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Top 9 User Lifecycle Management Software To Try In 2024

Rohit Rao

21st December, 2023

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Exploring user lifecycle management (ULM) tools is a great way to streamline processes within an organization. These tools are pivotal in ensuring that the entire lifecycle of users—from their onboarding to offboarding—is managed efficiently and accurately. 

Let's dive into some of the top user lifecycle management software that helps organizations automate and optimize these crucial processes.

User Lifecycle Management (ULM) is the comprehensive oversight and administration of an individual user's journey within an organization. It encompasses the complete span of a user's association with the company, starting from their onboarding through their active tenure and finally concluding with their offboarding or departure. It's basically the end-to-end management of an individual's life cycle within the company's ecosystem.

Furthermore, the software that is used to manage the entire lifecycle of an individual within the organization is referred to as user lifecycle management software. This advanced tool helps your IT team manage various tasks, including provisioning access, managing user permissions, monitoring activity, facilitating roles or responsibilities changes, and ensuring a secure and efficient departure from the organization. 

This was just an overview of user lifecycle management, so before we explore different tools, let's first have a deeper and more clear understanding of user lifecycle management. 

What is User Lifecycle Management (ULM)?

User lifecycle management orchestrates the entirety of a user's journey within an organization, spanning from onboarding to departure. Its focal point is the strategic and tactical administration of user identities, ensuring seamless access to resources and services throughout their tenure. ULM involves efficient onboarding processes, assigning access permissions aligned with roles, and promptly revoking access upon departure. 

This meticulous approach aims to streamline user management, bolster security, and uphold efficient access control across the organizational ecosystem. Notably, ULM operates on the principle of consolidating each user's identity within the infrastructure, granting comprehensive access based on predefined settings. This strategy simplifies access management and enhances security measures.

Furthermore, user lifecycle management encompasses a set of five processes, which are:

  1. Onboarding: Integrating a new user into the organization's systems and workflows. This involves setting up accounts, granting appropriate access permissions, and providing necessary resources to ensure they can start working efficiently.

  2. Provisioning: Managing user access to applications, databases, networks, and other IT resources based on their roles and responsibilities. This includes granting, modifying, or revoking access as needed during the user's tenure.

  3. Usage Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of user activities, access logs, and behavior to detect any anomalies or security risks. This step ensures compliance with organizational policies and identifies potential security threats.

  4. Modification and Updates: Adjusting user access levels or permissions in response to changes in roles, responsibilities, or organizational needs. Regular updates also include ensuring software and security patches are applied to maintain system integrity.

  5. Offboarding: The process of securely deactivating user accounts and revoking access to all organizational systems, applications, and data when a user leaves the company. This step is crucial for preventing unauthorized access and safeguarding sensitive information.

These processes aim to streamline the user's journey within the organization, ensuring efficient access management while upholding security standards and compliance requirements.

Why Do You Need A User Lifecycle Management Software? 

Active directory users and computers serve as the main tools for user account creation and management. Nevertheless, these tools come with constraints, including challenges in bulk onboarding, accurate user data handling, log maintenance, and timely offboarding.

IT admins turn to automated user lifecycle management software to ensure efficient operations and reliable security. This advanced solution facilitates smooth onboarding, user management, communication control, thorough analysis, and streamlined offboarding, providing a comprehensive solution for efficient and secure user lifecycle management. 

That’s not all; there are some other benefits as well. 

Key Benefits Of Implementing A User Lifecycle Management Solution

Here are some key advantages of implementing a user lifecycle management software:

  • Automates the onboarding and offboarding process: ULM tools seamlessly automate user onboarding and offboarding processes, saving time, minimizing errors, and reducing the reliance on manual intervention. Furthermore, these tools precisely control access and permissions, aligning user privileges with roles and responsibilities. 

  • Provides accurate user data that helps manage their access throughout their tenure: ULM tools help maintain accurate and up-to-date user data, reducing the risk of errors and mismanagement of access during different stages of their lifecycle and ensuring that data is consistent across the organization.

  • Offers centralized management platform: With the help of these tools, your IT admins can seamlessly manage users’ onboarding and offboarding processes from a centralized interface. Furthermore, this also makes it easier for IT admins to monitor and control user access across various systems and applications.

  • Provides reporting and analytics capabilities: ULM tools often come with reporting and analytics features, allowing organizations to gain insights into user activities, track user roles, positions, or department changes, and identify potential security risks.

  • Helps in cost savings: Automation and efficiency improvements brought about by ULM tools can result in cost savings in terms of time and resources required for user management tasks.

  • Improves user experience: Streamlined onboarding processes contribute to a positive user experience, allowing new users to quickly access the tools and resources they need to be productive.

