If you’re still creating manual scripts and working through moves, adds, and changes one by one, you’re leaving yourself open to human errors that can cost $500,000.
Sounds extreme?
That’s because it is.
When you rely on humans for your Microsoft Teams provisioning workflow, you’re exposing your business to the risk of human error.
75% of data loss is caused by human error.
One wrong click of a button and you can lose files, access, and even a full service.
In fact, 58% of service downtime can be attributed to an issue caused by a human.
Given the choice, wouldn’t you rather remove the chance of expensive human mistakes?
When it comes to provisioning in Microsoft Teams, the answer must be yes.
What is Microsoft Teams provisioning?
Microsoft Teams provisioning refers to the process of adding new users, making changes to existing users, or deleting them altogether.
These are sometimes referred to as MACs (moves, adds, changes) or MACDs (moves, adds, changes, deletions).
When a new employee joins your business, they need access to the rest of your company and access to everything they need to do their job.
This means basic equipment like a laptop or PC. This means basic access to emails and a phone. But this also means configuring their entire Microsoft estate. Which is where things get complicated.
What Microsoft Teams provisioning is needed on day one?
It’s not just Microsoft Teams. That’s the main takeaway here.
Only in rare scenarios are you likely to configure 1x Teams user and leave it at that.
The reality is that you’re going to add a new Microsoft account to cover many apps. To get access to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, users need the right license.
The same applies to SharePoint, OneDrive, and many other apps businesses use every single day.
None more so than Teams.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, it’s become clear that Microsoft Teams is the platform dominating the collaboration market.
As a result, we’ve started to use Teams correctly. It’s no longer siloed for meetings and one-to-one chats. Teams is now the hub for where work gets done.
It’s also the front end where everything gets stored. Everything a user sees in Teams and every click a user makes has a dependency on the back end configuration.
And that’s where Microsoft Teams provisioning comes in.
To enable users, new or otherwise, to have efficient and productive access to Teams and the entire Microsoft ecosystem, the access you configure (or misconfigure) must be correct.
And it must be correct every single time to ensure no downtime or delay. Failure to hit 100% accuracy may feel like a one-off small incident to you, the person pressing the buttons.
But think about the knock-on impact to the user or group of users…
Instead of working in an autonomous manner, generating new business or solving customer’s problems, they must now raise a support ticket and twiddle their thumbs until it reaches your queue.
If the average provisioning ticket costs $60, what is the cost of a second provisioning ticket asking for remedial work?
And, in some cases, what is the cost of the escalation you must raise when you realize something major has gone wrong?
The impact (and cost) of one wrong assignment, script, or click could be painstakingly high.
When you factor in what could go wrong, the cost of an escalation ticket is as high as $78. That’s on top of your original $60 ticket, don’t forget.
| Cost of error (IT Cost – with escalation) | ||||
| Item | Resource | Number | Hours | Cost |
| Service desk ticket logged | Office Worker | 1.00 | 0.10 | $1.53 |
| Ticket triaged & assigned | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 0.20 | $2.97 |
| Ticket actioned by engineer | 2nd Line Engineer | 1.00 | 1.50 | $40.10 |
| Escalation engineer | Specialist Engineer | 1.00 | 1.00 | $19.35 |
| Ticket management | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 1.00 | $14.88 |
| Ticket Cost | $78.83 | |||
But, once again, this only considers the impact on you. When you factor in time for lost productivity, we’re talking about four hours for the directly impacted user.
This can quickly compound when users realize more than one error has occurred and more resolutions are needed.
An organization impacted by 120 provisioning errors in one month could end up losing more than $25,000 in lost employee productivity. This is on top of the cost to IT.
The relationship between change and the Microsoft Teams provisioning workflow
When thinking about the potential for human error within the Microsoft Teams provisioning workflow, we’re cautious. Some might say risk aware.
That’s for a good reason.
When you factor in the scale of large business, turnover rate, and the need for continuous changes, we establish the real cost of manual error and lack of automation.
