever they go through the registration process, we can create the users on the fly, by allowing the users to be created in Okta but not authorized to access certain things until an approval workflow is completed internally within the fast-food organization. Then, when a vendor/company is approved through this initial process, they can be automatically approved for their entire email domain.

This typically only applies to a unique company domain and has certain verification rules so that when an internal staff member registers at one of these vendor locations, they can have access to the system. In a lot of cases though it doesn't make sense to turn on domain-based auto-authorization. In this particular case, although it's possible to have domain authorization, this particular client decided that it would need to be a workflow.

This is the scenario where vendors as a company have to get approved by the internal franchise team. Then, when the vendor organization is approved, the organization has to then approve additional users that get added in order to be authorized within that particular vendor organization. The vendor has the ability to upload products, manage bulk inventory and pricing data, product descriptions and details, etc. They can also integrate using their other logins as well. In other words, the vendors have the ability to auto-approve, but they typically don’t want to. They also want to internally have some control over who gets access to these different authorization areas. The franchise company has these different locations and their new locations are going online all of the time. There are new team members, or team members moving between locations or managing multiple locations. They need this information about authorization to purchase for certain locations or add more locations; these are things that are really seamless with Okta.

Bringing in Metadata – Workflows for Business Growth

Advanced Online Platform Workflows with Claims

Whenever we’re bringing in a user’s metadata using Okta, we’re utilizing OIDC and JWT (JSON Web Token), which is a set of data that comes over and a claim, or a statement about the user and metadata associated to the user. In this case, the claim is so we can see what locations these internal franchise users have access to. Do they have access to multiple franchises? What is their role within those franchises? Are they purchasers or are they reporting only? Are they able to submit requests but not actually purchase so they're request has to be approved? These are the types of things the claims tell us, and so the Okta system and the single sign-on really enables this workflow.

This process of enabling this workflow for these various locations is quite advanced. Everything is managed significantly inside of Okta and flows seamlessly into the enterprise eCommerce system. This allows the vendors to interact securely and intelligently with these different franchise locations and the different procurement and purchasing approval processes. That was especially nice and works really well for the franchise as they continue to grow and leverage this robust single sign-on with Okta.

advanced platform workflows
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