Comp Talk from BetterComp

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## Market Pricing Evolution


If you’ve been in compensation for... a lot of years, you likely remember the days when your market data came from hard copy reports. (Do you remember those three ring binders??) You’d then spend the next several months doing data entry into what became a humongous spreadsheet so you could come up with your market reference points. 

You were happy when it was all done, but then you’d have to do it all over again the next year.

Does that bring back feelings of nostalgia? No? Well, I can’t say I blame you.

## The Emergence of Market Pricing Systems


If you were anything like me, it felt like a game changer when the first cloud based market pricing systems came onto the scene. Market data was magically at your fingertips! What took months to complete could now be done in weeks. Imagine that!

I remember logging into my first online market pricing system; the excitement I felt when I could search through my Mercer, Radford, and Towers (now Willis Towers Watson) surveys within the application.

The best part was pricing a job in several minutes versus the half hour it used to take. Once I had my first taste of using market pricing software, I knew I’d never go back to data entry and spreadsheets (as much as I loved my beautiful spreadsheets).

I was so thrilled about my experience using technology, that I left my practitioner role to join the emerging compensation software space. Creating delight for my kindred compensation peers was enormously rewarding. It still is. And that is why I joined BetterComp.

I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to be part of a company that focuses on YOU, the customer, with a mission to craft a Better market pricing experience end to end.

## The Changing Compensation Landscape



Since I joined the compensation software world, the comp landscape has evolved quite a bit:

- Data has become more accessible
- There are more ways to slice and dice survey data than ever before
- Survey vendors have continued to refine the way they collect, organize, and provide data back to you
- You want to do more with the data you have, to glean insights that are not immediately evident when looking at the data
- You want to feel confident in the accuracy of your market intelligence to help drive better decision making
- You want to maintain consistency in how you define market matches for different jobs in different locations 
- You want to get your work done when you want to do it, without having to wait days for a vendor to load data
- And you want to know when and where those pesky anomalies and outliers are hiding


The problems we’re trying to solve for you today are not the same ones from 20 years ago. How you approach compensation has evolved, but the solutions you’ve been using have not fundamentally changed. So you’ve been experiencing a different kind of friction in your market pricing process. We’re on a mission to help you get rid of that friction and make market pricing Better.

Listening to your ideas and feedback has been central to our approach in building a Better solution, enabling a Better process. Technology is rapidly advancing in so many areas of our lives. We believe that it’s time for market pricing technology to meet you where you are today, and to carry you where you’re going tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to collaborating with you!

Sandra, 
Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer


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Why I joined BetterComp

BetterComp is the only platform designed from the ground up around improving your compensation market pricing process. We make your process...Better. 

Welcome to BetterComp!

Thanks for stopping by, we're so glad you decided to check us out.

A number of people have been wondering what I've been up to over the last year. Well, now you know!  Apologies for keeping most of you in the dark, but we've been busy. More on that later....

The last year has been probably the most rewarding of my career as I've been able to do multiple things that I love: geek out about market pricing, talk to dozen of customers about their real needs, and work with with people that I love. Hearing from customers was probably the most impactful, hearing what they really want to get out of the technology to solve their problem, and hearing it away from the bias that creeps in if a sales process is involved.

You may be asking yourself, "Self...how is BetterComp a new company but they were able to talk to dozens of customers?" Great question!

One of the things I've been fortunate enough to accumulate over the last 20 years is a great set of relationships in the world of compensation. Many of you have become my friends, Facebook friends, Instagram friends, etc. and that let us keep relationships going over nearly 2 decades. Heck, a few of you even got invited to my wedding (sorry if you didn't make the cut, the cake was really good).

What became clear after dozens of conversations was that people wanted something Better. They didn't want a "revolution", they wanted Better ways to get their work done.  There were many areas getting in their way of realizing all the value they could, but they knew they could get there with a Better solution.

I'll get to what we learned, but first some background: Each customer we spoke with had multiple surveys from multiple vendors - really good data sources like Radford, McLagan, Mercer, Willis Towers Watson, Culpepper, etc. Each customer also had an existing market pricing system in place like Salary.com's CompAnalyst, PayScale's MarketPay or PayFactors Survey Management, and each solution was represented, some more than others, but we heard from a few customers from each vendor.

What was fascinating to me was that the feedback was the same, regardless of industry, size, or what system they used. Everyone had the same issues. This includes: 

1. Not a single customer was using the whole solution, they all had unused modules. **They were paying for things they weren't even using.** 
2. Worse yet, **1/3 of the customers weren't using their existing system at all,** for reasons like it was more work than it saved (and they were still paying for it). Clearly the sales experience was more compelling than their customer experience. 
3. Every customer had **issues with the most basic function the systems are designed for - matching jobs and finding the the right data.**  The fact that these systems are designed with that specific process in mind and that customers universally had issues still blows our collective mind. 
4. Every customer had experienced **vendor driven delays**, waiting for the vendor to load a file or produce analysis that they couldn't do in the system on their own.  
5. Every customer wanted to have **more control over the process**, they wanted to be empowered to make changes. Some wanted the option to go to the vendor for support, but they didn't want to HAVE to use the vendor to do everything (because of the delays and the lack of control).


 
***

With this in mind, we set up building a new way to market price, a Better way to market price. I'd love to tell you more here but the competition is probably just as curious as you are so I'll just leave you with this - it's SO much Better. It's Better for customers, it's Better for survey providers, it's Better for consultants, it's Better for us, supporting our customers. 

As one of our customers put it: "It's just...Better."


Alan, Co-Founder and CEO


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