How Match Group scales global operations with Kainos Smart automation
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“We have all the expertise in the world but the constraints of time and resources mean automation is our best path to success.”
About Match Group
Match Group, Inc. is a leading American internet and technology company based in Dallas, Texas, recognised for owning and operating the world’s largest portfolio of popular online dating services. Its diverse array of brands includes household names such as Tinder®, Match®, Hinge®, and Plenty of Fish®, among others. With a presence spanning 20 offices worldwide and a workforce of over 2,000 employees, Match Group has been at the forefront of online dating for more than two decades.
Driving global growth through Workday expansion
In 2017, Match Group took a bold step toward operational efficiency by implementing Workday HCM and Payroll. As the company grew, so did its needs, which led to the expansion of Workday Financials across North America in 2021 and internationally through 2023. The complexity of these expansions demanded a new level of operational optimisation, particularly in financial and administrative tasks.
Carolyn Kelfer, Director of Financial Systems at Match Group, recognised this and spearheaded a plan to automate these increasingly challenging routine tasks, thereby enabling the company to scale. “Our strategic plan has always been to unify under a single ERP system,” Carolyn expains, emphasising, “unifying that under a single solution in Workday has been fantastic.”
The challenge: Managing growth and complexity
As Match Group expanded, the need to manage constant change became more pressing. Carolyn’s team was responsible for the comprehensive testing of these changes to validate and ensure alignment with the organisation's goals. “We consider it our primary responsibility to secure and safeguard our existing processes,” Carolyn confirms. This approach was particularly crucial during Workday’s bi-annual feature releases, with Match Group seeking validation that established business processes still performed as expected post update.
Despite Workday providing a wealth of resources, including release notes, preview tenants, and support, Carolyn’s team couldn’t possibly test every single business process manually. This posed a challenge due to the company’s rapid growth and consequent testing requirements. “At any given time, my team could be configuring and testing a new integration, bringing a new entity onto Workday, or implementing a policy change - all at once,” she notes.
The complexity only deepened as unauthorised or inappropriate changes posed risks to production. Carolyn reflects, “The underlying concern was serious - without the right monitoring, something as simple as an admin thinking they were in a sandbox tenant could lead to issues.”
A need for automation
Faced with these operational challenges, the team knew it couldn’t rely on manual testing. “We could do nothing and just wait until something goes wrong, but really that’s just exchanging time spent proactively now for time to painfully investigate and respond later,” Carolyn says.
With automation the clear option, Match Group began discussions with Kainos about an automated testing platform. Carolyn knew that without it, Match Group’s challenges would continue and so opted for Kainos Smart Test, the Workday preferred test solution. “Smart Test allows our team to define custom testing scenarios that encompass the business processes, validations, integrations, and security most critical to our business,” Carolyn explains.
The results were transformative. With Smart Test, her team could run over 1,400 tests with zero manual clicks. “Our time investment is now reduced to addressing only the changes identified,” Carolyn shares. “What once took between two to three full-time resources now takes about 30 minutes every two weeks.”
Automating Workday releases: A game changer
Automation had an immediate impact during Workday’s biannual releases. “In a matter of hours, we have Smart Test compare the results of our tests in Sandbox to those in Preview, and any differences are flagged,” Carolyn explains. This process helped Match Group reduce testing effort by 90%, leaving more time to focus on delivering and rolling out new features and improvements.
One standout example, Carolyn recalls, was when a seemingly small update could have halted two critical financial processes: supplier invoices and purchase orders. “Without Smart Test, we would have had to manually identify and approve thousands of invoices and purchase orders. It would have been a nightmare, thanks to automation, that issue was averted.”
Smart Shield: Elevating security and testing
As Match Group automated its routine testing, it also faced another challenge: allowing users to safely perform ad hoc testing and training without exposing sensitive data. Carolyn’s team needed a solution to give users access to authentic data without risking personal information. “When an accountant proxies in Sandbox, they shouldn’t see an employee’s salary, bonus, or Social Security number,” she emphasises.
The solution was Smart Shield, which gives users elevated access in Sandbox while masking sensitive data. “Smart Shield allows my users to authenticate using a different URL that mirrors our environments, without impacting performance,” Carolyn explains. This innovation not only improved data security but also boosted the confidence and efficiency of users during testing.
The difference was evident. “Users completed testing faster and were more confident at go-live,” Carolyn shares. Smart Shield also simplified planning for live demonstrations and provided a secure environment for user training. One of the biggest benefits, she notes, was how it eliminated the need for 12 people to be in a room just to perform end-to-end testing. “That was a huge waste of time and resources,” Carlyn says, “Smart Shield has alleviated that drain.”
Smart Audit: Ensuring compliance and security
As someone with a background in Risk and Compliance, Carolyn took an additional interest in automating security monitoring and compliance checks. “I thought I was escaping when I moved to Financial Systems,” she jokes, “but turns out, on a near-daily basis, we’re building effective automated controls.” To streamline this, Match Group turned to Smart Audit.
Smart Audit provided an essential solution for automating security monitoring and ensuring compliance with segregation of duties (SOD).
Carolyn describes the initial baselining as a huge relief: “Security requests can now be reviewed and approved in under five minutes - an estimated 95% reduction in effort.” Not only did this streamline processes, but it also provided an unexpected benefit. “Sometimes your gut instinct is wrong, and Smart Audit shows that a particular role combination is safe to assign,” she adds.
A path to scalable success
By embracing automation with Kainos Smart, Match Group has successfully scaled its financial operations while maintaining security, efficiency, and compliance. From eliminating manual testing to safeguarding sensitive data, these innovations have transformed how the company approaches financial system management. “We have all the expertise in the world,” Carolyn concludes, “but the constraints of time and resources mean automation is our best path to success.”