Joining and leaving, across eight systems

At ninety people across fifteen branches, hiring comes in waves — several people start on consecutive days, then it goes quiet for a while. Through those waves the administrator spent tens of minutes a day on access, and sometimes hours. Eight systems times two directions is sixteen operations, all by hand and all in the right order.

Today setting up a new hire takes under a minute.

A forgotten account on arrival means the person cannot work on their first day. A forgotten account on departure is worse — nobody notices, because it never complains.

The hard part is not revoking access, it is the order. In Google Workspace you first set up delegation and mail forwarding, then transfer the documents to a successor, and only then suspend the account, release the licence and finally delete it. In the CRM you first move deals, contacts and companies to another salesperson, along with their activities and followers — otherwise they disappear with the account. That order is exactly what gets wrong when it is done by hand.

Not everything could be automated. Two of the systems have no usable API, so they remain a checklist the tool displays and ticks off. An acknowledged manual step beats a silent assumption that somebody took care of it.