Forest City: Start with Okta, get more done...Like A LOT more.
ROI on Okta Investment
in annual end-user Productivity benefits
of "hard cost" savings
Forest City's Journey
Forest City describes itself as a “consumer” of cloud applications. Prior to Okta, managing user names and passwords for all these applications was very difficult for both end-users and IT. Today, with Okta single sign-on, Forest City realizes significant IT savings, productivity and security benefits.
Forest City is realizing an ROI of more than 650% with Okta’s SSO Edition. The payback period on this investment was one month.
We have found that Okta, once implemented, requires very little care in feeding and that the only effort we really spend on it is implementing new applications. Even implementing those, is very quick and easy.
Billy Heiser Manager, IT Security
The Situation
With the adoption of many cloud services, Forest City quickly realized the challenges of managing multiple user names and passwords.
When Forest City decided to invest in a single sign-on solution, they evaluated three different vendors. According to Billy Heiser, IT Security Manager at Forest City, "we gave each solution 3 applications to show us how they integrate single sign-on. The first two solutions were only able to complete 2 integrations in a two-week time period, while Okta was able to complete all 10 [integrations] within 3 days."
The Solution
Okta was deployed at Forest City in July 2013. Today, Forest City has over 60 applications in production with Okta and continues to receive application requests from employees daily. With Okta SSO, Forest City employees collectively save over 100 hours daily by not having to log in to individual applications.
According to Heiser, the three things Forest City likes most about Okta are that "it’s easy to use, the company has been very supportive of it, and users love it because it helps them manage one of the most frustrating areas of their jobs."
The ROI of Forest City’s Investment in Okta
With Okta, Forest City saves more than $80k each year in IT Savings. Prior to Okta, Forest City’s help desk was receiving 30-40 password-reset requests per day. Okta single sign-on has reduced the number of help desk ticket requests related to password resets and lost URLs by more than 85%.
Okta improves Forest City’s end-user productivity by more than $600k annually. Prior to Okta, end-users were spending several minutes per day logging in to individual applications. With Okta, end-users log in to Okta once, and have a centralized place to access all their applications. Okta’s end-user home page also significantly improves application adoption.
Okta strengthens Forest City’s security valued at more than $60k per year by reducing the risk of a security breach.
About Forest City
Forest City Enterprises is a national real estate company. The Company is principally engaged in the ownership, development, management and acquisition of commercial and residential real estate and land throughout the United States.
