How FTAPI professionalised compensation decision-making with Ravio's reliable market data

The challenge: Scaling fairness without a compensation playbook

FTAPI is Germany’s leading platform for GDPR-compliant data exchange, serving over 2,000 companies and more than a million users across public administration, healthcare, and other regulated industries. 

As a Munich-headquartered software company with ambitions to strengthen European sovereignty in data protection, FTAPI is operating in one of the world's most demanding compliance environments – a context where trust, data security, and fairness are paramount. And, with its latest major backing of Series B funding, FTAPI's success story sets an impressive example of both the potential, and indispensable importance, of the German tech ecosystem in strengthening Europe’s digital and economic independence.

But, when Kim Heckner joined FTAPI as Head of People and Culture nearly three years ago, she inherited a compensation system that was manually complex and not fully consistent throughout the whole company.

The human cost of ‘gut feeling’ was clear, and decisions weren’t always fair.

As Kim put it: "I don't like paying one person more because they're nice, or they asked when other people didn't." Kim’s belief was that fairness wasn't just a nice-to-have, but a prerequisite for building a people function that could be a true strategic partner to FTAPI's leadership.

What needed to change:

As FTAPI scaled, the flaws in their traditional approach were becoming apparent:

• No defensible benchmarks: When hiring managers questioned salary decisions, there was no credible data to reference.
• Some inconsistencies across roles
• No market visibility: Salary increase conversations relied on a variety of sources, differing per role or department. 
• Credibility gap: Compensation decisions felt arbitrary to employees, making it harder for HR to build trust with the broader team.

The solution: Professionalising compensation with trusted benchmarks as the foundation

Kim's first move was decisive: she would professionalise compensation, starting with the foundation – a verifiable, reliable data source.

Here's what FTAPI were looking for when evaluating compensation data providers:

1. German market data – not global averages

FTAPI doesn't compare itself to Google or Silicon Valley. It competes for talent in the German tech market, in itself a distinct ecosystem with different salary expectations, regulatory pressures, and compensation philosophies than those often revealed in US-skewed data sources. Many traditional salary survey providers default to global aggregates or markets where their data is strongest, diluting relevance.

“And, of course, as we then look to expand into other markets, having a tool that we know also supports multiple countries means we already have a solution when we grow."

2. Comparable peer data – SaaS/B2B/Scale-up, not large enterprise

FTAPI needed to benchmark against companies at a similar growth stage, and in a similar market position. Generic survey data, weighted toward larger enterprises, were skewing FTAPI's benchmarks upward and creating unrealistic expectations.

"Being a scale-up SaaS B2B company, the companies we wanted to compare ourselves to needed to be in the same sphere. We cannot compete with Google salaries, for example, so we needed to find a tool, with benchmarks comparable to our company.”

3. Data security and compliance built-in

As a data security focused company itself, FTAPI needed to feel confident that the data it was uploading to Ravio was treated with the same protections that FTAPI guarantees to its own customers.

"We needed to see all of the data security and protection regulations needed to meet our requirements."

4. Personio integration – an operational necessity

FTAPI uses Personio as its HRIS, and the ability to integrate Ravio directly with Personio was a critical requirement. Manual data entry or export/import workflows would defeat Kim’s purpose of modernising compensation.

Why FTAPI chose Ravio as their trusted benchmarking provider

Kim evaluated multiple providers, but Ravio's strengths aligned best with FTAPI's needs:

• Real-time German benchmarks covering the companies and roles FTAPI cared about
• Visible peer set transparency (being able to see which companies contribute to the data, building confidence in the comparisons)
• Enterprise-grade data security, with compliance built in from day one (fully GDPR-compliant, encrypted at rest and in transit, anonymised benchmarking data)
• Personio integration to keep the system of record seamless.

As Kim recalls, the decision came with initial scepticism: "Of course, people wanted to understand why we have to spend money on a product when we can search for the same information online for free. But Google and LLMs are not the Mr. Know-It-All”

She had buy-in from leadership because the case was clear: moving to a professional, defensible compensation process aligned with FTAPI's growth stage and strategic values – pulling compensation data directly from company HR systems through integrations provided documented, real salary information rather than synthesised estimates from mixed-quality online sources.

