Can self-service password reset tools save me money?

By the Imprivata editorial team

Password resets drain IT budgets and waste employee time. Discover how self-service password reset tools save money and improve user experience while strengthening security.

Passwords have been a major part of professional life for a long time, but they have hidden costs. Employees forget them, mistype them, or lock themselves out of critical systems just when those systems are needed most. IT teams spend countless hours on password resets and password recovery requests. And every minute employees spend locked out of their workstation translates into lost time, lost productivity, and — ultimately — lost revenue.

According to Gartner, password resets and authentication issues can account for 10-50% of help desk calls, and 20-40% of those calls could be avoided with self-service functionalities. Forrester has similarly highlighted that password-related requests remain one of the most risky, recurring, and costly IT support issues.

The hidden cost of passwords

In our high cyber-risk world, “Are passwords secure enough?” is a key question all organizations should ask. But it’s equally important to ask, “How much are passwords costing us?” This is where self-service password reset tools come in.

By allowing employees to resolve login problems independently and securely, organizations can save time and money. But the real potential goes further: pairing self-service with identity and access management (IAM) and passwordless authentication can reduce costs without reducing security, creating a win-win scenario for businesses under budget pressure.

Passwords were never designed to scale to the level of today’s enterprise systems. Employees now juggle dozens of logins across corporate platforms, cloud applications, and partner systems. This complexity creates three frequent login problems:

  • Lost credentials lead to employees being locked out of essential applications
  • Password recovery and reset requests flood IT help desks, often becoming the single biggest source of support calls
  • Lost time due to login issues disrupts workflows, causing frustration for both staff and managers

When you consider the resources wasted on password resets, the financial impact is clear. Every help desk call ties up IT resources that could be better spent on strategic initiatives. Every delay impacts employee productivity. And across large enterprises, this potentially adds up to millions of dollars in avoidable costs.

Why a traditional password strategy fails

Organizations often try to address these problems with stricter password policies, like complex character requirements, frequent forced resets, and lockout thresholds. But these measures rarely reduce costs or improve security. In fact, they often lead to more employee frustration, unsecure practices like writing passwords on Post-its, and even more forgotten passwords and reset calls.

Enter self-service password reset

Self-service password reset tools are designed to address these inefficiencies head-on. Instead of calling IT, employees can authenticate themselves through secure alternative methods such as biometric authentication, device trust, or knowledge-based verification — and reset their own passwords instantly.

Key capabilities of modern self-service password reset solutions include:

  • 24/7 availability: Employees can reset credentials outside of normal help desk hours, eliminating delays
  • Multifactor authentication (MFA): Layering verification methods ensures resets are secure
  • Audit and compliance: All reset activities can be logged, providing visibility for compliance and governance

The result: empowered users, reduced dependence on IT, and dramatically lowered help desk call volume.

The role of enterprise access management (EAM)

While standalone self-service tools can deliver benefits, the real efficiency comes from integrating them within a comprehensive enterprise access management (EAM) framework.

EAM solutions unify identity and access controls across the enterprise. They ensure that the right people can access the right systems at the right time, without unnecessary friction. When self-service password reset is part of EAM, organizations gain:

  • Centralized control: IT teams can manage policies, resets, and access from a single platform
  • Stronger security: Self-service features are backed by the same security infrastructure that governs enterprise access
  • Consistent experience: Employees encounter the same workflows and authentication methods across applications, reducing confusion

For organizations under pressure to do more with less, EAM provides a scalable way to balance efficiency, user experience, and security.

Moving towards a passwordless experience

Self-service reset is only the first step. The real breakthrough comes from adopting passwordless authentication, so that logins don’t depend on passwords at all.

Passwordless methods rely on stronger, more user-friendly risk signals and authentication factors, including:

  • Device-based trust: Confirming access through a known, registered device
  • Biometric authentication: Verification methods like face authentication and fingerprint scanning
  • Location signals: Blocking suspicious login attempts from unexpected geographies
  • Behavioral patterns: Monitoring patterns based on things like typing style, role and workflow, or time-of-day
  • Contextual risk signals: Adjusting authentication requirements dynamically based on risk

By eliminating reliance on passwords, organizations can drastically cut down the need for password recovery and reset, lost credential management, and associated help desk issues. Employees gain a faster, simpler login experience, while organizations gain tighter security at a lower total cost.

Real-world cost savings

The financial case for self-service and passwordless solutions is strong. Consider these four scenarios:

  • Help desk efficiency: If 10-50% of help desk calls are password resets, eliminating or reducing these calls frees up significant IT resources. Even modest reductions can translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in large enterprises.
  • Productivity gains: Every minute an employee spends locked out is lost productivity. Multiplied across thousands of employees, these small inefficiencies compound into substantial operating losses.
  • Affordable access controls: By deploying EAM with self-service features, organizations can implement robust authentication without inflating their budgets. This is truly EAM on a budget — achieving enterprise-grade security at a fraction of the traditional cost.
  • Reduced risk exposure: Stronger, passwordless authentication minimizes the chance of costly breaches caused by stolen or weak credentials.

These savings aren’t limited to any one industry. While healthcare organizations face particularly acute challenges due to regulatory requirements and the need for uninterrupted clinical workflows, the same dynamics apply to finance, retail, government, and beyond. Every organization faces the same tension: how to reduce costs without reducing security.

Beyond cost: Enhancing user experience

Cost savings are critical, but user experience is equally important. Poor login processes not only frustrate employees but can also drive attrition, impact morale, and reduce overall engagement.

Self-service password reset tools and passwordless authentication directly improve user experience:

  • Employees spend less time struggling with login problems
  • Frictionless authentication supports hybrid and remote work models
  • Consistent, intuitive login methods build trust in the organization’s IT systems and reduce burnout

In other words, organizations don’t have to choose between cost efficiency and user experience — they can have both.

The path forward

The case is clear: self-service password reset tools can indeed save organizations money, but their full value comes when combined with broader enterprise access management and passwordless strategies. This approach not only reduces IT costs and lost productivity, but also strengthens security and improves employee experience.

For organizations already exploring EAM solutions, the question is not whether to deploy self-service, but how to maximize its value. For those not yet leveraging EAM, self-service password reset is an accessible entry point that can demonstrate quick wins, while paving the way for passwordless adoption.

The Imprivata difference

While many vendors offer partial solutions, organizations need a platform that is both robust and cost-efficient. Imprivata Enterprise Access Management (EAM) delivers exactly that. With integrated self-service password reset and passwordless authentication, Imprivata enables organizations to reduce costs without reducing security.

Imprivata solutions are built to scale and interoperable across legacy and modern systems, offering affordable access controls and powerful capabilities that meet the needs of intense budget and compliance pressures. Interested in passwordless tools? Check out our recent blog post on facial biometrics and passwordless authentication or request a free demo.