How A Parent Media Co. enjoys cross-border flexibility and support with Deel

A Parent Media Co. knows what it takes to grow a global audience. Since launching Kid Doodle TV in 2014, the company has expanded from a Canadian media startup into a cross-border operation with 80 employees in Canada, 71 in the United States, and contractors in Spain and India. Managing that growth meant managing an increasingly complex workforce. Their legacy HR and payroll stack wasn't keeping up.

The company was running on Rippling, a platform that worked for domestic employees but fell short globally. When the company needed to expand to international markets, the platform lacked strong EOR and contractor support. When employees needed clear, itemized payslips, Rippling's opaque pay statements created confusion and an ongoing support burden for the company’s People team. And when benefit integrations failed, particularly around 401(k) enrollment, the team was left troubleshooting API errors rather than serving their people.

Compounding these issues was a lack of dedicated support. Without a named customer success manager, every problem became a search through support queues. For a lean People team navigating multi-country compliance obligations across two legal entities and multiple jurisdictions, that wasn't sustainable.

After evaluating alternatives (including ADP, which was ruled out due to product concerns and weaker talent management capabilities), A Parent Media Co. set its sights on a platform that could handle both the complexity they had today and the growth ahead.

“We needed a platform that could grow with us—not just handle Canadian payroll, but support our US employees, our international contractors, and whatever comes next. Rippling couldn't do that, and we knew we were outgrowing it.” — Maria Bircanin, People Business Partner, A Parent Media

A Parent Media Co. selected Deel for its ability to consolidate global payroll, compliance, and HR management in a single platform. The decision was driven by Deel's integrated offering across Deel’s PEO (US) and Global Payroll (Canada), two products that addressed the company’s core operating model without requiring them to stitch together multiple vendors or manage fragmented relationships.

The implementation moved quickly. Over two months, the company’s People team worked through structured data preparation, coordinating closely with Deel's implementation team via a dedicated Slack channel. The communication model made a real difference: issues were resolved quickly, questions didn't disappear into ticket queues, and the team felt genuinely supported at every step. It was a direct contrast to the experience they'd had with their previous provider.

One of the immediate wins was clarity. Deel's payslips gave US employees itemized visibility into their payroll deductions for the first time, a meaningful upgrade that reduced confusion and inbound HR questions across the organization. On the compliance side, the company’s People team began using Deel's Knowledge Hub to navigate state-specific FMLA and parental leave requirements, replacing ad hoc legal research with a centralized, always-current online resource.

The company chose to keep employee benefits plans managed through existing brokers. Deel’s PEO fully supports this flexibility for clients. Instead of forcing a wholesale replacement of everything that was already working, Deel’s PEO is tailored to businesses. A Parent Media Co. liked this approach and relies on Deel to take care of HR admin, tax filing, and compliance for PEO employees in the US.

“What stood out about Deel was how responsive the team was—from evaluation through go-live, we always had someone who knew our account and our situation. That's a completely different experience than what we had before.” — Maria Bircanin, People Business Partner, A Parent Media

A Parent Media Co. completed two successful pay cycles within weeks of go-live, a clean start that validated the data preparation work. It gave the People team immediate confidence in the platform.

Consolidating payroll and HR into a single system eliminated operational friction that had been a persistent drain. Benefits enrollment, contractor management, and compliance workflows that previously required workarounds or external escalations are now handled quickly within Deel. The lean People team spends less time on administration and more time on the strategic work that moves the business forward.

For the company’s CFO, the case for Deel was built on three pillars: operational efficiency, compliance risk reduction, and scalability. As the company continues to grow, including navigating complex multi-jurisdictional scenarios such as employees who live internationally but work in the United States, Deel gives leadership the confidence that their people infrastructure can keep pace.

With Deel now underpinning payroll and HR across multiple countries, A Parent Media has the infrastructure to hire, manage, and pay their global team without the previous operational drag.