GoCardless Shifts from Reactive Maintenance to Strategic Innovation

GoCardless, a global leader in direct bank payments, empowers over 85,000 businesses to get paid seamlessly. As a rapidly scaling fintech with a distributed workforce, GoCardless required an Apple device management solution that was as efficient, secure, and modern as its own platform.

The Challenge: A beast of an MDM was stifling growth

GoCardless was struggling with a “gold standard” device management solution that was complex, unreliable, and resource-intensive. Managed by a third party, the system created as many problems as it solved, leading to significant operational friction and security concerns.

We were spending almost a full-time engineer's worth of effort just on our device management.

Marc Littlefair Head of IT, GoCardless

The key pain points the team were facing included:

• Cripplingly slow onboarding: Device enrollment regularly exceeded an hour—and frequently failed, requiring complete resets. Creating a frustrating "day one" experience for new hires.
• Unreliable software updates: Application deployments were inconsistent, and critical auto-updates for the OS and apps failed without warning. This left the fleet vulnerable and made it "way harder" to maintain the stringent compliance required in the fintech industry.
• Low confidence in critical controls: Essential tasks like remote wipes lacked reliability, creating operational anxiety for the IT team.
• Operational drag: IT engineering bogged down in manual work and frustrating back-and-forth communication with their third-party supplier, which meant the team was diverted from strategic projects. A simple to-do could take a week to implement.

The Turning Point: Finding efficiency and consistency with Kandji

Recognising the need for a better solution, GoCardless turned to Remitech, their trusted IT partner for workplace technology.

Rather than jumping straight to a recommendation, the Remitech team took the time to deeply understand GoCardless’s specific pain points—the operational drag, compliance risks, and poor user experience.

Only after fully mapping out these challenges did they introduce Kandji as a solution that could directly address the issues at hand. After a single demo, the path forward became clear.

I was very impressed. I immediately thought, 'we need this.' I was able to ask a lot of questions. Jack from Remitech and Ryan from Kandji, did a really good job in explaining everything. The ability to enforce automated software updates without needing user interaction was a key thing for us. It was a no-brainer.

Laura Lorca IT Engineer, GoCardless

With Kandji, the GoCardless IT team found a solution that aligned with their operational goals:

• Zero-touch deployment: Enrolled and secured new devices; ready for work in minutes.
• Automated patch management: Apps and OS are consistently up-to-date with fully automated updates that don’t need intervention.
• Fewer errors, stronger security: Improved the IT team’s trust in the platform and removed the need for constant monitoring.
• Self-Service app: Cut down support time by providing employees with apps and setup instructions, slashing setup time from hours to under 30 minutes.
• Okta integration: A better integration with Okta allowed the team to scope apps and settings to devices based on the user groups. This simplified the architecture while retaining flexibility.

Seeing Kandji do it with two or three button pushes was the impressive piece for me. The cost of someone sitting there doing it went from Laura wasting a week of her life doing all the research, to pushing a couple of buttons, and she was done in five minutes.

Marc Littlefair Head of IT, GoCardless

Strategic Rollout: Migrating 900 Devices Smoothly

The migration of 900 devices was completed in just a few weeks, a testament to Kandji's efficiency and the expert guidance from the Remitech team—but most importantly, an innovative approach by GoCardless's IT Engineer, Laura.

A User-Centric Migration Strategy

Rather than forcing an all-at-once rollout, Laura developed a thoughtful migration strategy that put employee convenience first. She offered employees flexibility through a booking system:

• A Google Forms booking system allowed employees to choose their preferred migration slot from 9 time slots over 3 weeks, putting control in their hands.
• Live Zoom support during each migration session ensured real-time assistance was available for any questions or issues.
• Dedicating only 3 time blocks per week to migrations meant normal business operations continued uninterrupted.

We managed to push all those 900 people over three weeks. And we only did it Thursday evening, Friday, and Monday mornings. So each week, it was just those small slots for less disturbance.

Laura Lorca IT Engineer, GoCardless

The steps taken were simple. Employees would join their scheduled Zoom call at their chosen time, activate the migration with live IT support available, sign into Okta again to complete the authentication setup, and continue working normally with all applications and settings preserved.

The migration was very smooth for the end users. It took around three minutes. Because Kandji didn’t force full screen, the users were able to continue working while they were doing the enrollment.

Laura Lorca IT Engineer, GoCardless

The Results: Reclaiming headspace and a “huge return on investment”

By partnering with Remitech and deploying Kandji, GoCardless has made a transformational leap from reactive operations to strategic IT.

The results have been transformative:

• Full-time engineer reclaimed: Manual MDM work eliminated, freeing up the equivalent of a full-time engineer, whose time is now dedicated to high-value projects.
• 83% faster device enrollment: Onboarding time dropped from 60+ mins to just 10 mins, getting new hires productive faster.
• Stronger security & compliance: With reliable, automated patching and trustworthy remote commands, GoCardless can easily maintain its rigorous security and compliance standards.
• Strategic IT focus: The time savings have given the IT team the "headspace" to focus on strategic initiatives like vulnerability management that were previously out of reach.

We've now just got a little bit more time to spend doing some actual proper thinking about things. It's giving us more headspace to think about them because we're now not worrying about our MDM.

Marc Littlefair Head of IT, GoCardless