Symplicity Spotlight: Matt Kennelly

Each and every day, our client managers and implementation managers across the globe help make our clients' day-to-day just a little bit easier. With a client support team that comes from across the student success spectrum, clients continuously speak to the dedication of our client support team, and at Symplicity we want to give them the attention they deserve. In our series, Symplicity Spotlight, we’re pulling back the curtain on those make Symplicity possible. 

In our latest installment, we are getting to know our Australian colleague Matt Kennelly, who supports clients in the region with Symplicity Advocate. 

Learn more about Kennely's favourite projects, features of Advocate, and more below!

Before you joined Symplicity, what sort of roles and industries were you working in?
Prior to starting at Symplicity, I worked in software and hardware product support. I worked at the Apple Store as a Genius before moving into software support at a number of tech firms around Brisbane. Immediately before starting at Symplicity, I worked in Customer Success and Account Management. I’ve always worked in the tech sector across a few different industries, including higher ed, resource management and legal support.

When I first heard about the role and saw that Symplicity operated in higher education technology solutions, I was drawn to the position because I’d previously worked in higher ed tech and I’d enjoyed working with different educational institutions around the world. When I had my first interview with Chris, I spoke about the types of things I like about working in technology – e.g. getting to know the ins-and-outs of products, working with clients to make sure the solution meets their needs – and he assured me that Symplicity was the sort of place where I’d get to do those things every day.

I think one of the biggest challenges for higher ed teams in Australia, especially in student wellbeing, conduct, and complaints, is managing disconnected systems that complicate how student info is handled. Advocate helps manage this challenge by becoming the source of truth for wellbeing, conduct, and complaints matters. The growing volume of cases, particularly around mental health, puts added pressure on staff. On top of that, keeping up with changing regulations and limited resources makes quick responses difficult. In Australia specifically, there’s the added challenge of meeting the new requirements set out in the Australian Universities Accord which is a government-led initiative aimed at reforming the higher education sector. It’s focused on improving access, equity, and regulatory frameworks to meet the needs of students and a lot of institutions are looking to Advocate and other Symplicity products to meet the requirements laid out in the Accord.

During my time at Symplicity, some of the bigger projects I’ve worked on have been with University of Queensland (UQ) and La Trobe University (LTU) and currently supporting the implementation for Western Sydney University (WSU). The UQ project was a really fulfilling challenge because it was my first major project at Symplicity, kicking off just weeks after I started. It was a enterprise-wide implementation of Advocate with business units from across the entire University so I had the opportunity to work with a really diverse group of users who handle very different types of matters.

I recently worked with the Human Resources team at James Cook University to help them implement Advocate Flex. The team at JCU were tasked with providing a reporting portal for staff that included the ability for staff to make reports anonymously. This was a commitment they’d made to their workforce off the back of a university-wide staff survey, and they had a very tight timeline to implement a solution. With Flex, we were able to quickly build a specific workflow for handling anonymous reports alongside workflows for handling identified reports and complaints.

My favourite feature in Advocate is the Rules engine. In our region with some of our bigger implementations, we often find the public forms are used by a number of teams which necessitates very complex case routing rules. Being able to configure complex routing rules to meet the needs of clients is something I really enjoy working on, and it’s very satisfying when everything just comes together and works!

Outside of work I am a bit of a homebody! I like to go for long walks where I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks, I like to read sci-fi novels and I like spending time with friends and family.

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