How Braze guides managers to fast, data-backed compensation recommendations for every employee with Aeqium.

The Company

Braze is a leading customer engagement platform that powers real-time customer-centric interactions between consumers and brands.

‍As a growing post-IPO company, Braze has a nuanced compensation program that requires flexibility. To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its compensation reviews, Braze selected Aeqium for its improved insights and analysis and for its guided workflows, which help managers make data-backed comp decisions.

Braze uses Aeqium's tools – including Compensation Insights and Analysis, Compensation Bands, Employee Total Rewards Portal, and Compensation Cycle Planning — to enhance the organization's analysis, adjustment, and communication of compensation.

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‍“Aeqium has completely changed the way we do comp at Braze. It enables us to take a data-forward approach to comp planning, where managers and leadership feel confident about their recommendations. We have a very nuanced total rewards program, so Aeqium’s flexibility is key.

Aeqium has also allowed the Compensation and Equity teams to get out of spreadsheets, reduced the risk of human errors, and enhanced data integrity. This ultimately leads to better manager and employee experiences and improves our ability to engage and retain top talent.”

- Nishita Sethna - VP of Total Rewards

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The Challenge

Braze needed a compensation planning platform that could offer detailed analysis for leaders and simplify the process for managers to review employee compensation to make better recommendations. Additionally, they required a tool versatile enough to accommodate the complexities of their total rewards program while giving the compensation team full control. 

The team set out to improve key areas for their compensation analysis and reviews…

• Limited leadership insight into compensation analysis
• Manager confusion around compensation and the review process
• Manual data gathering and reliance on ad hoc reporting

Braze needed a scalable system in which decision-makers could review each employee in depth to make compensation recommendations that matched their contributions without becoming overwhelmed.

‍“Nailing our comp reviews is absolutely critical to maintaining employee confidence and satisfaction. As a compensation team, we’re accountable for establishing a process that helps managers understand and apply our comp philosophy to make the right decisions,” says Danada Hart, Global Compensation Manager at Braze. “Our partnership with Aeqium gives us a process that adds to the total experience for the employee, and that is a retention lever within itself.”

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The Solution

Braze aimed to improve their compensation analysis capabilities and improve their review workflows for managers and leadership alike.

“With Aeqium, our managers have access to each of their employees' salary, equity, and bonus information, and they know what they need to do next. Managers can easily create their own views, which I think is really helpful. Ultimately, we're reducing spreadsheets, emails, and touchpoints, and now it's all kind of becoming a one-stop shop,” says Danada. “We’ve had great success training our managers to use the tool effectively.”

To match their nuanced needs, they needed total flexibility from their tools.

‍“Aeqium has completely changed the way we do comp at Braze. It gives us a data-forward approach where managers feel confident about their recommendations and department heads can truly analyze the decisions being made. We have a very nuanced total rewards program, so Aeqium’s flexibility is key.” Nishita Sethna, VP of Total Rewards at Braze.

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The Results

Braze was able to quickly build a user-friendly process that their managers love.

“We have far fewer questions about the process and more of a focus on applying the compensation philosophy for their employees, which is a marked difference from previous cycles. Our managers estimate they complete their reviews in half the time and that there are 90% fewer errors in the data,” says Danada.

Managers have this to say about Aeqium:

• “This makes viewing the different methods of compensation types and approvals straightforward.” 
• “The process is really self-explanatory.” 
• “It’s my source of truth for anything comp related”

The team was most proud of the analytics they built for senior leadership. “The analytics that we were able to provide to our leaders, including our CEO, have been a major improvement and a huge credit to our compensation team.” Christos Louvis - Senior Global Compensation Analyst.

The process is also faster and less error-prone for the compensation team itself.

“When you don't have a comp tool like this, and you’re stuck in spreadsheets, everything takes a lot of time, not only for us but for managers. The time it takes to go from start to finish through a cycle in Aeqium has absolutely been cut down.” - Danada Hart

Aeqium has impressed everyone at Braze, even the finance team.

“Aeqium significantly reduced the risk, lost time, and frustration that came from running our compensation planning. It's been a true game-changer for us at Braze.”

- Isabelle Winkles, CFO 

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Test drive more manageable, more flexible compensation planning with Aeqium.

Compensation teams trust Aeqium for:

✅ Designing total compensation strategies

✅ Automating the prep work that goes into compensation planning

✅ Making data-driven decisions about employee compensation

✅ Seamlessly connecting information from across your people data ecosystem

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