Cardata

Cardata has been an innovator since its founding in 1999, delivering software and programs that simplify the mileage and vehicle reimbursement process for its clients. For the first two decades of its existence, Cardata was a 15-person, family owned and operated business with no real HR organization or talent strategy. There was no standardization on how pay decisions were made or raises awarded, and no safeguards against nepotism or bias.

When the company changed hands in 2021, its two new co-CEOs had a different vision. They wanted to bring people and culture to the forefront and put a formalized compensation structure in place that could efficiently scale as the company grew. A dedicated HR partner was brought on to build that structure from the ground up, ultimately evolving the compensation program into a total rewards system with data, transparency, and equity at its core.

The challenge for Cardata was that, unlike most tech companies, they are a search fund-backed company, not a venture capital-backed company, and their business model is focused on sustainable growth. This put Cardata in a position where they needed to find a source that not only provided the most comprehensive, relevant market data, but one that also fit within the budgetary constraints of the company. At the time, there was an HR department of one with multiple competing priorities, so it was equally important that the data be easy to access, search, and analyze without extra manual steps. Cardata found the right solution with HR Market Analysis from Payscale.

In the first 18 months that Cardata had a dedicated resource for HR, the company tripled in headcount. Positions were added to support client growth, existing roles were realigned, and new talent was recruited with the required skillsets to expand the product line as technology evolved. Cardata utilized Payfactors to understand market pricing for these new and changing roles, in addition to conducting a talent review to evaluate where the current staff fell
within the proposed pay bands being built.

Not only can Cardata access more competitive, granular data with Payscale and test out different market scenarios before publishing the results, but they can also create pricing projects for different teams and map out positions using internal titles. This enables Cardata to blend jobs and capture the unique responsibilities needed for each role. Titles and descriptions vary across organizations, and having the ability to combine a chosen percentage of one job with a chosen percentage of another is incredibly powerful — and something Cardata hasn’t been able to do with any of the free resources. Additionally, the Payscale pricing process has improved the efficiency of how quickly the Cardata team can match a job by over 50 percent.

In the year ahead, Cardata has plans to finalize and launch a clear compensation framework that includes all of the jobs within the organization and the associated pay bands. They want to be transparent about what it takes to get increases and how promotions will impact compensation, and they want to provide education on why the compensation system works the way it does. By putting this structure in place, Cardata can continue to grow sustainably as a company — so they can be there for their employees and customers and be set up for success both now, during times of economic headwinds, and in the future.