The Challenge:
Existing solution for employee offboarding and data archiving was not flexible enough and charged per user, skyrocketing the cost during peak offboarding season
The Outcome:
Annual offboarding & archive-related cost went from ~$1M to <$200K. Google Workspace license waste is eliminated — no more paying for archived users. Customer retains full control within their own cloud environment.
Industry: Hospitality| Company Size: 5,000+ with seasonal peaks | Processes Automated| Offboarding, archiving, access governance, device management | Total impact:Annual offboarding & archive-related cost went from ~$1M to <$200K
Offboarding and data archiving in Google Workspace isn’t just flipping a switch to disable accounts — especially in industries like hospitality where turnover is constant and security stakes are high.
Thousands of employees cycle in and out each month: seasonal staff, contractors, location transfers, temporary hires. Every departure creates immediate obligations for IT:
- Revoke user access everywhere
- Protect company data
- Maintain compliance with audits and retention laws
- Prevent licensing waste
- Ensure device and external sharing cleanup
And when the process depends on rigid automation tools or costly per-user pricing, things get expensive — fast.
The Problem: Cost and Complexity Exploded at Scale
A hospitality enterprise relied on an automated lifecycle solution for offboarding — but hit a scalability wall:
- Pricing increased per offboarded user
- Data archiving still required separate processes
- The IT team didn't have direct control over data residency
- Inactive Google Workspace accounts continued to consume paid licenses
During peak seasons, offboarding around 2,000 users per month drove annual costs beyond $1M — and still left compliance gaps. They needed automation that reflected reality, not a checkbox version of it.
The Solution: Zenphi’s Secure, Event-Driven Offboarding
The team adopted Zenphi to automate every step of employee separation (offboarding) — deployed inside their own cloud for complete data control.
How workflows trigger
With Zenphi, the IT team got to choose when they want to trigger the offboarding process:
- HR system event (API)
- Group or OU change in Google Directory
- Access revocation approval
- Google Audit Activity event
Full Separation in Seconds
With Zenphi in place, every employee departure follows the same secure and consistent pattern.
As soon as the offboarding trigger fires, access is removed immediately — the user is suspended or deleted from Google Workspace, stripped of all Group memberships, and their active sessions are shut down.
At the same time, Zenphi handles data governance intelligently. The rights to Gmail, Drive, and Shared Drive content is automatically transferred (delegated) to a relevant manager or archived into Google Cloud Storage, with full metadata preserved for compliance and future audits. Because the archive lives in storage — not in a user account — IT no longer pays for Google Workspace licenses tied to inactive employees.
Zenphi also respects existing retention policies. Messages still visible through Gmail APIs are archived right away, while any items held exclusively in Google Vault continue to be governed under Vault. And when a unified archive is needed for legal or operational readiness, Vault exports can be seamlessly ingested into the same secure repository — giving the team one complete, searchable source of truth.
Every communication channel is covered. Depending on Chat history settings and retention requirements, Zenphi can archive Google Chat messages via API export or automatically process Chat data exported from Vault. Regardless of the method, no conversations fall through the cracks.
And because user access extends beyond accounts, Zenphi goes further — listing every device associated with the departing user and remotely signing them out or blocking access entirely. File sharing is cleaned up too: external shares are removed, and collaborators are notified so they can take action before access changes.
What used to take hours of coordination now happens instantly, securely, and with complete confidence that nothing has been missed.
The Results
- Google Workspace license savings: thousands recovered monthly
- Annual offboarding cost: went from ~$1M to <$200K
- Data residency: now 100% of company's data is kept inside customer cloud environment
CASE STUDY
See How Global IT Teams Cut Hundreds Of Thousands On Google Workspace Offboarding
Download the Case study to learn how a hospitality leader switched to Zenphi to automate Google Workspace offboarding and data archiving — and saved $800K per year.
