How a SaaS Company Cut Access Provisioning Time with Access Governance

Know how to automate access governance in Jira Service Management to speed up provisioning, improve onboarding, reduce IT workload, and strengthen security.

Scaling from 50 to 500 employees in 18 months should be a celebration. For one B2B SaaS company, it became an operational crisis.

Revenue was climbing. New hires were flooding in, sales reps, engineers, customer success managers. Their tech stack was mature: Atlassian for service operations, Salesforce for CRM, a full suite of SaaS applications powering every function.

On paper, everything looked scalable.

In reality, one invisible bottleneck was bleeding productivity across the organization: app access governance.

According to research by Bloomberg, employees spend an average of 11 hours per year waiting for IT access requests, time that directly impacts productivity and revenue generation. For this company, the problem was far worse.

The Incident That Forced Leadership to Act

Monday 9:00 AM – New sales executive joins the sales team, ready to start prospecting.

Wednesday 2:00 PM – Still no access:

• Salesforce
• Outreach
• Sales dashboards
• Shared drive folders

Her access request journey looked like this:

1. Slack message to IT
2. IT tags RevOps
3. RevOps emails her manager
4. Manager approves via Slack
5. IT sees the approval on Wednesday afternoon
6. Access granted after 72 hours

The cost? Three days of lost sales productivity. At an average sales rep productivity cost of $500/day, that's $1,500 in direct loss, per new hire.

Leadership escalated immediately. When they investigated further, they discovered this wasn't an isolated incident. It was systemic.

The Real Cost of Manual Identity and Access Management

The company conducted a comprehensive audit of their access management process. The findings were alarming.

Problem 1: No Central Request Hub

Access requests flooded in through multiple channels:

• Slack DMs and channels (42% of requests)
• Email threads (31% of requests)
• Occasional Jira tickets (18% of requests)
• Verbal approvals and hallway conversations (9% of requests)

Result: Zero visibility with no provision for tracking. Frequent duplicates and missed requests.

Problem 2: Approval Chase

IT admins were spending 4-6 hours weekly hunting down approvals:

• Who approves Jira licenses?
• Has RevOps signed off on this?
• Is this permanent or temporary access?
• Where did the manager's approval go?

Approvals get lost in Slack threads, numerous emails, and chat messages.

Problem 3: Onboarding Productivity Collapse

The company ran an onboarding efficiency analysis with sobering results:

Before automation:

• Average access wait time: 52 hours
• Onboarding tasks delayed: 37%
• Sales productivity lost: 1 full selling day per hire

The Solution: Centralizing Access Management in Jira Service Management

The company needed to:

• Centralize access requests for all company apps
• Automate approval routing based on application ownership
• Integrate automated provisioning
• Maintain audit-ready approvals
• Work within their existing Atlassian ecosystem

Since they were already running service operations in Atlassian, expanding into Jira Service Management (JSM) for access governance was the natural choice.

They didn't want another standalone identity management tool. They wanted identity and access integrated where employees already worked.

The solution? miniOrange Application Access and Governance Workflow for JSM.

Building the Automated Access Management Framework

Step 1: Create an Access Request Portal

The team built a dedicated Access Service Project in JSM as the single source of truth for all access requests.

Employees could request access to any application through one structured portal that captured:

• Application name
• Role or permission level required
• Business justification
• Duration of access (permanent vs. time-bound)
• Department and manager information

Every submission generated a trackable ticket with a unique ID.

Within two weeks of launch, 94% of access requests were coming through the portal. Request intake became fully standardized.

Step 2: Intelligent Approval Routing

Manual triaging was eliminated through smart automation rules.

Approval logic was mapped based on application ownership:

Approvers received instant notifications and could approve directly within JSM, no context switching required.

Result: Approval turnaround time dropped by 76% without IT sending a single reminder.

Step 3: Automated Provisioning with miniOrange

The company integrated miniOrange Application Access and Governance Workflow to handle end-to-end provisioning.

Once approval was granted, the system automatically:

• Created user accounts in target applications
• Assigned appropriate roles via API integrations (Okta, Azure AD, direct app APIs)
• Mapped and allocated software licenses
• Updated the JSM ticket with provisioning status
• Closed the ticket with full documentation

Provisioning that previously took 52 hours now happened in 6 hours on average, often within the same business day.

Step 4: Lifecycle-Based Automated Revocation

Effective identity governance isn't just about granting access, it's about removing it at the right time.

The team configured lifecycle triggers that automatically revoked access:

Trigger Events:

• Employee offboarding (immediate revocation)
• Department transfers (role-based access updates)
• Contract completion for contractors
• Time-bound access expiry (automatically scheduled)
• Manager change or reporting structure updates

When triggered, access was revoked automatically across all connected applications within 2 hours.

