SaaS Operations Doesn't Have to be Hard

How can IT teams turn a 13 percent automation success rate into end-to-end SaaS control? Discover how Torii automates the full SaaS lifecycle, from instant offboarding to AI-powered contract parsing, streamlined onboarding, and license reclamation. See practical workflows, hourly automations, and real-time controls that cut risk and eliminate busywork.

In this video, Steve DeSaw, Distinguished Solutions Engineer at Torii, shares proven ways to automate app, user, license, and contract workflows. See Canvas workflows with unlimited branching, Slack approvals, real-time offboarding from Okta and Google, and AI that ingests contracts, flags auto-renewals, and uncovers renewal risk. Learn to flag new apps with more than 10 users outside the IDP, reclaim idle licenses after 60 days, compare overlapping apps, route renewals 90 days out, and eliminate shadow IT. A must-watch for IT leaders who need to cut SaaS spend, tighten access, and stop renewal surprises now.

This article was originally a video (YouTube link here). Below is the full transcript:

Welcome to today’s webinar on automating SaaS operations for IT teams using Torii. My name is John Baker, and I’m here with Steve DeSaw, Distinguished Solutions Engineer at Torii. Today we’re talking about automation, specifically how you as an IT professional can automate your SaaS operations with Torii.

Before we begin, a few housekeeping items to keep the session running smoothly. We cannot see or hear you, so please add any questions to the chat, and we will save time at the end for Q&A.

We will start with context about automation, including results from a recent survey of IT professionals. Then we will cover the four key aspects of automating the entire SaaS lifecycle: application lifecycle, employee lifecycle, license optimization, and contract automation. Finally, Steve will walk through the Torii platform, we will share a customer success story, and we will wrap up with questions and answers.

When we asked IT professionals how automation is working for them, only 13% called it a great success. There is a massive gap between expectations and reality, and the only consistent area of success has been parts of the employee onboarding and offboarding cycle. We dug deeper to see what success looks like, and found that over half of respondents said ease of use matters most, while smaller groups prioritized customization, cost savings, productivity, and transparency.

Ease of use makes sense when IT professionals have many tools and limited time. Promises and features matter, but the most important factor is whether a tool is intuitive and enables you to get work done quickly.

Now we will walk through the four aspects of automation and the core capabilities Torii offers to support them. First, automating SaaS ops requires a workflow engine that is usable and intuitive. Torii provides a Canvas workflow builder that gives a full view of all workflows, displays unique branching paths, and supports unlimited branching with nuanced, labeled conditions for quick revisions.

Workflows do more than complete tasks; they also set alerts and auto-generate application details. These attributes become conditions and building blocks within workflows, and you can fully customize automations and alerts.

For the user lifecycle, automation goes beyond manually triggered onboarding. You can schedule provisioning, perform group-based provisioning, streamline access requests with Slack approvals, provide a self-service app catalog, and auto-reflect role changes. Offboarding can be real-time or scheduled, delegated to ITSM tools, and logged with a robust audit trail.

Real-time offboarding reduces the window for access after an employee leaves the company. Traditional offboarding often requires manual triggers or can take many hours to run. Torii continuously monitors Okta and Google to detect when a user leaves the organization and triggers workflows immediately, reducing the risk of data breach or IP loss by removing access quickly.

For license optimization, Torii supports reclaiming licenses, downgrading tiers, cost benchmarking, and alerts for unused apps. Contract management can extract cost and contractual details, and you can use those data points in workflows to better understand and act on license usage.

You can compare similar apps side-by-side to evaluate options across several dimensions. With that overview, I will hand it off to Steve for a walkthrough of the Torii platform.

Thanks, John; we’ll take a deeper look at automation and practical workflows next. Today we will talk more about automation. While onboarding and offboarding are common starting points, automation extends into license-based automation, application automation, and contract automation. Application automation can include sending questionnaires when new apps are discovered, issuing IT notifications, and flagging apps that are being used by many people but not provisioned through your identity provider.

Torii includes dedicated workflows to manage AI applications and their associated risks and approvals. When Torii discovers a new app, it evaluates tags and categories to determine whether the app uses AI, such as AI development, conversational AI, or AI image tools. If the app is AI-related, we can trigger a Slack notification to the user who started using the app to ask whether they plan to continue and whether they require an exception.

