Automating Onboarding with Make, From 2 Weeks to 2 Hours
The Challenge
A mid-sized SaaS company was losing valuable time and consistency in their onboarding process. Each new hire or client onboarding required:
- Manual account creation across 6+ tools (Slack, Notion, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Jira)
- Repetitive email sequences by HR or project managers
- Human follow-ups for sending checklists, contracts, and introductions
- Errors due to skipped steps or delays across departments
This caused onboarding delays of up to 2 weeks — leading to poor first impressions, wasted resources, and reduced retention.
The Solution: A Fully Automated Onboarding System with Make.com
We deployed a modular, no-code onboarding system using Make.com. The goal: eliminate all manual steps, reduce onboarding time, and increase process consistency.
Make.com Automation
Build and scale powerful automations fast. Scalevise designs reliable Make.com scenarios, handles complex logic and error handling, and keeps costs predictable as you grow.
- ✓ Expert scenario design & orchestration
- ✓ Robust error handling, retries & logging
- ✓ Clean handover with documentation & monitoring
Step-by-Step Automation
- Trigger
- New hire or client form submission via Typeform, Airtable, or Webflow
- Intake webhook hits Make and starts the scenario
- Account Setup
- Automatically creates user accounts in Slack, Notion, and Google Workspace
- Generates personalized onboarding documents from Google Docs templates
- Comms & Planning
- Sends welcome emails and links to documentation and calendars
- Schedules kick-off call in Calendly, synced with assigned team members
- Task Management
- Creates onboarding tasks in Asana/Jira based on role or project type
- Logs the entire process in Airtable for tracking and auditing
- AI Personalization (Optional)
- Generates personalized welcome messages or Slack intros using OpenAI
- Sends role-specific training material based on function
Results After 30 Days
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Avg. Onboarding Duration | 10–14 days | 1–2 hours |
| Manual Workload per Hire | ~6 hours | ~30 minutes |
| Error Rate | High (incomplete steps, forgotten access) | 0% |
| First-Month Satisfaction (NPS) | 56 | 91 |
The system paid for itself within 3 weeks due to reclaimed staff time and improved first-week productivity.
Why This Worked
- Speed — New team members or clients were set up and productive in hours, not days
- Consistency — No steps skipped, no manual errors, always the same high-quality experience
- Scalability — One flow handled 3 different onboarding types (internal hire, contractor, external client)
- Modularity — Easy to plug in tools like Trello, Monday.com, HubSpot, Notion, or Slack
Ready to Eliminate Manual Onboarding?
Whether you're onboarding new hires, clients, or partners — there's no reason to waste another hour manually coordinating tools and steps.