In today’s saturated market, it can be easy for companies to over indulge on their tech stack. With so many integrations, having tools that overlap and generate unnecessary cost has become a huge issue for companies – especially in an economy of tighter budgets and careful spending.
Sastrify, founded in 2020, is on a mission to solve this issue. As the next generation software management platform, Sastrify helps companies cut costs by automating SaaS and cloud management and offering visibility in tool usage versus spend.
And it’s been a hugely successful story so far. In their first 2.5 years alone, Sastrify is a fully remote company that has expanded across Europe, including the UK, Germany, Spain and Serbia.
However, in the last year, Sastrify has intentionally pressed the brakes – shifting to more sustainable growth measures to match the broader economic landscape. For Claudia Korenko, People Experience Specialist at Sastrify, this means prioritising talent retention through building a strong compensation philosophy.
In this case study, Claudia shares how Sastrify has built their compensation philosophy rooted in transparency and fairness – and to do that, they needed reliable and accurate data from Ravio.
When Claudia joined Sastrify back in 2021, she was the first person in the people team and one of only 20 people in the entire organisation.
During that period, the focus was on setting up the company roots, including hiring, processes, and shaping the right workplace culture. Secondary to all of this was compensation.
“When it came to compensation, we very much took a freestyle approach. We didn’t have access to benchmarks, and instead we asked our network what a proper salary should be for certain roles in countries like the UK and Germany,” says Claudia Korenko, People Experience Specialist at Sastrify. “We took an educated guess and related it to what candidates shared with us.”
As Sastrify expanded and gained new funding, Claudia and her team recognised that they needed to build a compensation philosophy that supported Sastrify’s growth – one grounded in transparency, fairness, and support for a globally distributed team.
“We worked to define how we approach compensation for a complex global and remote environment,” says Claudia.
This included questions like whether to base pay on location, the specific data points to use, the frequency of pay reviews, and of course, what benchmarking tools Sastrify should use.
“We knew our compensation philosophy should bring clarity on how pay decisions are made, ensuring transparency in every step. We also had to strike the right balance between competing for talent and ensuring financial growth and stability in fluctuating market conditions.”
“To do that, Sastrify needed a compensation management tool with reliable benchmarking data.”
After shopping around, Sastrify chose a compensation provider with a strong presence in Europe. However, it didn’t take long for challenges to start cropping up.
"During our first compensation review of the year, we realised the data accuracy wasn’t aligning with what we saw in the market."
“At the beginning of 2024, during our first compensation review of the year, we realised the data accuracy wasn’t aligning with what we saw in the market,” Claudia explains.
“The benchmarks appeared inflated for key roles across product, customer success, and sales, particularly in Germany and Spain.”
For Sastrify, this raised serious concerns. After dedicating significant time and effort to establish a compensation philosophy rooted in transparency and fair pay decisions, encountering skewed data undermined the trust they had worked hard to build.
“At some point we completely lost trust in the data and we were paying for a benchmarking tool we couldn’t use,” says Claudia. “We felt we could not provide reliable benchmarks that showed we were paying fairly.”
With the need to uphold their transparency-driven philosophy, Claudia and her team sought a new solution – one that could provide the reliable benchmarks essential to Sastrify’s global compensation strategy.
That solution was Ravio.
Sastrify’s compensation philosophy centres on transparency, aiming to give employees a clear insight into how their compensation is determined, even in a global, remote environment. While Claudia and her team don’t disclose specific salaries, employees are encouraged to access insights into the benchmarks relevant to their roles – a practice that helps build trust and clarity.
“While we don’t share individual salaries, we do want to be as transparent as possible. Employees can see benchmarks and understand where they sit within their pay range,” Claudia explains.
“Often, they reach out to learn how their current package maps to a specific market data percentile for their role – or how their benchmark compares.”
To fully uphold their compensation philosophy, Sastrify needs accurate, real-time data that aligns with their market and peer group. Here’s why they chose Ravio to meet these needs.
One of the first things that drew Claudia and her team to Ravio was the option to access benchmarks for free before committing, especially given their prior experience.
“When we first got in touch with Ravio, we asked if it was possible to get three roles for free,” Claudia recalls.
“Thankfully, Ravio’s Sales team was incredibly responsive, and within one day, we had access to the data.”
Ravio’s quick, flexible approach and the accuracy of its benchmarks made a strong first impression.
“I really loved how easy it was working with Ravio, the communication and flexibility that they showed us,” says Claudia.
“We had no management buy-in at the start, as we were still contractually bound to our previous provider. But the data reliability and proactive support from the sales team, Julia and Nico, were convincing enough for us to choose Ravio.”