Now that you understand the importance of user lifecycle management software, let’s proceed further and explore different types of user lifecycle management software.

Here’s The List Of Top 9 User Lifecycle Management Software

Given below are some of the well-recognized user lifecycle management software that you can consider implementing to streamline the user lifecycle management process. 

1. Zluri 

Zluri's LCM

Zluri stands out as an exceptional user lifecycle management platform, adeptly managing every stage of a user's journey within the company. From seamless onboarding of new users to secure offboarding when their tenure concludes, Zluri's ULM automates the entire user lifecycle management process. This automation minimizes manual intervention, reducing errors and eliminating bottlenecks that may cause operational delays.

Automated approval workflow

However, Zluri's ULM capabilities go beyond managing onboarding and offboarding tasks. The platform also effectively manages user mid-lifecycle changes, improving employee efficacy and overall experience. 

To better understand, let's break down how Zluri manages each stage of the user's lifecycle.  

Seamlessly Onboard New Employees 

Every now and then, you see new employees being hired in bunches, and ultimately, the IT team has to manage each of the employees' accounts, granting them the right app access, and so on. In such a scenario, traditional methods (using tickets-based legacy systems) won't be efficient; it can be apt to handle a few employees but not many. It will consume more time, involve human errors, and drain your IT team's effort. 

So Zluri's ULM automates the onboarding process, allowing your IT team to create user accounts easily, assign roles, and grant required access. How does it do that? It enables your IT team to create onboarding workflows that automate provisioning with just a few clicks, saving a lot of time and effort. Further, it ensures your new employees gain access to all the required SaaS apps to start with their work effectively from day 1. 

onboarding

Effectively Manages Mid-Life Cycle Changes 

When employees undergo mid-lifecycle changes due to promotion, change in department, or geo-shift, they require access to new SaaS apps to hit the ground running. So, Zluri integrates with your organization's HRMS to stay up-to-date with the changes, allowing your IT admins to keep track of changes in employee roles effortlessly. So how does it work?

Whenever there is an update in an employee's role, your HRMS gets updated with the details, and Zluri automatically retrieves the data from the HR system and updates it on the centralized dashboard. This allows your IT admins to quickly and easily verify employee details from the dashboard and grant or remove access permissions as necessary. 

This is how your IT team benefits, but Zluri doesn't stop here; it enhances employee experience by offering a self-serve model, an Employee app store, i.e., a collection of SaaS applications approved and verified by the IT admin. This gives your employees the flexibility to choose any app from the EAS and gain access to it within no time. 

 Employee app store

All your employees need to do is submit an app access request. The IT admin gets notified of the same, then verifies the employee's identity and grants them secure access without disrupting the employee's flow of work. 

However, it's equally important for your IT admin to ensure that the employees are granted only the permissions necessary for their new role while revoking their prior access to any unnecessary applications. 

Securely Offboard Employees Upon Their Departure 

Protecting your organization's sensitive data is a top priority, requiring prompt action from IT teams when employees depart from the organization. Whether due to termination, voluntary resignation, or sabbatical, revoking the departing employee's access to all SaaS apps and deactivating/suspending their accounts is crucial. 

Delaying or failing to do so results in data breaches and leaves your organization vulnerable to unauthorized access and potential data compromise. 

However, with Zluri's ULM, your team can rest assured that all access will be securely revoked without the risk of missing any critical access points. Zluri's offboarding workflow simplifies the deprovisioning process, allowing your team to manage access revocation with just a few clicks efficiently and effectively.  

deprovisioning process.

To learn more about Zluri's user lifecycle management capabilities, book a demo now and try it. 

Features 

  • In-App Suggestion:  Zluri's ULM provides an in-app suggestion feature that allows your IT team to perform different actions. Such as, they can add users to different groups and channels or even send an automated welcome greeting. 

    However, a point to note is that the actions can vary for different applications and are mentioned under recommended actions. 

    In-App Suggestion

  • Automated Playbook: Zluri's playbooks serve as a valuable asset in streamlining workflows by allowing users to save and reuse customized workflows. This feature eliminates the need to recreate processes repeatedly for each user or situation. By leveraging playbooks, redundant tasks are minimized, and operational efficiency is greatly enhanced.

    Automated Playbook

  • Contextual App Recommendations: Based on the employee's department and the role, Zluri's ULM suggests some applications that can be added to the workflow. Then, your team can take relevant action for each application they choose for a particular employee.

    Contextual App Recommendations

  • Automation Rules: Your team can also set automation rules by defining when, conditions, and then. With the help of these triggers, your team can set new automation rules. For example, when an employee is added to the HR department, then grant them access to Bamboo HR.  

