Automate User Provisioning to Save 500+ Hours Annually On Onboarding

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Streamlining the process of providing employees access to apps is at the heart of automated user provisioning.

Did you know that an average company spends around 500 hours each year doing this manually?

This delay in user provisioning means new hires wait for app access, wasting time.

Mistakes increase with more people and apps. That's why finding a better, faster way, like CloudEagle's automated provisioning workflows, is crucial.

This blog dives into how CloudEagle helps automate user provisioning and its benefits for your organization.

TL;DR

1. Manual provisioning wastes time – Companies spend 500+ hours yearly on manual onboarding; automation speeds up access and cuts delays.
2. Improves security & compliance – Auto workflows reduce human error, ensure proper access controls, and support regulations like SOC 2 and GDPR.
3. Boosts IT productivity – IT teams save time by automating repetitive tasks and focusing on high-value strategic initiatives.
4. Scales with growth – Automated provisioning supports seamless app access management as your user base and SaaS stack expand.
5. CloudEagle simplifies provisioning – With 300+ integrations and no-code workflows, CloudEagle helps streamline onboarding, save time, and reduce risks.

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What is automated user provisioning?

Automated user provisioning is the process of automated workflows, creating, managing, and configuring user accounts and their access rights across various systems and applications within an organization. It streamlines the onboarding, offboarding, and role changes for users by automatically assigning and revoking access based on predefined rules and roles. 

Workflow automation streamlines providing access to apps rather than relying on manual intervention for each user, ensuring swift, accurate, and secure onboarding and offboarding of users within an organization's ecosystem.

Adopting workflows doesn't relinquish IT control, as administrators retain full authority, define rules, and maintain oversight from a centralized platform.

They can directly provision or deprovision employees as needed, for example, when an employee changes a departments and might need access to a different set of apps.

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What are the Benefits of Provisioning?

Provisioning offers numerous benefits, including increased efficiency, enhanced security, improved compliance, and cost savings. It streamlines processes, reduces errors, and allows for faster deployment of resources. 

Key benefits include:

• Faster onboarding and offboarding: New hires get instant access to tools, boosting early productivity. Departing employees are quickly deprovisioned to reduce risks.
• Error reduction: Standardized processes eliminate manual mistakes in assigning roles or permissions.
• Improved IT productivity: IT teams save time by automating repetitive tasks, allowing focus on more strategic initiatives.
• Consistent compliance: Proper provisioning supports audit trails, role-based access, and compliance with regulations like SOX and GDPR.
• Cost savings: Eliminates overspending on unused licenses by granting access only when required and revoking it promptly when not.

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Key Factors to Consider for Automatic User Provisioning

Key factors to consider for automatic user provisioning include efficiency, security, compliance, scalability, and the need for ongoing management. Automated systems streamline onboarding, access management, and offboarding, reducing manual effort and the risk of errors, while also enhancing security through consistent policy enforcement. 

 The effectiveness of your provisioning process depends on several key factors:

• Role-based access control (RBAC): Ensure you have a clear mapping of roles and permissions for each department and job function.
• Integration support: Choose tools that integrate with your existing SaaS applications, HR systems, and directories like Okta or Azure AD.
• Onboarding and offboarding triggers: Define specific triggers (e.g., new hire, department change, termination) for provisioning workflows.
• Scalability: Your provisioning system should adapt to organizational growth, supporting hundreds or thousands of users.
• Auditability: The system should log and track every provisioning/deprovisioning event for security and compliance.
• Ease of use: A no-code or low-code workflow builder can empower non-technical admins to create and manage workflows easily.

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How Automated User Provisioning Works?

Automated user provisioning streamlines the process of granting and managing user access to applications and systems within an organization. It leverages predefined rules and workflows to automatically create, update, or revoke user accounts and permissions, eliminating manual intervention and reducing errors.

