Comp Talk

Welcome to BetterComp

Written by Alan Miegel | Sep 23, 2020 12:44:00 PM

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).
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