In this lesson, we'll cover
automating the onboarding process in your organization.
When we talk about automation,
we refer to the use of technology
to execute repetitive tasks,
without continuous human intervention
in order to increase overall efficiency
and reduce the chances of human errors occurring.
By automating your onboarding process,
you can directly impact
your organization's overall productivity,
employee satisfaction and retention rates.
This helps to ensure that your new hires
are quickly and efficiently integrated into their roles
in your organization's culture.
By automating your onboarding process,
you can utilize a systematic approach
to this process that can eliminate
any tedious manual tasks,
reduce the likelihood of errors,
and provide your new employees
with structured, consistent experience.
This allows your organization
to quickly activate your new team member's potential
so that they can contribute meaningfully
in their new position within your organization sooner.
Automating the onboarding process
is crucial for businesses to scale effectively
and ensure a consistent experience,
while also reducing the administrative burden
on your human resource
and information technology departments.
Using automation can enhance
our support ticket management process as well
by streamlining the onboarding process
to make it more efficient and error free.
There are many different areas
that can be automated during the onboarding process,
including creating documentation records
for the new employee, scheduling their training,
provisioning them equipment,
managing their access rights,
distributing various checklists
that the new employee must complete
and completing feedback throughout the process.
But since we are cybersecurity professionals,
we're really just going to focus
on a use of automation to conduct
user and resource provisioning.
First, let's talk about user provisioning.
User provisioning involves the creation
and management of user accounts
and access rights to internal systems.
Automating user provisioning
is an essential aspect of the onboarding process,
since it ensures that new employees
have the necessary access to systems, applications,
and other resources required for their role
as soon as they are brought on board.
To conduct user provisioning,
our automation process must collect information,
create the user's account,
assign the account the correct roles and access,
send out the proper notifications and confirmations,
and then conduct continuous synchronization and updates.
First, the new employee will provide us
with the necessary information,
like their personal details, role,
the department through an online forum,
or they can enter them directly
in your organization's human resource portal or system.
Then based on the collected information,
automation will work in the background
to create user accounts
and various systems such as email,
work management platforms,
internal communication tools,
and other parts of your networks.
Next, the system will assign the appropriate roles
and access levels for their user's accounts automatically,
depending on the new employees
assigned department and position
to ensure that they have the specific tools and data
needed to perform their job.
Once accounts are established and access is granted,
automated notifications are sent to new employees,
their managers, or the information technology department
for their awareness, as well as to confirm
that the account was properly created.
Finally, the automation system is also used
to keep the user's information
synchronized across various platforms.
When an update occurs such as an employee getting promoted
or move into a different department,
the system will automatically reflect these changes
in their related accounts and access permissions.
Now that we have covered the concept of user provisioning,
let's move on to the coverage
of automating resource provisioning.
Resource provisioning automation
ensures the timely and appropriate allocation
of physical and digital resources,
such as workstations, software licenses
and communication tools.
Resource provisioning is about allocating
the necessary tools and resources
that new employees need to perform their jobs.
Resource provisioning occurs
by completing a basic five step process
that includes requirements analysis,
resource allocation, configuration and customization,
verification and auditing and gathering feedback.
First, the system must analyze
the submitted role and department information
to determine the specific resources
that should be assigned to the new employee.
Then, based on pre-defined rules,
automation system either initiates procurement workflows
for resources not in inventory
or allocates available resources.
This might include setting up a workstation,
providing a company issued smartphone,
or granting a license
to allow specific software to be utilized.
Next, the resources are then configured
according to the specific needs of the employee's role.
For example, a graphic designer's workstation
might be equipped with specialized photo editing
or vector design software,
while a salesperson might receive access
to your organization's customer
relationship management systems
instead. Once the configuration
and customizations are completed,
you must use a verification process to ensure
that the automation was successful
in granting the new employee
all of the resources that they would need.
Once verification is complete,
you should then also ensure that auditing is occurring
to keep track of the resources that were allocated,
which is a critical process to ensure
your inventory management remains up to date
and that your organization maintains
its compliance posture.
Finally, the new employee and their manager
will receive some automated prompt to confirm that
their resources meet their needs,
or to report any issues
or additional requirements
that may still need to be fulfilled.
For example, here at Dion Training,
whenever you purchase a product at diontraining.com,
it will begin our user provisioning
and resource allocation automation.
If you purchase a course
or an exam voucher from us,
our system will first check
if you already have a user account with us.
If you don't, the user provisioning process will begin
and a brand new student account will be created for you.
Once the account is created,
it will then start our resource provisioning process
to grant your new user account the proper access rights
to the particular course,
or exam voucher that you have purchased.
When the automations are complete,
you are then sent an email notifying you
of your new account and a link
for you to log into that account.
This is a very basic onboarding process
that is completely automated to onboard
new students into our courses.
Similarly, we have an onboarding process
for our internal employees as well.
Here at Dion Training when a new employee is hired,
we use automated resource provisioning processes
to provide the new hire with access
to our learning management system,
our content creation tools
and our internal communication platforms
as soon as they join our team.
So remember, automating onboarding
through user provisioning and resource provisioning,
offers us many benefits to our organizations,
including speeding up the onboarding process,
reducing errors, ensuring compliance,
and saving time and resources.
By implementing automations for these processes,
your organization can ensure a smooth, consistent,
and efficient onboarding experience
that enables new employees to contribute
to the organization's success more quickly.
This strategic approach
of automating the onboarding process,
not only optimizes the use of resources,
but also enhances the new employee's journey
during their first few days
of employment in your organization.