The 15-Tab Morning: What Manual Provisioning Actually Looks Like

TL;DR

You're not an IT admin. You're a human API.

And not for the easy apps. The tools without SCIM tend to be your most critical: the niche CRM sales can't live without, the industry-specific ERP, the compliance-mandated finance system. They're irreplaceable, always in audit scope, and have the most byzantine permission structures.

15 tabs. 47 permission screens. 2 hours per new hire. For apps you can't walk away from.

Monday morning, 8:47 AM

New hire starts today. Engineering manager. You got the ticket Friday at 5 PM.

You open the first tab. The industry-specific ERP your company has used for twelve years. No SCIM. No API. Just a web admin console that looks like it was built in 2009 - because it was.

Create user. Assign department. Now the permissions. This ERP has 340 individual permission flags organized across 12 modules. Engineering managers need access to Projects, Time Tracking, Resource Allocation, and read-only on Financials. You know this because you've done it forty times, and you have a Word document with screenshots.

Click. Click. Click. Scroll. Click. Click.

That's one app. Fourteen to go.

Why the worst apps are also the most critical

Here's what vendors won't tell you: the apps without SCIM aren't your nice-to-haves. They're the ones running your actual business.

They're irreplaceable. The niche CRM sales uses because it's built for your industry. The ERP that's been customized over a decade. The compliance-mandated finance system. You can't switch - the switching cost is 18 months of migration and retraining hundreds of people. So you're stuck. And the vendor knows it. That's why SCIM has been "on the roadmap" for five years.

Auditors know their names. SOC 2. ISO 27001. Industry-specific compliance. These apps show up in every audit because they contain your most sensitive data. "Can you show me evidence of timely deprovisioning for the last ten terminations?" You can. It takes four hours to compile. And you're praying nothing slipped through.

The permission models are insane. Consumer apps have three roles: Admin, Member, Guest. Apps built for complex enterprises have permission structures that evolved over decades. The ERP with 340 permission flags. The CRM where you configure access per record type, per field, per workflow stage. These aren't permissions. They're puzzles. And you solve them manually, every time.

The math

One new hire. Fifteen apps without SCIM.

Across a year, for a 500-person company with normal turnover:

• 75 new hires × 2 hours = 150 hours
• 75 departures × 2.5 hours = 187 hours
• Role changes, access reviews, audit prep = 200+ hours

That's 500+ hours on provisioning alone. A quarter of an FTE, spent being a human API.

You're a human SCIM endpoint

You went into IT to build things. To solve problems. To make the organization more effective.

Instead, you're translating HR events into clicks across fifteen browser tabs. The architecture diagram shows Okta at the center, arrows pointing to every app. The reality is you, with a spreadsheet, clicking through permission screens at 8:47 AM on a Monday.

Product-led growth changed software. Apps now optimize for end-user adoption - easy signup, intuitive interface, viral spread. What they don't optimize for: the person who has to add fifty users at once, revoke access at 6 PM on a Friday, or prove to an auditor that everyone who left actually lost access.

These apps grew by making users happy. IT wasn't in the room. Now IT inherits the mess.

The alternative

Stitchflow turns your 15-tab morning into a single configuration.

We deliver SCIM-level provisioning through resilient browser automation, backed by 24/7 human-in-the-loop. We build the integration. We maintain it. <$5K/app/year.

For the ERP with 340 permission flags - we map them once, you assign groups in Okta, the right permissions apply automatically.

For the industry CRM with 47 record types - we build the logic, you stop solving the puzzle manually.

For the compliance-mandated tools auditors ask about by name - you get audit logs, automatic deprovisioning, and evidence that doesn't take four hours to compile.

Your Monday morning should be about building things. Not being a human API.