How Eden makes hybrid work spaces a reality with WorkOS

If you asked someone to describe a hybrid workplace in 2019, you probably would have gotten a blank stare. Enter the 2020 pandemic, and every company became a “hybrid workplace” seemingly overnight. Eden, a 60-person company based out of San Francisco, was well poised to respond to this massive workplace shift. 

Eden is on a mission to become the all-in-one workplace management platform, giving its customers a one-stop shop for different parts of the employee experience.  From booking desks, to tracking employee tickets, to returning to the office safely, Eden’s platform powers every aspect of hybrid workplace management. 

With the spike in demand for hybrid work solutions, Eden needed to be able to serve the enterprise needs of its existing and prospective customers. 

The challenge: Juggle core features and enterprise readiness with limited engineering resources

Eden was eager to integrate Single Sign-On (SSO) and directory sync into their products, but they had a problem familiar to any fast-growing startup: constrained engineering resources. 

Eden knew they had to focus their lean engineering team’s time on their core products. Under the guidance of its CTO, Kyle Wilkinson Eden reached out to WorkOS to explore adding SSO without having to re-architect their existing code.

The solution: Integrate SSO first

The most immediate need Eden had was to integrate (SSO) into its platform, because larger customers wouldn’t sign a sales contract without it. After speaking with existing customers, Eden's Senior Manager of Workplace SaaS, Samantha Kaplan, discovered that SSO was a fundamental requirement that needed to be met before prospective customers would start using Eden’s products.

Eden was already serving larger customers like DoorDash and Slice at the time, but the team wanted to ensure that enterprise features like SSO were available for all their customers, large and small. In addition, Eden knew that allowing customers to sync their HR directories would be necessary in order for Eden to move upmarket.

Implementing SSO and Directory Sync with WorkOS

WorkOS collaborated with the Eden team to help them integrate WorkOS’ APIs for SSO and Directory Sync at the same time. “Adding SSO was so seamless and super straightforward,” said Kaplan.

While Eden’s initial focus was on integrating SSO, onboarding customers for Directory Sync didn’t require additional work. The WorkOS team was able to quickly turn around Eden’s requests for new integrations, building one for HiBob in 2 days.

Eden’s customers benefit from the use of WorkOS

Eden now supports dozens of customers, like Lattice and Bark, using SSO and Directory Sync.  As a result of the availability of these enterprise features, more than 50% of Eden’s clients have opted into a higher pricing tier. 

The benefits of WorkOS extend beyond being able to offer SSO and Directory Sync. Kaplan cites the Admin Portal, an addition to their application following the SSO and Directory Sync integrations, as the Eden team’s favorite aspect of using WorkOS. The Admin Portal enables Eden’s customers to get a guided walkthrough of configuring Eden’s software with their identity and directory providers. 

The Admin Portal gives our customers a polished experience. It’s exciting to see customers want to use SSO now and to give them the Admin Portal.

— Samantha Kaplan, Senior Manager

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Before setting up the Admin Portal, the Eden team had to walk customers through the SSO integration manually, which resulted in lots of back-and-forth between its customers and its customer support team.

As Eden onboards more and more customers using SSO and Directory Sync, the WorkOS team is always just a Slack message away for any troubleshooting or advice.‍

“Another plus of working with WorkOS is the open communication over Slack. Our team can work directly with WorkOS’ Developer Success Engineers so customers get unblocked faster," said Kaplan.

What’s next 

Today, enterprise readiness is a substantial part of Eden’s product roadmap. The team’s philosophy behind building enterprise features has evolved into deeply integrating with its customers’ existing systems, with the goal of continuing to build off of the employee data that Directory Sync provides. 

While the days of a resource-constrained engineering team are gone, its partnership with WorkOS remains.  As Kaplan puts it, “WorkOS is like an extension of our enterprise team."

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