If the user requests an exception, the workflow moves the app into review. Torii supports customizable application states, for example discovered, review, and sanctioned. The user is prompted to complete a questionnaire that asks about the app purpose, the type of data involved, and other relevant details, and the submission routes to the relevant approver or team. If approved, the app becomes sanctioned; if denied, it is closed. This builds a control process around AI applications.

A similar workflow can run when a closed app is discovered in use. You can reuse the same steps, notification, questionnaire, and approval, so the process scales across any app category, not just AI.

Access management workflows support Torii’s app catalog, where you control what appears to end users. When a user requests access, Canvas lets you build a visual workflow that branches by department, role, or any condition. For example, a Salesforce request for sales and marketing can result in automatic provisioning, Slack notifications, or adding the user into Okta, while customer success may require approval before account creation.

Canvas supports multi-step approvals and complex branching while remaining easy to manage and visualize. This is particularly useful for group management, where you can visualize which tasks and group memberships apply to sales, marketing, finance, and other teams. Torii can update group memberships across Okta, Azure, Google, or any supported identity provider, ensuring users are placed in the correct groups automatically.

If an application does not have a built-in provisioning action, Torii supports custom actions that call REST endpoints. You can send POST, PUT, or PATCH requests with an authorization header, though we recommend using Torii’s secure secret vault for credentials. This enables provisioning and deprovisioning for apps that require API calls.

Regarding triggers, I recommend the user meets criteria trigger because it offers fine-grained control. For example, you can start onboarding three days before the user’s start date in BambooHR. The workflow will wait until the start date is within three days, then create the Google account, create the Slack account, and branch by department to assign the correct apps and groups.

Application triggers fire when a new app is discovered with notable attributes or outlier usage. License workflows can target licenses with specified inactivity periods, and threshold workflows can trigger when you are running low on licenses and need to order more. Contract workflows handle end dates, notice periods, and auto-renewals.

App events provide the signals required to enable real-time offboarding across tools and services. Torii reflects deactivations in Google and Okta immediately, which allows workflows to trigger offboarding actions such as transferring Drive documents, disabling accounts, setting email aliases, and signing users out of sessions. This supports both scheduled and real-time offboarding processes.

For license reclamation, you can target specific license types and define inactivity periods, for example 60 days. Workflows can include exceptions, such as skipping removal for C-level employees or members of a leadership group. You can notify IT, prompt users to confirm whether they still need a license, unassign licenses when users agree, or route declinations into an approval path. Torii’s workflow engine supports branching on approval denials, enabling different paths and notifications depending on the outcome.

Contract workflows run on criteria such as end dates within 90 days and can check for auto-renewal clauses or notice periods. You can route renewals down different paths, send Slack notifications, create tickets, or notify procurement teams, depending on the contract attributes.

Overall, Torii’s automation engine covers user workflows, application workflows, license workflows, and contract workflows, helping you manage SaaS across security, cost, and compliance dimensions. I will now pass it back to John.

Thanks, Steve; those examples make the workflows feel tangible for IT teams. We have case studies on our website, including CD Baby, which reduced time and effort across license procurement and management, fully automated offboarding, and improved control over shadow IT using Torii’s automation tools.

We pulled several questions from the chat to address the most common topics. First, workflows trigger on a regular hourly schedule, while integrations sync nightly to keep data current. Integrations sync nightly, and workflows run every hour on the half hour. In addition, Torii supports real-time workflows for events such as Okta or Google deactivations.

You can reorganize workflows, and we are rolling out a tagging system to help identify and organize them. Branching has already reduced the number of workflows many customers need, and tagging will improve visualization and management further.

AI contract ingestion works by having Torii parse contract PDFs and extract key metadata automatically. Torii’s AI can parse contract PDFs to extract start date, end date, billing email, value, and contract language such as auto-renewal clauses. You can upload contracts directly in Torii, or you can email contracts to [email protected] and the AI will ingest them automatically, flagging auto-renewal language and populating contract fields.

We did not get to every question in the chat, but we will follow up via email for those we missed. On behalf of Steve and myself, thank you for your time and attention. We appreciate it, and we wish you a wonderful rest of your day.