Typical workflow includes:

1. Trigger: A new employee joins (from HRMS) or switches departments.
2. Role mapping: The system identifies the user's job role and maps them to relevant access groups.
3. Provisioning: Based on this role, the user is granted access to appropriate SaaS applications, tools, or data.
4. Approval (if needed): In some cases, access requests go through an approval flow.
5. Deprovisioning: When a user leaves or changes roles, their access is automatically revoked or modified.
   
   

Platforms like CloudEagle.ai enhance this process with drag-and-drop workflow builders, 300+ integrations, and Slack-based access request automation, reducing manual work and error rates.

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Automated Account Provisioning Best Practices

Implementing automated provisioning successfully requires more than just turning on a tool, it demands strategic planning and continuous oversight.

Best practices include:

• Start with role clarity: Clearly define each department’s access needs to avoid overlap or excessive access.
• Use least privilege principle: Grant only the minimum level of access required for users to do their jobs.
• Regularly audit access: Set up quarterly access reviews to detect outdated or unnecessary permissions.
• Automate deprovisioning: Ensure workflows revoke access instantly when employees leave to reduce compliance risks.
• Involve HR and department heads: Align with HR systems and department managers to capture accurate role and employee data from the start.

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Why automate user provisioning?

Automating user provisioning offers numerous benefits, primarily enhancing efficiency, security, and compliance while reducing costs and manual errors.

Manual completion of these tasks for each employee and system is time-consuming. Even with Active Directory (AD), administrators still manually configure resources. Automating this process allows IT to focus on technology and cybersecurity initiatives using pre-configured settings aligned with roles and governance policies.

Manual user provisioning poses several challenges.

• Cumbersome processes lead to delays in granting access, hindering employee productivity.
• Human errors in configuring permissions pose security risks, potentially exposing sensitive data.
• Managing access to multiple apps results in inconsistencies across platforms, complicating user access management.
• Scaling with manual provisioning becomes arduous, causing inefficiencies as organizations grow.
• The time-consuming nature of manual tasks, which are prone to mistakes, diverts valuable IT resources from strategic initiatives.

These pain points emphasize the pressing need for automated provisioning solutions, ensuring swift, accurate, and secure user onboarding and access management within dynamic business environments.

What are Auto Provision Roles for All Users?

Auto Provision Roles for All Users is a process that automatically assigns roles to users based on predefined criteria, typically related to their job assignments or other attributes within an organization.

Here’s why automation matters:

• Scales with growth: As your company adds more apps and users, automation ensures seamless provisioning without increasing IT headcount.
• Reduces human error: Automation ensures consistent role-based access every time, preventing accidental over-permissioning.
• Accelerates productivity: New hires can start working on day one with all required tools in place.
• Enhances security: Timely deprovisioning eliminates zombie accounts and reduces data breach risks.
• Supports compliance: Auto-provisioning ensures audit logs, consistent access policies, and real-time access visibility, essential for compliance with frameworks like ISO 27001 and SOC 2.

Save up to 500+ hours annually with CloudEagle’s auto-provisioning workflows

CloudEagle helps you automate user provisioning with its customizable user provisioning workflows that simplify the task of user provisioning. They are no-code drag-and-drop workflows, so there is no dependency on the IT team.

CloudEagle offers 300+ integrations so that you can set up workflows for most of the apps in your stack. Administrators can define rules and triggers for user onboarding, modifications, and offboarding, streamlining the entire user lifecycle management process.

These workflows adapt effortlessly to organizational growth, enabling efficient user access management at scale.

With their ability to save time, enhance security, and optimize resource allocation, CloudEagle's auto-provisioning workflows will enable efficient and secure SaaS management, empowering organizations to save time on user provisioning.

Get new employees productive from day 1

When organizations automate user provisioning, new employees can get app access to start contributing from day 1. With CloudEagle, employees will be granted access to applications based on their roles and departments.

The admin sets up rules beforehand, like which departments need access to which apps, and when a new employee joins, they are automatically assigned apps based on the pre-defined rules. With this, employees dive into their roles immediately, maximizing productivity and streamlining onboarding.

