SaaS app provisioning checklist: Manage SaaS for new hires

An effective employee onboarding process is key to success for your organization’s new hires. But it’s often a messy process for those involved. Having a system in place ensures that you won’t have employees locked out of key tools, and that your new hires will be contributing to your teams as quickly as possible. To that end we’ve created a SaaS app provisioning checklist for you to use at your business.

Today, even small businesses use dozens of software tools and each one is used by various different employees with different access levels. Provisioning that access is its own process. We’ll walk through effective provisioning in this article.

Getting ahead of the SaaS chaos

The one thing that remains constant about a SaaS stack is change. We found that more than 40 percent of the average company’s SaaS stack has completely changed in the last two years. If that’s not complicated enough, the typical midsize company uses 120 apps overall, and sees an average of 2,700 app-to-people connections in their SaaS Graph. Companies need to master SaaS app onboarding to ensure that people know how to properly and securely use their applications, and are aware of their roles and responsibilities.

Use this checklist as a guide to develop your own onboarding plan.

1. Before the first day

A good provisioning plan starts with a system of record for your SaaS apps. Having a single source of truth surrounding the process is important.

The first day of employment can be a stressful, largely non-productive day for most new hires. Turn that pattern on its head by taking care of HR essentials prior to the first day, as well as confirming needed apps and licenses with the team lead.

2. Organize SaaS toolset around teams

The first day is crucial for truly beginning to immerse a new hire in your company culture. You can help them feel at ease by giving them an overview of the tools they will use, access to all of them, and instructions on how each one is used by your company.

The most efficient way to provision apps at scale is to organize apps by team usage. Your company should implement per-team onboarding plans: each new hire will be provisioned general use apps that are in use throughout the organization, and then be onboarded to their particular team and given access to get the specific tools they need.

3. Provision tools used across all teams

Some of the most common all-company apps include:

• Productivity suites (G Suite, Office 365, etc.)
• Team drives
• Email (Gmail, outlook, etc.)
• Communications (Slack, Notion, etc.)
• Single-sign on (TeamsID, Okta, etc.)

You should also take this time to set up 2-factor authorization and review any necessary security details.

4. Provision team-specific tools

Team leaders should be keeping a list of required and optional apps. Often there are different access levels needed among different employees in a team, which requires license management.

Implementing a standardized process enables faster onboarding and productivity.

5. Training and key app information

You’ll need to get your new hire trained on all tools. They need to know what your company is using each tool to accomplish, and any processes instituted for each tool. For example, a new sales hire will need to know your internal requirements for what information is recorded into your CRM. This varies company to company, even if you’ve used the tool before.

Any technical training is likely handled by the vendor, either through information on their website or via training and certification.

6. Confirm complete provisioning

Ensure that your new hire, team lead, IT and HR teams are in sync with each other by confirming that each part of the provisioning process has been completed.

7. Document the process

Documentation of the provisioning process is important for security audits and for future offboarding. You’ll want a standard place to keep all onboarding documentation for the future.

Wrapping up

It’s possible to keep track of these steps in a spreadsheet, but that process is time-intensive and error-prone. Blissfully offers a better way, as a real-time SaaS system of record with specific workflows for provisioning/deprovisioning and automated G Suite account creation.