Using Ravio: Building internal confidence

The onboarding experience was “really smooth. The Ravio team were very helpful, always trying to make our lives easier, which is very much appreciated”.

But the real transformation happened as the FTAPI team began using the tool for real decisions:

"For us in the HR department, life became much easier. We could go into the benchmark section [of the Ravio platform]. I like this feature a lot because it shows the data I need to see. It gives the information I need straight away."

Three specific elements built trust for Kim:

1. Visible peer set

"Having the customer base – knowing where you get the data from and who we compare against – is very helpful. When I last looked at the list, we spotted companies that we wanted to compare ourselves to. That's very important."

Seeing this peer set created immediate credibility. FTAPI employees and managers could see the logic behind the benchmarks.

2. Clean, intuitive interface

Ravio's benchmarking module is clean and easy to navigate. For a fast-growing company where many leaders aren't compensation experts, accessibility matters. "A lot of the interface is very intuitive. That's also very important."

3. Exportable data

"You can export the data – or the bands you create yourself – into Excel, which is really helpful and needed, especially for sharing with the rest of the leadership team. It also helps having admin controls that let me manage the employee view – super convenient!"

The results: Shifting from gut feeling to data-backed decision making

Kim particularly highlights two key outcomes from introducing Ravio at FTAPI:

1. Increased confidence in compensation data and decisions

Kim notes that her current confidence in compensation data now stands in stark contrast to where it was when she first joined FTAPI.

"I wanted to have a more solid base, a more trustworthy base. Our compensation discussions are more productive now. Before Ravio, three people Googling the same question would find three different answers, so we'd waste time debating which data was right. Now we start from a shared baseline - 'here's what Ravio shows' - and focus our discussion on the actual decision. The quality of our conversations has gone from a 5 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10."

This is the core value: Ravio created a common baseline and a single source of truth – and one with a methodology Kim could trust.

Whether FTAPI chooses to follow that data or deviate from it, they’re still better prepared in the knowledge that they are now making an informed decision, not guesswork.

2. Defensible and equitable compensation decisions, every time

The most meaningful shift has been philosophical. The aim was never to make compensation “perfect”, but to make it defensible and equitable. 

"We have a different kind of compensation scheme and process in place now where I feel like we can be fair across the whole company, across all roles. And fairness is very important to me.”

For FTAPI, selecting a compensation tool wasn't just about benchmarking features. It was about trust. FTAPI integrates its Personio HRIS with Ravio, uploading sensitive employee data in the process, and this integration has to meet FTAPI’s security standards.

This is an often-overlooked dimension of tool selection in regulated industries: you can't outsource your compliance culture. Choosing a vendor is choosing to partner with someone who shares your values. For FTAPI, Ravio's security-first approach meant the partnership felt safe, and built on mutual trust.

Ravio's approach to security directly addressed FTAPI's concerns:

• GDPR compliance built-in: Every customer signs a Data Protection Agreement (DPA) compliant with UK and EU GDPR requirements. Personal data is anonymised in the benchmarking datasets, so it cannot be linked back to individual companies or employees.
• End-to-end encryption: All customer data is automatically encrypted both in transit and at rest. FTAPI's employee data doesn't sit unprotected on Ravio's servers.
• Independent third-party auditing: Ravio uses Vanta for real-time compliance and security monitoring, and undergoes annual penetration testing. For a compliance-conscious company like FTAPI, this transparency is reassuring.
• Anonymised benchmarking data: Ravio's benchmarks are fully aggregated and anonymised – FTAPI's salary information contributes to market data, but it's impossible to reverse-engineer which company any individual salary came from.
• Transparent trust centre: Ravio publishes a real-time Trust Centre detailing security practices across infrastructure, organisational security, product security, internal procedures, and data/privacy - a level of transparency rarely seen in the industry.

FTAPI has achieved what Kim set out to accomplish: a compensation process rooted in fairness, transparency, and data - and one that aligns with the company's mission and values.