At beqom, we’re committed to empowering business leaders to build successful, high-performing teams. From VPs of HR and Chief People Officers to CFOs, COOs, and CEOs, we know that these leaders possess unique perspectives on what it takes to drive excellence within their organizations.
To tap into this wealth of knowledge, we’re kicking off a series of interviews with industry leaders, and what better way to begin than with our very own CEO, Fabio Ronga, recently honored as the 2024 Entrepreneur of the Year by Innovaud.
As a people-centric company, we believe in practicing what we preach, which is why we were eager to sit down with Fabio and hear his thoughts on leadership, innovation, and the future of compensation management.
Interview with Fabio Ronga
Key driver.Fierce determination & independent mind.
Main Focus.People.
Biggest Challenge.Convincing stakeholders of your vision.
This is the full length interview with Fabio Ronga.
Transcript
Fabio: When you are a CEO, honestly, you don’t want to be rewarded for your work. You want your company to succeed. A CEO by definition is like a coach. A coach doesn’t have a goal to be Coach of the Year, a coach wants the team to win the championship. So the value of the award is really to recognize that beqom has been successful.
Fabio: Your successes are always related to customers: when you acquire a big name customer, when you have a successful global go-live, when you develop a new component and customers are super happy with it. Then you know you are on the right track.
Fabio: When you start, you have a vision. Looking back, that vision was very close to what we have achieved today. But at the time, nobody believes you. Everybody is telling you that you are crazy. For every supporter, there are ten others telling you it won’t work. This may sound counterintuitive, but as an entrepreneur, you can’t listen to advice. You need an independent mind and you have to believe in yourself. If you don't have an independent mind you end up always agreeing with the biggest number of people.
“As an entrepreneur, you need an independent mind and you have to believe in yourself.”
Fabio: I never thought of it as a risk. I saw a need and I knew we could meet it. I worked for SAP, one of the biggest business software companies in the world, with thousands of developers, and they did not have a way to manage compensation in a complete and efficient way. To me it was not taking a risk, it was pursuing an opportunity – just doing what needed to be done.
Fabio: Again, it’s getting other people to align with your vision. You can’t do things without convincing other people. I knew 100% that bringing PayAnalytics and beqom together was the right thing for both companies. But then you have to communicate that vision and enroll others. And by the way, once you change their minds and convince them, you now have created high expectations and you are really under pressure to make sure it works.
Fabio: First of all, I don’t consider it my role as CEO to be an expert on compensation. My role is to listen to the experts and then assemble and empower teams to deliver the solutions that are needed to propel businesses forward—those things that everyone thinks are impossible. But to answer your question, I believe we are still moving towards the original beqom vision of total compensation, managing salary, bonus, long term incentives, sales commissions, and so on, in a comprehensive, efficient, and fair way, and tying those rewards to performance processes. The total comp approach has become more obvious now, after we have been preaching it to the market for the past 15 years, but still, many companies are not there yet.
Fabio: For one thing, AI holds the promise of removing human bias in decision making, which is particularly important in regards to pay decisions. Models have to be trained, but in the end AI models are easier to control than human behavior. beqom customers already use AI to offer the optimum, competitive rewards packages to attract the best talent, and to make fair and informed pay decisions without bias.
On the efficiency side, cycle times for many processes will be reduced to almost zero. Productivity is going to skyrocket. Because of AI, one day very soon we're going to do in one day what used to take one week. So we shouldn’t worry about whether AI will take jobs, we should figure out what new things we can accomplish now that we have this incredible new tool set.
About the series
This interview is part of the video series Leading People, where we sit down with the minds shaping the future of HR. beqom executives and other industry leaders share their personal journeys, discuss key challenges and successes, and offer unique insights on the evolving role of HR in today’s world.
About Fabio Ronga
Fabio Ronga is the co-founder and CEO of beqom, leading the company since its inception in 2008. Under his guidance, beqom has established itself as a leader in compensation technology, delivering a comprehensive SaaS platform for pay management, equity compliance, and AI-driven solutions. Prior to founding beqom, Fabio held senior roles at SAP and OutlookSoft, managing international growth and integration, and driving significant revenue increases. His extensive career in the enterprise software industry spans 30 years, marked by a strong focus on entrepreneurship, SaaS innovation, M&A, and strategic leadership.
Learn more about beqom's total compensation solutions
For more information about beqom’s solutions for managing total compensation, performance, and pay equity contact our experts to tell us your challenges or request a demo.
