Secure Employee Access for Coca-Cola’s BigCommerce Storefront

Challenge

Coca-Cola needed to launch an employee-only BigCommerce storefront without creating a separate identity ecosystem or adding operational overhead. They also had challenges like:

• No Native Enterprise SSO: BigCommerce lacked native authentication with Coca-Cola's Microsoft Entra ID, requiring employees to use a separate identity for storefront access.
• Storefront Had to Be Fully Gated: The storefront needed to remain completely inaccessible until a visitor's identity was verified through Coca-Cola's existing enterprise directory.
• Guest Checkout Had to Be Eliminated: Allowing guest transactions could expose the employee-only store to unauthorized purchases, conflicting with Coca-Cola's restricted storefront model.
• Automated Customer Provisioning: Customer profiles needed to be created in BigCommerce automatically, using attributes received during successful Microsoft Entra ID authentication.

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Results

The Cloud CIAM deployment gave Coca-Cola a fully gated BigCommerce storefront while simplifying employee access and account management.

• Store Fully Inaccessible to Guests: Unauthenticated visitors are redirected directly to Microsoft Entra ID and cannot access storefront content until identity verification succeeds, preventing unauthorized browsing and checkout.
• Simplified Employee Login: Employees use their existing Microsoft Entra ID credentials to access BigCommerce, eliminating separate storefront passwords and maintaining authentication through Coca-Cola's established enterprise identity infrastructure.
• Zero Manual Account Provisioning: New BigCommerce customer accounts are automatically created when required, using profile attributes received from Microsoft Entra ID and eliminating manual account setup for employees or IT teams.
• Secure, Standards-Based Handoff: SAML establishes federation between Microsoft Entra ID and miniOrange, while signed JWT tokens provide the application handoff to BigCommerce, creating a defined authentication flow across the integrated environment.

About Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is one of the world's largest beverage companies, serving customers and employees across global markets. As part of its internal digital initiatives, Coca-Cola launched a dedicated BigCommerce storefront for employees and required the platform to remain completely inaccessible to public or guest users.