How Slow Access Is Quietly Killing Your Partner Experience

In B2B, first impressions matter more than you might expect. Speed, trust, and collaboration dictate the success of business partnerships, meaning that access delays don’t just slow down business; they can sabotage it.

Behind every stalled login screen, every tedious password reset, every inconsistent onboarding flow, lies a quiet and pervasive risk: deteriorating partner experiences that could cost you trust, business, and reputation.

The Thales Digital Trust Index Third-Party Edition shows that while many organizations are making progress, significant gaps remain in how partner access is managed. From password friction to a lack of transparency, B2B partners are raising their standards.

When Day One Feels Like Day Zero

Imagine this: a prospective partner signs a deal, eager to start collaborating. But then they’re forced to wait. Days go by before they receive system access. Meanwhile, momentum and enthusiasm wane, questions pile up, and confidence falls.

This situation happens more than you might think: one in three (31%) organizations report waiting days for a partner to give access, stalling business before it starts.

This is more than a technical hiccup. It’s a breakdown in confidence. Making business partners wait to enter your systems sends a clear message: we weren’t ready for you. In today’s hyper-competitive business world, that message can be fatal.

The Hidden Cost of Inefficient Access

When a partner fails to log in, work stops. And it happens more than most teams realize.

An overwhelming majority (96%) of third-party users report issues logging into partner systems, costing an average of 48 minutes every month per user just trying to get in. Multiply that across a partner ecosystem, and the wasted time – and lost productivity – adds up fast.

But this is about more than just wasted time; it’s about lost confidence.

When partners suffer through failed logins, password resets, and confusing handoffs during onboarding, they feel like they’re not a priority. If your access experience feels clunky or unreliable, partners start questioning your readiness, your professionalism, and even your security posture.

Trust rarely disappears at a dramatic moment. It erodes in quiet, repetitive friction.

Passwords are a Productivity Drain

40% of users reset their passwords once or twice a month. This friction isn’t just irritating for individual users; amplified across corporate environments, password resets become a costly operational burden.

These statistics are exasperating because the fix is so simple: passwordless authentication. Passwordless methods are more secure, convenient, and significantly reduce operational costs compared to traditional authentication. And, with implementation reaching 48% of the world’s top 100 websites, organizations have no excuse for not implementing it. Yet many organizations still rely on outdated methods like SMS OTP or username-and-password alone, both of which are highly vulnerable.

Access Revocation is Too Slow – And Too Risky

Offboarding is also a significant problem for B2B organizations.

Over half (51%) leave user access active for days or weeks after it’s no longer needed. This can lead to security incidents, compliance failures, and reputational damage.

These are not hypothetical risks. In March 2025, a medical organisation suffered a significant data breach when a recently departed employee retained access to critical systems and used it to transfer sensitive data belonging a large number of staff members. The risk isn’t theoretical: delayed deprovisioning is a well-documented contributor to breaches and compliance failures.

The Identity Lifecycle is Disconnected

Poorly managed identity lifecycles are also rife throughout B2B.

Only 48% of users receive the full access needed after a role change – resulting in delays, workarounds, and risky shadow IT. Your partners need access that matches their responsibilities. But, far too often, IAM systems lag behind reality, creating dissonance between identity and function.

Trust Depends on Transparency

Perhaps most concerning of all, users don’t fully trust their partners. Only 56% are fully confident that they would disclose a breach promptly. That lack of confidence is chilling. It calls into question the very foundations of digital trust.

If you can’t trust your partner to act responsibly during a breach, how can you trust them at all?

So, What Needs to Change?

It’s time to reimagine B2B IAM. Fast access doesn’t have to mean weak security. In fact, speed, usability, and security aren’t mutually exclusive; they’re essential for effective IAM.

To elevate the partner experience, organizations must:

• Automate onboarding to deliver access in minutes, not days
• Embrace passwordless authentication to eliminate friction and boost security
• Standardize identity processes across teams to ensure consistency
• Enforce real-time access revocation to minimize post-relationship risk
• Build transparent breach response protocols to protect and sustain trust
• Monitor the whole identity lifecycle to ensure access always matches the role

B2B collaboration is faster, more digital, and more distributed than ever. The challenge is that most IAM platforms were never designed to handle the unique complexity of third-party access, where roles, relationships, and responsibilities constantly shift.

If you want to succeed in the modern partner economy, you can’t afford for your first impression to be a wait screen – the first login sets the tone for the entire relationship, at least in digital terms.