    Automation Rules

  • Schedule Onboarding/Offboarding Workflow: Your IT team can schedule onboarding/offboarding workflow as needed, and Zluri's ULM will automatically run that particular workflow on the scheduled date. So, your IT team no longer has to cross-check dates to manually run workflows. 

    Schedule Onboarding/Offboarding Workflow

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.8/5

  • Capterra: 4.8/5

2. Okta

Okta

Okta's lifecycle management helps your IT admin eliminate manual onboarding and offboarding processes through automation. It allows them to grant access based on role, designation, or department and revoke all access upon departure. 

This also helps improve your employee experience as they don't have to wait longer to get onboarded and start their work from the day of joining. 

Furthermore, it revokes access and suspends users' accounts quickly with just a few clicks, allowing your team to recuperate software licenses and save on costs. Also, it secures the SaaS app data from security breaches or hacking through a still-active account. 

Features 

  • Okta's lifecycle management handles access provisioning for all employees from one place and integrates with your HR system to streamline auto-provisioning and deprovision access processes. Additionally, if you want to customize your workflow, you can simply do it through Okta workflows without the need for coding.  

  • It conducts audits and generates reports showing which employees can access a given application and which were recently deprovisioned. This helps you get a centralized view of users and their account access. 

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.5/5

  • Capterra: 4.6/5

3. OneLogin

OneLogin

OneLogin's identity lifecycle management platform is designed to automate provisioning processes for the swift onboarding of users. It imports entitlement definitions from various applications, providing flexible rules to determine each user's entitlements. For instance, upon creating a new user in Salesforce, the identity provisioning system can simultaneously assign them to specific groups like Admin, Marketing, or Sales.

Also, this user lifecycle management software recognizes the critical need for offboarding. Thus, it acts as an effective "kill switch" to prevent unauthorized access from former employees. 

Features

  • Acknowledging the unique needs of different organizations, OneLogin's user provisioning tool allows the importation of custom attributes from external directories. These attributes can be seamlessly pushed to compatible applications, including Jive, Samanage, or Salesforce.

  • OneLogin Workflows enables your IT team to deploy custom logic to streamline onboarding and offboarding processes with precision and efficiency. 

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.4/5

  • Capterra: 4.6/5

4. Microsoft Entra 

Microsoft Entra

Microsoft Entra is another of the best lifecycle management software that offers a robust suite of features designed to enhance user productivity and fortify organizational security by automating identity lifecycle processes.

By incorporating customizable workflow templates, Microsoft Entra facilitates the swift onboarding of new employees. It grants access right on day one, ensuring new team members hit the ground running and maximize productivity from the outset.

Also, it responds promptly to role changes within the organization by effortlessly updating, adding, or removing access to resources. Thus, Microsoft Entra's lifecycle management ensures agility in managing access, enabling seamless transitions when team members' roles evolve.

Not only that, this user lifecycle management software ensures that users go through a secure and compliant offboarding process when they leave the organization. This gives peace of mind to both the organization and the person leaving. Also, timely and securely deprovisioning users adds an extra layer of security.

Features

  • Entra's lifecycle management seamlessly integrates with HR systems like Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Aquera to automatically provision or deprovision user access based on HR signals. 

  • It utilizes templates to automate common identity and access tasks, such as the initial setup for new users and updates related to roles, teams, or locations for existing employees.

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.5/5

5. Sailpoint 

Sailpoint

Sailpoint user lifecycle management software facilitates the seamless onboarding of new hires by automating and accelerating the provisioning process. This not only boosts user productivity from day one but also prevents human errors, ensuring efficiency for both workers and IT teams.

Also, this tool addresses the risk of over-provisioning or unauthorized access by former employees, providing a crucial layer of security. SailPoint also ensures compliance requirements are met, offering validation, audit, reporting, and metrics features.

Features

  • SailPoint’s role-based provisioning policies ensure that the workforce’s access remains within the bounds of their job description. This aligns access privileges with organizational hierarchies, ensuring a clear separation of duties.

  • SailPoint reduces security risk by meticulously managing worker accounts. It ensures that former employees no longer have access to resources, while current workers are equipped only with what they need, mitigating potential security risks.

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.4/5

  • Capterra: 4.1/5

6. Jumpcloud

Jumpcloud

Jumpcloud is a widely known identity lifecycle management software that allows your IT team to centrally manage one identity and set of credentials per user. This user lifecycle management software enables the automation of identity creation for new users, manages access changes during the identity lifecycle, and facilitates seamless identity and access termination upon a user's departure. 

Furthermore, Jumpcloud's identity lifecycle management gives your IT team complete control over user identities, no matter where they are. Whether you use it by itself or with other tools, Jumpcloud ensures that administrators and users have a smooth experience, no matter where they're located.

