In this post, we will discuss an overlooked feature of Google Workspace that makes the business suite even more attractive that it already is and will save you a lot of time: single sign-on.
The main reasons to use Google Workspace to run your business
Google Workspace is a cloud-based desktop that makes it easy to run a startup on the web. You can use it to set up and manage your email, calendar, documents, and contacts. It also includes a suite of productivity tools like Google Docs and Google Sheets. Additionally, it is backed up by mobile applications allowing you to run your business on the go.
With Google Workspace, you can access any file you need from anywhere. You don’t have to worry about losing data or needing to backup your computers every night — everything is automatically stored in the cloud.
One advantage that is not always considered but yet, we would argue, a very big time saver is Google single sign-on (SSO) feature that more and more applications are offering.
What is single sign-on?
Single sign-on (SSO) is a type of authentication that allows you to use a single login and password to access multiple applications or resources on the internet. This is convenient because it means you don’t have to remember multiple usernames and passwords; all you need is one set.
Single sign-on has been around for years, but it has become more popular in recent years as more companies have begun using it. It has been used by large organizations with multiple websites, such as banks and airlines, that want their customers to be able to login once and access all of their services from there on out.
As the user base of Google Gmail has kept on growing over the years (as of January 2020, Gmail had more than 1.8 Billion users!), more companies have been realizing the advantage of offering an easy way for users to register for their service via Google SSO, democratizing its use.
Why single sign-on is a time saver
The Economist recently published an article about an academic study which quantified the time wasted by digital users over the years doing repeated tasks such as logging in. The authors extrapolate their figures into a “weighted total futility” (WTF) estimate measuring the wasted time; the Economist writers called the results “unbelievable” and would probably make you scream “WTF!!”.
Hence and according to the study, months (!!) are wasted trying to remember passwords, entering them wrongly or updating them.
According to a study and over a lifetime, months are wasted trying to remember passwords, entering them wrongly or updating them.
Single sign-on eradicates those issues, and a growing number of applications have been offering it as an option to log-in into their platform. To illustrate this, we put together the map below showing a group of common applications that a theoretical startup would use to operate its ecommerce business. Those apps cover, more or less, all the functions necessary to run your business: sales, marketing, supply chain, finance …
Line between each application shows a potential connection or integration; out of 14 apps surrounding that of Google Workspace, 9 of them offer the ability to sign-in via Google SSO feature. That’s 64% of apps for which you won’t have to remember a password and in which you can login in a breeze (as long as you are logging into your Google Workspace account in the same browser session).
That is for a single user ; now extrapolate that to a bunch of users in your team and you can understand the amount of time saved by using single sign-on.
Integrations among apps goes beyond SSO, you can read more about it on this post.
Considerations and risk associated with single sign-on
To leverage Google SSO feature, the user must sign with its Google Workspace credentials ; one can even bypass entering the credentials for each application by using Google Chrome as a browser and signing into Chrome. Then, once you go to an application offering Google SSO and click log-in, you will instantly enter the application. Magic!
The main risk of using single sign-on is that anyone who can access your Google account can gain access to all of your other accounts as well. Hence, it becomes critical that all Google Workspace users understand the risks and that the administrator sets up strong security settings such as double authentication (also called Two-Factor Authentication, abbreviated 2FA).
At Olari Consulting, we help founders of promising startups scale their idea. Among other things, we help founders get organized and set up apps and platforms to run their business as efficiently as possible. You contact us at info@olariconsulting.com or by sending a message from this page. Thank you.
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