Against the backdrop of the complete relaunch of the Conrad eCommerce shops (www.conrad.de), a system was sought that integrated the identities of customers and partners on a single platform. With cidaas, the Customer Identity and Access Management System of Widas ID GmbH, Conrad found the right solution to stay connected with business and personal customers via any channel, device or app.
The family-owned company, Conrad Electronic, from Upper Palatinate, has been one of the leading Omnichannel dealers for technical and electronic products since 1923. More than 3 million items are sold online or via stationery stores. In order to gear up its digital channels for the future and further improve its customers’ shopping experience, Conrad brought its technological world onto a central platform. The relaunch of the shops has created a modern eCommerce platform that is based on single-page applications and in the background, cidaas is used as the central identity management system.
Separate login for more data security
If a customer wants to register or log in to the shop (www.conrad.de) today, the registration mask opens on a separate login page. The separate login solution offers the advantage, that the customer’s accounts are protected against unauthorized access by third parties. Cidaas uses special algorithms here, which, for example, based on location data or device usage, detect fraudulent attempts even before logging in and blocks access.
Pure shopping experience – Single Sign- On across all Conrad applications
A further advantage for customers is the Single-Sign-On Service available for the entire Conrad platform. Once logged in via the central login page, all other Conrad applications can be accessed without having to authenticate oneself again. The service goes one step further here: if the system recognizes that an account with the same credentials, e.g. the same name, already exists on a Conrad application, the customer is asked if the two user accounts should be linked. The result is that each customer has only one single identity across the entire Conrad platform and can, therefore, shop via all online channels with just one login.
Step-by-step integration of the existing customer base
The decisive criterion to opt for the Swabian product cidaas was not only the fact that it is a completely German product and that the customer data is also hosted in Germany but also the option to connect the existing user accounts from the previous user management system. In the course of many decades, millions of customer data had accumulated at Conrad, which was stored in different country-specific databases. Today, these are accessed by cidaas as a central identity platform via APIs. In this way, the existing functions and integrations of the previously used services can be retained.
Tobias Baumgart, leading expert in platform architecture and head of the eCommerce platform (www.conrad.de) at Conrad Electronic, summarizes: “We chose cidaas because the flexible CIAM system helped us easily migrate to an advanced, digitized world. For example, by means of an individual connector, we can integrate existing user accounts into the Customer Identity Management system. Through cidaas, our private and business customers can always and everywhere stay in touch with us – no matter which channel, which device or app and integrate all new services.
About cidaas
cidaas stands for “Customer Identity as a Service” and delivers an out-of-the-box solution for standardized access control and identity management. Based on OAuth 2.0 and Open ID Connect standards, the cidaas software offers scalability, security, transparency and flexibility in the management of customer data. The cloud-based solution is an in-house product of Widas ID GmbH. The software is OpenID Connect certified, has the “Software hosted in Germany” seal of quality, and has been awarded the “Best OF 2018” rating by the “Initiative Mittelstand”, that honors particularly innovative IT solutions.