Customer story: Bringing confidence to compensation management at Tiqets

Tiqets is an online booking platform for museums and attractions around the world. It connects travellers worldwide with more ways to experience culture. 

Founded in 2014, the Dutch series C company now has around 230 employees based around Europe, with the large majority of them based in Tiqets’ headquarters in Amsterdam.

Like most organisations, Tiqets was conducting very manual compensation reviews and relying on traditional methods for sourcing benchmarking data. This created a cumbersome planning process, eroded confidence in compensation between teams, and led to some difficult conversations that could have been avoided.

In this case study, we chat to Maartje Koopman, Head of People and Culture at Tiqets, about how Ravio has helped build trust within the organisation and streamline the compensation process end-to-end.

A lack of access to reliable benchmarking data hurt trust between teams

Before joining Ravio, Tiqets conducted most of their research through platforms such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor, and built a basic compensation framework based on their findings.

Not only was this time-consuming, but it was often inaccurate, resulting in a lack of confidence in the data. 

Tiqets’ previous compensation review process also raised reliability issues with managers and executives, which posed a challenge to Maartje and her team.

“It created frustrations with line managers. They didn’t trust the data that we came with, which made it difficult for us to discuss compensation and talk about what people’s pay should be. Were we paying the right amount to people, or were we way off in the market?” says Maartje.

This often happens when there isn’t a direct match between a role in the business and the benchmark used by the People team. It is common for very technical roles to be compensated differently, even though they may seem similar (e.g. front-end engineer vs. a back-end engineer).

Maartje and her team tried to find benchmarking data for roles they thought were similar, but employees didn’t feel these roles were specific enough, causing them to question the data and erode trust. 

The vision: Redefine what Tiqets needed from a compensation data provider

When Maartje Koopman joined Tiqets as Head of People and Culture, her main aim was to transform their compensation review into a structured, streamlined, and professional process. 

One of Maartje’s first actions was to look for a benchmarking solution that could offer Tiqets the reliable data they needed – both in the right sectors and roles. 

“It was very difficult for us to compare ourselves with the right sectors, organisations, and competitors as we are a digital tech scale-up,” says Maartje. 

“We have so many developer positions – like different engineering types and product roles – so we needed to look for more digital tech scaleups, versus large corporate organisations.”

“My goal was to pay fairly across countries, positions, and roles. That required having solid data to compare ourselves to the market, in order to ensure that we remain an attractive employer for the right talent.”

Ravio’s real-time global benchmarks and market filters meant it quickly became the number one choice for Maartje and her team to source relevant compensation data and improve Tiqets’ compensation review process. 

The result: How Tiqets built compensation confidence using Ravio

One of Maartje’s first steps to achieving her vision was to generate trust and buy-in from those in the business.

With Ravio, Maartje and her team are able to source reliable compensation data for relevant roles, making compensation discussions with line managers far easier.

“I think it’s so much better now. If managers look at Ravio, they see that the right comparisons are being made…We’re having the right conversations now,” says Maartje Koopman, Head of People and Culture at Tiqets. 

Streamlining the end-to-end compensation process using Ravio

What was once a time-consuming, multi-month exercise quickly became streamlined and simple – so much so that Maartje and her team only focus on their benchmarking process twice a year now, freeing up the rest of their time for more strategic, higher impact work.

“We’ve added so much time back into our day-to-day now that we have Ravio as our go-to  benchmarking provider. We check Ravio if we need to know about a specific role, versus having to spend a ton of time on compensation-related questions on a daily basis. We’d go crazy.”

This was a huge improvement from the previous year. When Maartje first joined Tiqets, compensation reviews were a tedious, extensive process.

“We have already made huge improvements in terms of how much time the whole process took us compared to last year. This year we will be able to go even faster. Our senior leadership can see that everything is running more smoothly than it was before.”

But it’s not just the new, real-time approach to benchmarking that saves Tiqets a significant amount of time and effort. Ravio’s integration with popular HRIS platforms make the flow of data far more streamlined and efficient, too.

Tiqets use Hibob as their HRIS. And what was a manual process of collecting benchmarks, making comparisons, and then transferring this into Hibob is now faster and easier. 

“I think what is also really useful is that there's a connection between HiBob and Ravio, so that there's real-time data working for us. That saves us a ton of time as well.”

Utilising Ravio’s easy-to-use compensation platform

Managing compensation reviews and benchmarking can be complicated – especially for those who don’t live and breathe compensation expertise every single day. This often means that People & Culture teams must provide thorough explanations alongside compensation data to line managers, to ensure they understand the context behind every compensation decision that affects their direct reports.

“I think that benchmarking itself needs explanation towards line managers. It's complicated, especially if you have to first explain how our organisation wants to pay. How does it work? Do we work within the 50th percentile or the 90th? And why?”

Luckily for the team at Tiqets, Ravio’s platform helps to visualise this clearly so that these discussions with managers and executives naturally become far easier. 

“It’s so easy to get the data out and to show them what's behind it in Ravio. The ease of reading the information and to find explicitly what's behind it,” explains Maartje Koopman, “it’s really great.”

“If we go to a specific category, we can see, okay, this is the description behind it. These are the types of positions that you have, and that makes it very easy and recognisable for everyone.”

Tiqets’ switch to Ravio has helped to transform their compensation review from an unstructured, unreliable, and time-consuming process to a streamlined and accurate one. 

With comprehensive, real-time data, Maartje Koopman has generated trust and buy-in from hiring managers and executives at Tiqets, helping them communicate compensation confidently within the organisation and beyond. 

With Ravio’s easy-to-use platform and integrations, Tiqets no longer needs to worry about a manual and time-consuming process. Instead, they can now complete their compensation review twice a year, allowing Maartje and her team to focus on other high-impact work that makes Tiqets such a great place to confidently work and grow.

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