This eliminated orphaned accounts, a major security and compliance risk. According to Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report, compromised credentials account for 49% of breaches. Orphaned accounts are particularly vulnerable.

The Measurable Business Impact

The company tracked KPIs for six months post-implementation.

Implementation Roadmap: How They Did It in 60 Days

The company followed a phased rollout model:

Phase 1: Discovery & Audit (Weeks 1)

• Mapped all existing access request channels
• Identified high-volume applications (20+ apps)
• Interviewed stakeholders across IT, Security, HR, and business units
• Documented current state approval workflows

Phase 2: Portal Design & Pilot (Weeks 2-3)

• Built JSM Access Service Project
• Created standardized request forms for top 10 applications
• Launched pilot with IT and Sales teams (50 users)
• Gathered feedback and refined workflows

Phase 3: Approval Automation (Weeks 4-5)

• Configured automated routing rules for all applications
• Set up approver groups and delegation rules
• Implemented SLA tracking for access requests
• Rolled out to entire organization (400 users)

Phase 4: Provisioning Integration (Weeks 6)

• Integrated miniOrange Application Access and Governance Workflow
• Connected identity providers (Okta SSO)
• Set up API connections to major applications
• Configured automated provisioning and deprovisioning rules
• Conducted security and compliance review
• Full production launch

Total implementation time: 11 weeks

Team size: 2 IT admins, 1 security engineer, 1 project manager (part-time)

Getting Started with Access Automation in JSM

Here’s how you can implement automation for app access approvals at your company, all through a centralized hub at Jira Service Management.

Step 1: Start by centralizing access requests inside Jira Service Management

• Create a dedicated service project for access requests
• Build standardized request forms for your top applications
• Establish clear SLAs for access provisioning

Step 2: Automate approval routing and tracking

• Map application owners and approvers
• Set up automated routing rules in JSM
• Enable approver notifications and one-click approvals

Step 3: Extend automation with provisioning and governance

• Integrate miniOrange Application Access and Governance Workflow
• Connect your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace)
• Configure automated provisioning and deprovisioning
• Enable lifecycle-based access reviews

Step 4: Build compliance-ready audit trails

• Enable comprehensive audit logging
• Create standard compliance reports
• Schedule periodic access reviews
• Document your identity governance framework

Know more about access automation through Jira Service Management.

Why miniOrange Application Access and Governance?

miniOrange brings enterprise-grade identity and access management capabilities directly into Jira Service Management:

• Deep Atlassian Integration - Native JSM workflows, no context switching
• Automated Provisioning - API integrations with 100+ applications
• Lifecycle Management - Automated access reviews and revocation
• Compliance Ready - Built-in audit trails and reporting
• Cloud Identity Governance - Support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments
• Rapid Deployment - Implementation in weeks, not months
• Scalable Architecture - Grows with your organization from 100 to 10,000+ users

Wrapping Up

For this B2B SaaS company, access management was never just an IT workflow. It was intrinsically tied to:

• Revenue productivity (sales rep ramp time)
• Employee experience (day-one readiness)
• Security posture (credential management)
• Compliance readiness (audit preparation)

Manual processes created delays, visibility gaps, and audit challenges that compounded with every new hire.

Centralizing and automating identity and access management in Jira Service Management changed that trajectory completely:

• Governance became systematic and auditable
• Compliance became continuous instead of crisis-driven
• IT became a business enabler instead of a bottleneck

The operational cost of manual access management is already there, it's just hidden in scattered emails, frustrated employees, and audit preparation scrambles.

It's time to make it visible. It's time to automate it. It's time to transform access from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.

Ready to Transform Your Access Management?

Discover how miniOrange Application Access and Governance Workflow can help your organization achieve similar results.

Try miniOrange on the Atlassian Marketplace Schedule a Demo

Because when access moves faster, your business does too.

FAQs

1. What is access governance?

Access governance is the process of managing, approving, and auditing user access to SaaS applications. It ensures secure, compliant, and role-based access provisioning while preventing unauthorized or orphaned accounts.

2. How does Jira Service Management improve access provisioning time?

Jira Service Management centralizes access requests, automates approval routing, and integrates with provisioning tools. This reduces manual work, eliminates approval delays, and accelerates access provisioning by up to 80% or more.

3. Why is automated access provisioning important for growing companies?

Automated access provisioning reduces onboarding delays, improves employee productivity, minimizes IT workload, and strengthens security. It ensures new hires get correct system access quickly without manual approval chasing.

4. How does miniOrange integrate with Jira Service Management for access governance?

miniOrange integrates directly with JSM workflows to automate provisioning and deprovisioning. It connects with identity providers like Okta or Azure AD and supports API-based role assignments across multiple apps.