# Article Name
Automating the SaaS User Lifecycle

# Article Summary
Automate the full SaaS lifecycle with Torii to optimize operations, maximize ROI, and reduce risk through discovery, workflows.

# Original HTML URL on Toriihq.com
https://www.toriihq.com/articles/automating-saas-user-lifecycle

# Details
How did one IT leader save 1,300 hours, uncover 3x more apps, and cut SaaS waste? Discover why only 13 percent of IT pros see great automation results, and learn how an agentless, data-driven approach turns messy sprawl into clear, actionable workflows. See continuous discovery, adoption alerts, and license reclamation triggers work together to streamline onboarding, offboarding, and renewals with 100+ no-code workflows.

In this video, John Baker, Information Architect at Torii, shares field lessons, new research, and a framework that works in production. Follow the journey from shadow IT discovery and adoption questionnaires to two-way Jira workflows, dynamic 60-day renewal alerts, and a license engine that downgrades and reclaims with one click, all built for the consistency 48 percent rank highest. Must-watch for IT, procurement, and security teams looking to eliminate blind spots, reduce risk, and streamline SaaS operations without steep learning curves.

This article was originally a video (YouTube link here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHSsCvHcfuU]). Below is the full transcript:

Welcome to today's "Automate More Than Onboarding and Offboarding" webinar with Torii. In this session, you will discover how to leverage automation across the entire SaaS lifecycle to optimize operations, maximize ROI, and minimize risk. Please use computer audio rather than telephone for the best connection, and submit questions through the Q&A section; we will address them at the end.

I would like to introduce our speaker, Torii’s Information Architect, John Baker. John will share practical examples and research-backed insights about automating the SaaS lifecycle across discovery, governance, and spend management.

Thanks for joining us for this webinar where we'll cover research, root causes of automation failures, and real-world outcomes. Over the course of this webinar, we will review recent research conducted with the Gartner Peer community, explore why automation sometimes falls short, discuss Torii’s philosophical approach to addressing those issues, and present a customer success story. We will conclude with a question and answer session.

A year ago, my family and I moved into a new house in a very rural area. One of our summer projects was clearing overgrowth to create a garden, and we encountered a root ball, the remaining root system after a tree has been cut to a stump.

I tried to use a farm jack to remove the root ball, but I ran into several problems: the chain would not secure properly, the base sank into the dirt so I had to use planks for support, and the jack began to tip because of the off-center weight. I reached out to steady it, the lever slipped, and the handle crushed my nose, which resulted in a fracture and bleeding while my family watched.

That experience illustrates how automation can fail and cause real problems in practice. Many of you have experienced similar frustrations when automation did not work as expected. What was supposed to turn a four-hour process into minutes instead required constant tweaking and became a new source of stress. A clean demo does not always match a complex production environment.

In our research, only 13% of IT professionals reported great success with automation. Most reported some success, limited success, or no success, which is low for a technology that has been around for years. Part of this low satisfaction stems from misaligned expectations between IT professionals and what solutions deliver.

When asked what the greatest advantage of increased automation is, 48% of respondents said consistency, 27% said limiting liability, and 21% said improving speed. This suggests IT professionals mainly want something that works reliably; faster is not helpful if it is going in the wrong direction.

When choosing automation for new software, 54% prioritized ease of use, and only 12% prioritized cost savings or productivity. Many tools are built for narrow outcomes and have their own vernacular and setup. IT teams want systems that work without extensive learning curves.

You can generally categorize automation into three spheres: application lifecycle, user lifecycle, and spend optimization. These areas are intrinsically interconnected; shadow IT affects offboarding and license counts. Torii was designed to ingest data from across the organization, ensure high data integrity, cross-reference it, surface actionable insights, and enable automation based on those insights.

Automating app discovery is critical because the way an application is introduced sets the tone for its relationship with the organization. Shadow IT often slips in when teams lack time to investigate, and that messiness compounds across licensing and onboarding or offboarding. Torii provides continuous, comprehensive app discovery, including shadow IT detection, and many organizations find their actual app count is three times what they believed.

Torii centers visibility so teams see who adopts which applications and why. You can configure adoption alerts for stakeholders such as procurement, finance, managers, and InfoSec so the right people are notified when new applications are added. Torii also supports automatic adoption questionnaires for new app owners, and multiple workflow triggers for security reviews can be based on adoption rates or an app’s status from discovery to evaluation.