“It’s funny, I didn’t even see the platform because I was so impressed. The benchmarking data and transparent communication spoke for itself.”
With Ravio, Sastrify gained access to real-time, accurate data that aligned with their specific market environment and growth phase – a major improvement over their previous provider.
“Our previous provider put us in a bucket with tech companies who were much bigger than us – it didn’t make sense,” says Claudia.
In order to actually have realistic data that Sastrify could trust, they needed to be in a peer group that did make sense, i.e. growth-stage tech startups.
Luckily for Claudia, when they onboarded with Ravio, not only were the benchmarks more accurate, but the peer group and growth-phase alignment was also far more relevant, too.
“When we accessed Ravio’s data, we quickly realised the benchmarks were much more realistic and reliable. They made sense for specific roles based on what we knew from internal salaries and candidates,” says Claudia.
“Ravio also made sure the benchmarks and settings reflected the right company size and funding stage relevant to Sastrify.”
It meant that Claudia no longer needed to question whether a benchmark reflected the market, or if it was relevant to the right peer group.
It built confidence in Ravio’s data, which helped to streamline their review process and improved conversations with senior leadership and individual employees about compensation.
“When discussing pay raises, we can show that our recommendations are backed by accurate benchmarks. This has built a strong level of trust with our senior leadership as well as our employees in our compensation strategy.”
For Sastrify, a transparent compensation philosophy also meant ensuring that employees understood how their roles fit within the broader pay structure. A key part of implementing this with Ravio involved mapping Sastrify’s internal levels to Ravio’s framework to make sure compensation decisions were consistent and clear.
While this brought up initial feelings of dread for Claudia, the experience couldn’t have been more different.
“I thought it was going to be much more effort and a bigger headache, because I’m used to initial onboardings for tools always being a lot of pain and work on our end,” explains Claudia.
“But I was surprised how easy it was, and that the levelling made sense for us.”
Though Sastrify is a lean organisation, Claudia found that Ravio’s levelling system struck the right balance between being thorough and easy to understand. This structure allowed Sastrify to share clear insights with employees about where they fit within the broader compensation framework.
“I sent our levelling over to Ravio’s customer success team, and then after a few days it was online in the tool – it felt very smooth,” says Claudia Korenko, People Experience Specialist at Sastrify.
Ravio’s levelling framework is designed to be flexible for this very reason. We can either map employees to our levelling from scratch, or base it on a framework that customers like Sastrify provides. This ensures the setup works seamlessly for companies of any size or structure.
For Claudia and her team at Sastrify, the goal of compensation is simple: to create a process that is transparent, fair, and manageable across all roles and regions.
“Compensation is such a headache for People teams in startups, so just solving this pain is so crucial for us,” says Claudia. “It gives us ease of mind as well as time and energy to focus on strategy and retaining our best people.”
“When you really think about it, compensation is one of the most complex fields we have in the people space – especially when you are setting up and growing.”
One of the biggest challenges in compensation is conducting a fair, transparent and thorough compensation review process. This can take months and involve many different stakeholders. For Sastrify, who does this bi-annually, this requires a lot of manpower.
“Doing a salary review process is a huge effort for us. It has an impact on the company because it creates or breaks trust. It makes the difference between retaining people and losing them, or growing and succeeding as a company,” says Claudia.
However, Ravio makes this easier. Firstly by providing accurate, reliable benchmarks. Secondly, by offering different types of compensation – all in one place.
“I need to have base salary and variable salary together when doing my compensation review,” says Claudia. "My ultimate goal is to move away from spreadsheets forever.”
Luckily for Claudia, Ravio has recently released this very feature. Now, customers can see different types of compensation on Analyse Your Company, and compare base and variable pay together with equity, total cash, and total compensation.
This is part of the total goal of Ravio: to be one trusted source of compensation for companies.
Over the past four years, Sastrify has shifted from establishing compensation packages on gut feeling and candidate expectations to a data-driven and transparent process, cemented in a clear compensation philosophy.
Now, with Ravio’s real-time benchmarking to guide them, Claudia and her team at Sastrify are equipped to offer fair and competitive pay, streamline complex review processes, and build trust across their global team.
“Ravio has become a trusted partner in bringing transparency and efficiency to our complex, global compensation strategy. I’m confident that Sastrify can continue to grow, and I look forward to collaborating on even more features that benefit remote, fast-growing teams like ours.”
Interested in learning more about Sastrify’s compensation philosophy? Connect with Claudia on Linkedin, she is happy to share her experiences with you.
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