This leading university serves over 19,000 students across more than 35 schools in the United States and abroad, offering undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. They faced critical data quality issues—inconsistencies across systems like Banner and LDAP made integration difficult and slowed decision-making. A tight project timeline added pressure, and students and faculty were frustrated by excessive MFA prompts that disrupted their daily work. They needed to balance security requirements with a user-friendly experience while standardizing data across their entire educational ecosystem.

We implemented a phased approach to modernize their identity infrastructure while improving the user experience:

• Data standardization and quality checks to clean up inconsistencies, unify email formats, and address user attribute problems

• Phased integration strategy starting with HR systems, then directory migrations, SSO, MFA enhancements, and governance tools

• Comprehensive system integration connecting Banner, LDAP, and other key applications to Okta for centralized management

• Enhanced Multi-Factor Authentication optimized to balance security and convenience, reducing user frustration

• Communication campaign including town halls to prepare students and staff for the changes

• Improved data accuracy with standardized, clean data across all systems reducing provisioning errors

• Timely project delivery hitting all milestones within the planned timeline despite complexity

• Enhanced user security with optimized MFA policies that increased adoption rates

• Better user experience with reduced MFA prompt frequency while maintaining strong security

• Clear implementation visibility through detailed planning and regular stakeholder updates

• Seamless system integration across 19,000+ users and 35+ schools