How Brinqa Transformed Sales Compensation Management and Streamlined ASC 606 Compliance

Brinqa, a leading Cybersecurity SaaS provider, faced significant challenges in managing their complex sales compensation structure and ensuring ASC 606 compliance. With a growing team of sales representatives and customer success managers, their manual processes for commission calculations and revenue recognition became increasingly cumbersome and error-prone. Seeking to automate these critical financial processes, Brinqa turned to Visdum's advanced sales compensation management platform.

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About Brinqa

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HQ: Austin, Texas, USA

150+ Employees

Business Category: Cybersecurity SaaS

CRM: Salesforce

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Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Brinqa has established itself as a trusted cybersecurity partner for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and global enterprises. With a client roster that includes industry giants like Nestle, SAP, GitHub, Rolls Royce, Ring, and Warner Bros Discovery, Brinqa's reach spans diverse sectors. The company's innovative platform integrates advanced analytics, risk scoring, and automation capabilities to provide comprehensive visibility into cyber risk posture and enable informed decision-making for these high-profile organizations.

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The Challenge: Streamlining Complex Compensation and Ensuring ASC 606 Compliance

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As Brinqa experienced rapid growth, their manual processes for sales compensation and revenue recognition struggled to keep pace. The company faced four critical challenges:

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1. Intricate Commission Calculations: Brinqa's sales compensation structure includes complex elements such as tiers, accelerators, and different incentive models for Account Executives (AEs) and Customer Success Managers (CSMs). AEs are paid a percentage of bookings and collections on invoices, while CSMs' incentives are based on Net Retention Rate (NRR) and Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) compared against their portfolio. Managing these diverse compensation plans in Excel was tedious and lacked clarity.
   
   
2. ASC 606 Compliance: The Financial Controller faced a significant challenge in generating amortization reports manually. This process was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. Maintaining historical schedules, carrying forward balances, and creating recurring breakup revenue recognition for multi-year contracts were all managed through cumbersome manual processes.
   
   
3. Lack of Integration: The Revenue Operations team provided commission payment sheets to the Finance department, from which the former had to recreate their own amortization schedule format. This duplication of effort led to inefficiencies and potential discrepancies.
   
   
4. Historical Data Management: Tracking and maintaining historical data for commissions and revenue recognition was becoming increasingly difficult with their growing business, leading to potential compliance risks.

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These issues threatened to impede Brinqa's sales operations scalability and financial accuracy. Leadership recognized the urgent need for an automated solution that could handle their unique requirements and support their continued expansion.

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The Solution: An Integrated Platform For Sales Compensation Management and Revenue Recognition

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Confronted with these mounting challenges, Brinqa conducted a thorough evaluation of available solutions and ultimately chose Visdum's sales compensation automation platform. Visdum's ability to handle both complex commission structures and ASC 606 compliance requirements set it apart from other options.

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Why did Brinqa choose Visdum? 

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After evaluating several vendors, Brinqa's decision to implement Visdum was solidified by a combination of factors:

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1. Successful Proof of Concept (PoC): Visdum conducted a comprehensive PoC that demonstrated the platform's capability to handle Brinqa's specific requirements. During this phase, Visdum accurately modeled Brinqa's complex compensation plans and showcased how it could automate their ASC 606 compliance processes. This hands-on experience gave Brinqa confidence that Visdum could deliver on its promises.
   
   
2. Seamless Salesforce Integration: As a Salesforce-native application, Visdum offered straightforward integration with Brinqa's existing CRM. This meant that Brinqa could leverage their Salesforce data directly within Visdum, ensuring data consistency and eliminating the need for complex data migrations or synchronizations.
   
   
3. Flexible Compensation Plan Modeling: Visdum's adaptable framework allowed Brinqa to easily configure their diverse incentive structures for both Account Executives and Customer Success Managers. The platform's ability to handle tiers, accelerators, and different performance metrics (such as bookings, collections, NRR, and MRR) within a single system was a major selling point.
   
   
4. Robust ASC 606 Compliance Features: Visdum's built-in tools for managing revenue recognition, creating amortization schedules, and maintaining historical data addressed Brinqa's pressing needs for ASC 606 compliance. The automation of these processes promised to significantly reduce manual effort and improve accuracy.
   
   
5. Scalability: As a growing company, Brinqa needed a solution that could scale with their business. Visdum's cloud-based architecture and proven track record with other high-growth companies assured Brinqa that the platform could support their long-term needs.
   
   
6. User-Friendly Interface: Despite the complexity of the underlying calculations, Visdum's intuitive dashboards and self-service portals for sales reps were appealing to Brinqa's management. They saw the potential for increased transparency and reduced administrative queries.
   
   
7. Dedicated Support: Throughout the evaluation process, Visdum's team demonstrated a deep understanding of Brinqa's challenges and showed commitment to their success. This personalized attention gave Brinqa confidence in the ongoing support they would receive.

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The successful PoC, combined with Visdum's comprehensive feature set and tailored approach, ultimately convinced Brinqa that Visdum was the right choice for automating their sales compensation management and ensuring ASC 606 compliance efficiently.

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Results: Automated Compensation Management and Streamlined Financial Reporting

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By implementing Visdum's comprehensive solution, Brinqa has transformed its sales compensation management and financial reporting processes. The new system has yielded significant improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and compliance.

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• Automation of Complex Compensation Plans: Visdum accurately models and calculates commissions for both AEs and CSMs, taking into account tiers, accelerators, and performance metrics specific to each role.
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• Integrated ASC 606 Compliance: The platform automates the generation of amortization reports, maintaining historical schedules, and creating recurring breakup revenue recognition for multi-year contracts with ease.
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• Unified Data Source: Revenue Operations and Finance now work from a single, reliable data source, in a unified manner, eliminating duplication of effort and reducing the potential for discrepancies.
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• Historical Data Management: Visdum provides robust capabilities for tracking and maintaining historical data, ensuring that Brinqa can easily access and report on past compensation and revenue recognition information.
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• Improved Visibility for Sales Representatives: Both AEs and CSMs now have access to self-service dashboards where they can track their performance and projected commissions in real-time.

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Through Visdum's powerful automation capabilities, Brinqa has successfully streamlined its sales compensation management and ASC 606 compliance processes. This digital transformation has not only increased operational efficiency but also provided greater accuracy and transparency across the organization.

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Ready to simplify your sales compensation and revenue recognition processes?
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Let's explore how Visdum can transform your financial operations.

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