Onboarding and offboarding employees includes managing which SaaS applications they need access to and which they need to be removed from. Many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) do this with something lovingly (or not so lovingly) called The SpreadsheetTM.
A new employee joins the company? Update The Spreadsheet.
An employee left the company? Update The Spreadsheet.
An employee changed their name? Update The Spreadsheet.
Then, when the annual access review comes along, everyone asks: How accurate is The Spreadsheet? And as your company grows, the more employees you have, the more applications you use, the more digitally connected you are — the more complicated The Spreadsheet gets.
The spreadsheet method had its day, but you can see how it might prevent SMBs from leveling up and even unintentionally add operational, technical, and security debt to take care of later. It is possible to automate granting and revoking access and permissions by using APIs for many applications. But there are some substantial barriers:
It’s nobody’s job (yet). Small companies are often strapped, and maybe you don’t have a dedicated headcount that can own the process of updating employee application access.
The app doesn’t have an API. With some applications, the only way to update permissions is in the app itself.
The expensive SSO tax gets in the way. Using automation software like Okta, for example, forces you to implement technological protocols you just don’t need yet. It’s expensive and can be disruptive to users.
A better way to automate IT permissions
Because it’s so easy to implement, more modern application vendors have adopted “Sign in with Google,” and they don’t charge for it. This means that if you use Google Workspace, the need for SAML-based SSO (like Okta) is nearly obsolete. And get this — 70% of startups and SMBs already operate on Google Workspace to begin with!
YeshID helps Google Super Admins create a streamlined, repeatable, efficient, and compliant way to manage identities and applications. Using templates, you can automate creating a Google user and putting them in the proper organization and groups. This also triggers the creation of a task list of apps they need access to and automatically sends requests for provisioning to the proper admins.
And now, we’re testing an even easier way to do this: If the application offers the ability to read the list of users on lower subscription tiers, we’ll actually keep the list up to date for you. And soon, we’ll have the ability to add the user for you too (if that capability exists in lower subscription tiers).
To start, we have integrations with Slack, Notion, and Hubspot. Once enabled, syncing users from those applications to YeshID can be done with a click of a button.
Give it a go
YeshID is in beta and looking for folks who sit in that sweet spot where you want to ditch The Spreadsheet but don’t want to go all in on Okta. If this is you, learn more! We’re already SOC II compliant, we’re in the Google Workspace Marketplace, and you have a big ol’ DELETE button if you decide it’s not for you.