Features

  • Jumpcloud simplifies access control through group-based strategies, including automated dynamic groups. This feature allows instant access provisioning for new users based on their roles or departments. In the same way, when a user departs the organization, suspending their account automatically revokes their resource access, safeguarding confidential data and processes.

  • Jumpcloud reinforces identity security throughout a user's employment by layering multi-factor authentication, conditional access policies, and single sign-on across identities. This ensures that identities remain secure and compliant with organizational policies.

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.5/5

  • Capterra: 4.6/5

7. BetterCloud

BetterCloud

BetterCloud's user lifecycle management ensures timely and accurate user provisioning by leveraging automated dynamic workflows. These workflows seamlessly connect with HR sources like BambooHR and Workday, ensuring that onboarding is both efficient and error-free.

Furthermore, your IT team can customize automated processes to cater to your onboarding requirements, freeing up their valuable time. Also, by eliminating routine tasks that don't necessarily require an IT professional, BetterCloud allows your team to focus on more meaningful and strategic projects.

Not only that, BetterCloud simplifies the offboarding process, reducing the steps associated with a departing employee to save time and protect company data. Automation streamlines the process, decreasing the time required to offboard an employee from an average of 9 hours to less than 30 minutes.

This user lifecycle management software also mitigates security risks by reducing user-error potential through automated workflows for revoking access. Also, BetterCloud leverages audit logs for reporting and compliance needs, providing a robust solution to prevent data loss.

Features

  • BetterCloud's user lifecycle management supports over 900+ actions, significantly reducing manual work for your IT teams. This comprehensive approach ensures that various aspects of IT management are covered within a single platform.

  • With this tool, your IT teams can strategically schedule on-demand workflows. These workflows automatically remove users' access to apps and groups, facilitating efficient management and transfer of files to other team members.

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.4/5

  • Capterra: 4.1/5

8. MiniOrange

MiniOrange

MiniOrange’s user lifecycle management solution ensures that any changes in user access across applications sync in real-time with the platform and all other integrated directory apps within a second. This immediate synchronization minimizes delays and ensures accuracy.

Also, this tool offers automatic bidirectional synchronization that ensures that all integrated directories and applications stay updated after a user is modified within MiniOrange. Furthermore, MiniOrange supports integration with various HR applications/systems, AD, LDAP, and other IDPs and directories, including Azure AD and LDAP.

Features

  • MiniOrange enhances security by implementing role-based access control, only granting user access when necessary. This prevents potential security breaches and unauthorized access to critical company data.

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.4/5

  • Capterra: 4.4/5

9. GroupID

 GroupID

GroupID, now a part of Netwrix, is a tool designed to simplify user management within Active Directory and Entra ID. By automating lifecycle management, GroupID empowers business owners to take control of resource access, ultimately enhancing security and increasing IT productivity.

How does it do that? Netwrix GroupID streamlines the process of user provisioning and deprovisioning in Active Directory and Entra ID. Syncing data in bulk from authoritative sources like HRIS platforms ensures accuracy and efficiency in managing user access. 

Changes made to users in one directory are instantly reflected in near real-time to a linked identity store, eliminating the need for third-party connectors. This seamless synchronization ensures that user information is always up to date across multiple directories.

Additionally, this user lifecycle management software introduces access workflows allowing users to request the necessary access. Resource owners or managers can easily approve or deny these requests, reducing the IT workload and ensuring efficient access management.

Features

  • Attestation workflows in GroupID ensure users regularly confirm that their accounts are still needed. This proactive approach enables disabling unnecessary accounts, enhancing overall security and compliance.

Customer Rating

  • G2: 4.9/5

Seamlessly Manage User’s Lifecycle With The Best User Lifecycle Management Software

So, here you have it: an overview of 9 user lifecycle management software options. However, the ultimate choice rests with you regarding which one to consider. Selecting the best ULM tool is a critical decision that requires careful consideration of various factors. You need to evaluate the specific needs and dynamics of your organization. Also, consideration of key factors such as cost, complexity, scalability, integration capabilities, automation features, and reporting capabilities is paramount. 

Each organization has its own set of priorities, and the chosen ULM tool should seamlessly align with these priorities to maximize its impact. Ultimately, the best ULM tool not only meets the organization's immediate needs but also provides scalability, adaptability, and efficiency in managing the entire user lifecycle. 

FAQs

What Is the User Account Lifecycle Process?

The user account lifecycle process refers to the various stages a user account goes through during its existence within an organization. There are three main stages involved in this process: creating an account, reviewing or updating it, and deactivating the account if needed—kind of like "CRUD." 

What Does Customer Lifecycle Management Software Do?

The customer lifecycle management tool keeps track of the customer journey and guides them towards brand loyalty and advocacy. This tool also helps improve customer experiences, which makes the business more successful, and more people notice the brand, making both new and current customers happier.


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