The current average staff turnover in the UK is approximately 36%, and 43% in the US. An increase of 9% versus previous years.
Using change as a metric, the following cost estimates can be calculated to consider both cost to IT and the loss of business productivity.
| Number of Monthly Changes | Cost of Change Per Month | Cost of Change Per Year (ongoing) |
| 50 | $1,969.42 | $23,633.04 |
| 100 | $4,088.76 | $49,065.12 |
| 350 | $16,037.14 | $192,445.68 |
| 500 | $26,325.15 | $315,901.80 |
| 1,000 | $54,869.11 | $658,429.32 |
That’s extraordinary.
In the case of a business making 1,000 changes to Microsoft Teams users every month, you’re spending over $650,000 per year on administration.
Now factor in the time and associated cost of script creation and maintenance. We don’t have any figures on those (yet) but anything else on top of this already migraine-inducing amount is unwelcomed.
It’s at this point we must ask a question.
What’s the more cost-effective approach to Microsoft Teams provisioning?
The answer is quite simple.
We must automate the tasks and processes that have the highest potential risk for human error.
We’re taking about the mundane run rate support items that we could do in our sleep.
The problem here is that we start to treat such issues just like this.
When something becomes habit, we stop giving it our full attention.
Take the case of walking your dog. Every day you do the same loop around the park. You pick up your dog’s lead and a poop bag. This process is autonomous. It runs on autopilot.
Then one day the unthinkable happens. You forget to pick up the bag and you’re stuck.
That’s what happens when you leave Microsoft Teams provisioning down to humans, to habit, and to the possibility (and 1 in 100 chance) of human error.
Now, 1 in 100 may not seem that big. But, if you’re making 1,000 moves, adds, or changes per month, that’s 10 major problems (and costs) you could have avoided.
Here’s the good news about your Microsoft Teams provisioning workflow
Instead of taking a cost hit because of a human error that could have been avoided, you can automate your Microsoft Teams provisioning workflows.
Callroute has created an auto-provisioning tool (Orto) that assigns policies and access to Teams users using pre-populated user persona templates.
In the example below, you can see the pre-configured options for the sales, support, and finance teams. Inside these are all the policies you’d provision manually.
In the scenario where you’re manually assigning these, you leave your business open to misconfiguration and human error.
In the scenario where you use auto-provisioning, you’re relying on automation to run the process for you. Therefore, removing the 1 in 100 chance of a major issue because of human error.
See how auto-provisioning saves time and money when provisioning users in Microsoft Teams in the video below.
Kevin Kieller, a technology analyst focused on the Microsoft ecosystem, says, “Auto-provisioning for Microsoft Teams means faster, more consistent, more secure process, that will improve the overall end-user Teams experience.”
What does life with auto-provisioning look like?
Using Orto, you could reduce your cost per provisioning ticket by 77%.
The average ticket cost now comes in at just $7.69.
With no need for user intervention, the process will begin automatically once the user account has been created in AzureAD.
| Cost of a new user addition/change | ||||
| Item | Resource | Number | Hours | Cost |
| HR system input | Office Worker | 1.00 | 0.50 | $7.69 |
| Service desk ticket logged | Office Worker | 1.00 | 0.00 | $0 |
| Ticket triaged & assigned | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 0.00 | $0 |
| Ticket actioned by engineer | 2nd Line Engineer | 1.00 | 0.00 | $0 |
| Ticket management | 1st Line Engineer | 1.00 | 0.00 | $0 |
| Ticket Cost | $7.69 | |||
A much nicer-looking table, don’t you agree?
To find out how you can start saving money on Microsoft Teams provisioning, book your free 30-mins demo here.
There’s no obligation to sign up. However, we’ve worked out that every business with 1,000 or more Teams users should.
Yes, there’s a cost associated with running auto-provisioning. But, when weighed up against the money you’re losing to manual inefficiencies, you’re still coming out saving money.