In Torii, a pre-created workflow can trigger when a new app is discovered and send a customizable application form. You control sender, recipient, subject line, and the message content. The recipient is often the user who started using the app, and the form can be fully customized to collect budget, ownership, or other relevant details.

Personalization tokens save time by inserting names, app titles, and signatures automatically into communications. They automatically populate recipient name, application name, and signature based on your primary source for identity, often an HR system like BambooHR. Once configured, these tokens let Torii deliver personalized messages automatically.

Users see a customizable questionnaire where admins choose which fields and messages to present to set tone.

Torii offers a library of over 100 out-of-the-box workflows that are no-code and customizable. You can trigger workflows based on app approval processes, risk levels, closed app reuse, unused applications, license thresholds, upcoming renewals, and redundant technology detection.

For example, if an application fails security review and is closed, a closed-app-in-use trigger sends an email to later users. That notification can ask the user to stop using the app or notify the app owner to take action.

License management is one of the biggest areas for cost savings across SaaS estates. Torii supports inactivity triggers, license count thresholds, automatic reclamation of licenses after offboarding, and feature-level usage recommendations to downgrade underutilized licenses. The license recommendation engine provides one-click optimization suggestions.

You can set an inactivity trigger for a chosen number of days so users receive an email about reclaiming the license. Experiments show that presenting users with the dollar amount the company would save increases the likelihood of relinquishing unused licenses.

You can enforce tougher steps, like notifying a supervisor in Slack and transferring DocuSign files before account closure when a license sits unused. You decide how assertive your reclamation policies should be, and you can notify procurement when license ratios indicate it’s time to purchase more.

Torii provides additional cost-saving tools such as license cost benchmarking to support procurement negotiations. It offers automatic alerts for new SaaS spending and unused apps, and supports tech stack reduction through side-by-side app comparisons that show usage trends, contract terms, and overlap between user sets.

A dynamic renewal calendar sends reminders to responsible stakeholders, for example 60 days before contract renewal, using personalization tokens.

We also focus on automating the employee lifecycle, from hire to exit, to reduce delays and errors. In our survey, about 69% of organizations automated onboarding and 64% automated offboarding. Torii supports scheduled onboarding and offboarding, triggers from external ITSM tools like Jira via APIs, group-based provisioning by role, team, or department, and both automated real-time offboarding and delegated offboarding through ticketing systems.

Torii’s Jira integration supports two-way communication so actions completed in Jira can be reflected back in Torii for monitoring. Torii also supports event-based user access triggers for moves, promotions, and leaves, which can suspend licenses or swap tool sets. A self-service app catalog provides a sanctioned way for users to request new applications or request access to existing applications.

Scheduled onboarding workflows can be triggered directly from your HR system to align provisioning with hire dates. For example, when BambooHR shows a hire date, you can schedule a workflow to run at 8 a.m., Monday through Friday, in a specified time zone. That workflow can provision apps, add users to groups, and place them into Slack channels so new hires are ready on day one.

We'll send a case study after the webinar showing how Bobby Abdullah saved 1,300 hours by automating SaaS work across teams. His organization benefited from the interconnected approach Torii provides.

Let's move to questions about workflows and automation use cases. For the license-not-in-use workflow, you can select which applications are included in the trigger and customize the number of days before a license is considered inactive, since different apps have different usage cadences.

Torii includes many built-in actions for common apps and allows custom HTTP actions via tools like Workato or Zapier.

Questionnaire responses can be emailed and are also stored in the Info tab for each application in Torii. You can create custom fields to track whatever information you need, and Torii is designed to serve as a SaaS system of record.

Shadow IT discovery uses multiple sources rather than a single mechanism. The Sources column shows where each discovery came from, such as direct integrations like Asana, browser extension discoveries, Google account connections, Okta, Slack, NetSuite expense data, and more. Combining multiple sources helps construct high-integrity data without relying on invasive methods.

On the topic of agents, Torii intentionally avoids using agents because they can introduce vulnerabilities, create maintenance overhead, and impact device performance. Instead, Torii relies on multiple non-agent sources to build a comprehensive discovery picture.

If we did not answer your question during the webinar, we will follow up with a detailed response after the session. Thank you, and have a great day.