Login friction auditing for HR software buyers

When an HR director shortlists employee engagement tools, they evaluate features: recognition programs, pulse surveys, analytics. Nobody demos the login flow. Then the tool rolls out to 5,000 employees, and within 60 days the helpdesk is fielding 'I can't log in on my phone' tickets and participation rates are 30% below projections. By that point the contract is signed, the implementation is done, and the vendor has no incentive to rush a fix.

The HR buyer made a purchasing decision without any data on how the authentication experience performs for a workforce like theirs — mixed device types, varying corporate SSO setups, high proportion of non-desk workers on mobile. That information doesn't exist in analyst reports or review sites in any structured form. G2 reviews mention 'login issues' but don't quantify: what percentage of users hit session timeouts? Does mobile auth fail more on Android or iOS? Does SSO federation work with their specific IdP?

A lightweight audit service — run before or shortly after contract signing — that tests a given engagement tool's auth flow against a client's actual environment (their IdP, their device mix, their network configuration) and produces a concrete friction score would give HR buyers leverage they've never had. It would also give them documented grounds to demand SLA commitments on auth reliability from vendors before signing.

This is a business because enterprise HR teams are buying or renewing engagement software on 2–3 year cycles, procurement timelines mean there's always a pre-purchase window where this report has value, and a bad rollout caused by login failure is expensive to recover from — low adoption numbers follow the HR team politically for the life of the contract. The audit doesn't need to be expensive to be worth it; it just needs to exist before the decision is made rather than after.

What to build

Build a SaaS-delivered audit that HR or IT teams run pre-deployment, which stress-tests an engagement tool's authentication flow against the buyer's IdP, mobile device types, and network setup, then produces a scored report of session stability, mobile failure rates, and SSO compatibility gaps.

Where to start

Partner with HR consultants and implementation specialists who manage software rollouts for mid-market clients — they've watched participation rates tank due to login friction before and have direct credibility to introduce the audit as part of their standard pre-launch checklist.

The hard part

The natural moment to sell this is pre-contract, but HR buyers don't know they need an auth audit until they've already had a bad rollout — so the first challenge is educating the market that this failure mode is predictable and measurable before it happens, not just a vendor bug to complain about after.

How it makes money

Per-audit fee of $1,500–$4,000 depending on environment complexity, with an optional ongoing monitoring retainer for teams who want quarterly re-tests after app updates or IdP changes.