Scale app provisioning

As organizations grow, manually handling user provisioning becomes increasingly complex and time-consuming. This is when the need to automate user provisioning becomes paramount. CloudEagle's automated provisioning workflows can streamline access management for the increasing number of employees and apps as your organization grows.

CloudEagle's workflows are integrated with Slack, so your employees can easily request access and tag relevant people without leaving the business communication platform.

Reduce provisioning errors

Automated provisioning minimizes errors by standardizing processes, ensuring consistent user access across applications. Establishing predefined rules and roles streamlines onboarding, reducing manual intervention and potential mistakes.

Regular audits and monitoring further enhance accuracy, swiftly identifying and rectifying any discrepancies in access permissions.

Manual processes are prone to errors. Automated user provisioning workflows ensure that the exact permissions will be granted to the authorized users every time a new employee is onboarded.

Save time and money

The time and effort saved through automated user provisioning directly translates into cost savings. Automated user provisioning yields substantial cost savings by streamlining the process of providing access to applications. The time saved can be spent on more strategic work.

It minimizes manual labor, reducing administrative overhead and potential errors. With streamlined processes, companies optimize resources and quickly onboard new employees, resulting in significant financial benefits and improved operational efficiency.

Remediant streamlined user provisioning and saved hundreds of hours managing app access

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Background

Remediant's IT team spent a lot of productive time on manual user provisioning and deprovisioning for multiple SaaS applications. Their spreadsheet-based process was tedious and time-consuming.  The manual process was also prone to errors, such as ex-employees still having access to apps.

Solution

Remediant leveraged CloudEagle to automate employee onboarding and offboarding. After integration, CloudEagle provided complete visibility into Remediant's user provisioning module. This centralization made user access management, provisioning, and de-provisioning effortless.

Result

Remediant optimizes employee onboarding and offboarding with CloudEagle. The platform's deprovisioning and auto-provisioning features streamline app access management. This efficiency saved significant time and allowed the team to focus on strategic tasks.

Read the complete case study here.

Conclusion

Automating user provisioning isn't just a choice; it's a strategic move towards efficiency and security. By automating access management, companies save time, eliminate errors, and bolster security protocols.

Swift onboarding, accurate access revocation, and optimized license usage are pivotal benefits, ensuring productivity while fortifying data integrity and compliance standards.

CloudEagle's automated workflows redefine access management. They are easy, no-code, simple drag-and-drop, ensuring ease of use.

Book a demo today to witness firsthand how automated user provisioning revolutionizes your organization's efficiency while saving time for more strategic tasks.

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FAQs

1. What is automatic user provisioning?
Automatic user provisioning is the process of automatically assigning and managing access to software and systems based on user roles. It eliminates manual setup, streamlines onboarding, reduces errors, and ensures employees get the right access from day one.

2. What does “auto provisioned” mean?
Auto provisioned refers to users or systems being granted access or accounts automatically through pre-set workflows, usually during onboarding. This reduces IT workload and ensures consistent, secure access provisioning across applications.

3. What is the difference between SAML and SCIM auto provisioning?
SAML handles authentication (SSO), while SCIM is for provisioning. SCIM automates user creation, updates, and deletion across platforms, ensuring real-time account sync, while SAML allows users to log in securely without passwords.

4. What are provisioned apps?
Provisioned apps are applications for which users are automatically granted access based on predefined rules. These apps are assigned during onboarding or role changes to improve efficiency and security.

5. What are the benefits of automated account provisioning?
Automated account provisioning boosts productivity by ensuring instant access, enhances security with fewer errors, supports compliance via audit trails, saves IT effort, and reduces onboarding time for new hires.

6. How does automated provisioning improve compliance?
Automated provisioning creates detailed logs of user access and changes, making it easier to audit who accessed what and when. This supports compliance with regulations like SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR by ensuring consistent access controls.

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