In business, time is money. Nowhere is this truer than in the first days of a new partnership. When a supplier, distributor, or contractor joins your ecosystem, the speed at which they are onboarded determines how quickly they can begin contributing value.
Yet too often, the process drags. Access is slow. Verification is unclear. Authentication is inconsistent. And revenue slips through the cracks.
These onboarding challenges stem from how companies manage digital identities and access. Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems govern who gets access to what, and when. When these IAM processes are slow or fragmented, partners can’t get to the tools, data, or systems they need to do their work.
And this isn’t a minor administrative issue. According to the Thales Digital Trust Index Third-Party Edition, 31% of external users wait days to receive the access they need. That delay stalls commercial engagement. It ties up internal resources. It hurts customer delivery. Most of all, it creates hidden costs that accumulate quietly, then show up in missed opportunities and flat growth.
These delays show up in operational slowdowns today. Tomorrow, they turn into missed revenue and financial leakage.
Onboarding Delays Are Expensive
Third-party users are essential to companies’ operations today. They power supply chains, manage logistics, run outsourced functions, and extend services to customers. But if it takes days to get them properly verified, provisioned, and authenticated, friction will block productivity from day one.
Almost a third of organizations admit that onboarding external users takes longer than it should. Why? Because access requests are often siloed across systems. Identity checks may be partially manual. Ownership of the process is unclear. The result: wasted time, duplicated effort, and slow revenue realization.
It’s easy to underestimate the financial impact of these delays. A missed deadline, a delayed delivery, or an interrupted service chain may appear as one-off operational hiccups. But over time, they impact billing cycles, create churn risk, and erode partner satisfaction; issues that show up later as revenue shortfalls.
Friction Erodes Productivity, Trust
The Digital Trust Index Third-Party Edition reveals that 96% of external users face issues when logging into partner systems. On average, they spend 48 minutes each month just resolving access problems. Multiply that across dozens (or hundreds) of partners, and the numbers quickly add up.
That time represents lost productivity. More than that, it represents a breakdown in trust. When a partner cannot access what they need, when they need it, they begin to question the reliability of the business relationship. And when the relationship is strained, the partnership is at risk.
Only 38% of external users say they’re fully satisfied with onboarding clarity. Less than half are satisfied with the process overall. This is not about comfort. It’s about control. Unclear or inconsistent onboarding processes increase the burden on internal teams while slowing down external delivery.
Poor Identity Management Creates Financial Risk
At the heart of poor onboarding is weak identity management. When there is no single source of truth for third-party identities, access decisions become fragmented and error-prone. This slows the onboarding process and drives long-term financial risk.
More than half of external users retain access for days or even weeks after they no longer need it. That means sensitive systems remain exposed long after a partnership ends or a project is completed. For the CFO, this creates a compliance risk with potential financial implications, particularly in regulated sectors like finance, insurance, or healthcare.
Equally concerning is what happens during role changes. Only 48% of users are granted appropriate access when their role evolves. That leads to either overprovisioned access, which introduces risk, or underprovisioned access, which reduces productivity. Either way, the business pays the price.
Manual Processes Drive Up Operational Costs
Where identity workflows are inconsistent, costs rise. When onboarding steps are handled manually, or access requests are handled ad hoc, internal teams are forced into reactive support roles. Help desks get overloaded. Security teams spend time chasing approvals. Line managers become bottlenecks.
40% of external users reset their passwords once or twice a month. That’s a poor user experience and a resource drain. Each reset represents a support ticket, a lost work session, or a delay in delivery. Passwords remain the weak link in many partner authentication flows, yet alternatives like passwordless access remain underused.
From a financial perspective, this is a classic case of indirect cost accumulation. None of the issues alone are catastrophic. But taken together, across a broad partner ecosystem, they reduce margins, slow delivery, and stretch operational teams thin.
The Case for CFO Involvement in Onboarding Strategy
For many finance leaders, partner onboarding appears to be an operational detail best left to IT or procurement. But the financial stakes are too high for the CFO to remain at a distance.
Revenue leakage, compliance penalties, support overhead, and delayed productivity are all CFO concerns. As the B2B ecosystem becomes more complex, and third-party users more integrated into the value chain, onboarding must be seen as a business-critical function.
Finance leaders should be asking:
- How long does it take for a new partner to become fully operational?
- Are identity and access processes automated, secure, and scalable?
- What is the cost of failed logins, password resets, or delayed revocation?
- Where are we losing productivity, trust, or speed—and what’s it costing us?
- How does our identity management solution safeguard our revenue?
Better Onboarding Starts With Better Identity
Solving these issues begins by fixing identity. Centralized identity management allows for clear, fast, and consistent onboarding. Role-based access policies streamline provisioning. Automated deprovisioning reduces risk. Modern authentication, including passwordless methods, improves both security and usability.
Identity is the foundation for trust in B2B relationships. It’s this trust that drives speed, agility, and long-term value. The firms that invest in scalable, secure identity systems will improve partner experience and gain a measurable business edge.
Delayed onboarding is a nuisance, a tax on your partnerships, a drag on your revenue, and a liability in your compliance posture. CFOs have a critical role to play in bringing visibility to these costs and in pushing for identity investments that deliver both operational and financial returns.
Partnerships begin with trust. Trust begins with access. And access must begin the moment the relationship does.
Jose Caso, B2B IAM at Thales, is a seasoned product professional with over 15 years of experience in software development, product management, and product marketing. He specializes in aligning technical and business goals to deliver solutions that meet evolving client needs. With a background spanning physical security, cybersecurity, and enterprise solutions, Jose focuses on driving innovation that keeps businesses competitive in a dynamic market.
The opinions expressed in this post belong to the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Information Security Buzz.