HARMAN improves Workday audits and compliance with Kainos Smart Audit
“Configuration change detection has helped us meet our goal of reducing manual work by far the most.”
About HARMAN
HARMAN International is a global leader in connected technologies for automotive, consumer and enterprise markets. HARMAN employs 33,000 people across 126 locations worldwide. Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, the organisation operates across automotive, lifestyle and corporate divisions, creating a complex environment for system governance, security and audit.
Challenges with Workday audit and manual reporting
HARMAN implemented Workday in 2021 to enable more efficient, self-service HR processes. A complex structure and manual practices presented immediate challenges from an audit and compliance perspective. As Claire Cooper, Director of Master Data and System Governance, at HARMAN explains, “Workday delivers a robust platform for running efficient business processes, and as our organisation evolved, we needed deeper audit and control insights to address gaps and prepare for the future.”
To meet their compliance needs, the people systems team spent more than a year on an iterative cycle. This included manually building reports, running quarterly audits, responding to internal and external auditor feedback and refining controls. This approach was time-consuming, reactive and increasingly unsustainable for a global organisation operating across multiple divisions and regulatory environments. With a strong culture of best practice and high-end technology embedded in its DNA, HARMAN recognised the need for a more sophisticated, real-time approach to managing audit risk, configuration changes and access controls within Workday.
Smart Audit implementation for real-time configuration monitoring
HARMAN engaged Kainos in September 2023, selecting Kainos Smart Audit to support its vision of reducing manual audit effort while strengthening governance and compliance. Rather than rushing implementation, the team took a deliberate, highly structured approach. Over an extended scoping period, HARMAN worked closely with Kainos and internal audit to redesign controls, align monitoring to audit expectations and ensure complete transparency.
“Once we switched on Smart Audit, we could really see the amount of work needed to understand the information and design the tool properly, so we could explain it in enough detail to our auditors,” says Claire.
HARMAN went live with Smart Audit in 2025, initially focusing on access reviews and configuration change detection. Configuration change detection quickly became a standout capability, monitoring 43 high-priority Workday business processes such as hire, termination, job changes and one-time payments. Crucially, Smart Audit was embedded directly into HARMAN’s existing, automated change control and case management process. Risk alerts, approvals and evidence were connected end-to-end, creating a single, trusted source for audit reporting.
Benefits of Smart Audit for governance, compliance, and risk management
The introduction of real-time configuration change detection transformed HARMAN’s audit and governance model. Instead of retrospective, quarterly reviews, the team can now identify and question changes as they happen, dramatically reducing risk exposure. “You’re not waiting a whole quarter and then asking why something changed. It’s in real time, and that’s a huge benefit,” Claire explains.
Smart Audit has also reduced friction with both internal and external auditors. By providing a single, consolidated evidence base, auditors no longer require multiple reports from different systems, leading to smoother, more confident audit conversations. Beyond compliance, the solution has driven positive behavioural change across the administrator community. Clear visibility, accountability and the requirement to link every change back to an approved ticket have reinforced disciplined, auditable ways of working.
Results: real-time audit, risk reduction, and efficiency gains
After implementing Smart Audit, HARMAN achieved measurable improvements in both efficiency and risk management. The system now automatically detects and assesses approximately 1,000 configuration changes per year across 43 high-priority Workday business processes, from hire and termination to one-time payments. This real-time monitoring drastically reduces the time spent on manual audits and reporting. “Configuration change detection has helped us meet our goal of reducing manual work by far the most,” says Claire.
Beyond time savings, Smart Audit has streamlined internal and external audits, consolidating multiple reports into a single, trusted evidence base. Administrators now follow disciplined, auditable processes, linking every change back to approved tickets, which has increased accountability and reduced compliance risk. The result is a smoother, more confident audit experience and strengthened governance across HARMAN’s complex global HR systems.
Future plans: extending Smart Audit for segregation of duties
HARMAN plans to further extend its use of Smart Audit by introducing segregation of duties monitoring when the business is ready. This next phase is expected to deliver additional reductions in manual effort and further strengthen governance across Workday.
Reflecting on the journey, Claire concludes: “Once Smart Audit went live, the effort has been worthwhile. The benefits we’re seeing now will continue to pay off into the future.”