Ramp builds a scalable, transparent commissions engine with CaptivateIQ

As Ramp’s go-to-market team grew rapidly and approached hundreds of payees, it became clear that their Google Sheets–based commissions process wouldn’t support the scale they were heading toward. The team decided to implement CaptivateIQ before reaching 100 payees, ensuring they had a more reliable foundation in place as growth continued.

[QUOTE
| quote: We were growing so fast that spreadsheets just weren’t manageable anymore. It was all over Google, Slack, Salesforce, you were constantly trying to tie everything together.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

Today, Ramp runs commissions on CaptivateIQ, giving admins and sellers a single, structured source of truth for plan logic, attainment, and payouts, backed by dashboards, inquiries, and a scalable data model that handles millions of transaction rows.

At a glance

Teams on CaptivateIQ:
Full GTM org, from SDRs and AEs through channel and post-sales
‍

‍Payees on platform:
~570 (up from ~260 when Shane joined)
‍

‍Previous state:
Google Sheets calculator plus manual emails and Slack inquiries
‍

‍Key outcomes:

‍‍Centralized, self-serve visibility for sellers and cross-functional partners
Structured dashboards for YTD attainment and OTE payout tracking
A unified workflow for plan documents and statements
Plan changes and complex logic managed in-house by Ramp’s team
A vendor partnership that rapidly incorporates customer feedback into the product

The Heroes

Meet Ramp’s Commissions and GTM Operations Team

Shane Chonis, Sales Compensation Leader

Veteran incentive compensation leader with more than two decades of experience across enterprise ICM systems. Oversees Ramp’s end-to-end commissions operations and drives scalable comp design as the GTM organization more than doubled in size. Known for balancing technical expertise with clear, transparent processes that empower sellers and admins alike.

Skyler Lewis, Sales Operations Associate

Owns day-to-day administration of Ramp’s compensation plans and is the architect behind many of the team’s core CaptivateIQ workflows. A detail oriented operations partner who helped implement Ramp’s initial plans, rebuilt GA tables, and now maintains ongoing plan updates for a 570 plus payee organization. Passionate about making compensation transparent, self-serve, and easy for sellers to trust.

The challenge: hypergrowth on fragile spreadsheets

Before CaptivateIQ, Ramp’s commissions process lived in a patchwork of tools:

Google Sheets for payout calculators
Salesforce reports to figure out which deals were included
Email and Slack for questions, exceptions, and manual clarifications

[QUOTE
| quote: For reps, it was basically a calculator. If they wanted to know what made up their attainment, they had to jump into Salesforce and try to connect the dots. Nothing was in one place.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

As Ramp’s GTM headcount surged, this setup introduced operational risk:

Spreadsheets strained under millions of lines of transactional card data
Admins had to manually verify that credits, quotas, and payouts tied out
Reps chased answers across tools, increasing noise for the comp team
Plan changes risked breaking fragile formulas

Shane, who has decades of experience in incentive compensation and has worked with multiple ICM systems, knew this was not sustainable.

[QUOTE
| quote: Without an ICM, doing what we are doing now would be a nightmare. I’ve done it in Google Sheets before. At Ramp’s current scale, it just doesn’t work.
| name: Shane C.
| title: Sales Compensation Leader, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/694685e63c57125b139c31e0_Shane%20C..png
|]

Why Ramp chose CaptivateIQ

Ramp selected CaptivateIQ because it uniquely combined visibility, scalability, and ease of ownership, ultimately enabling a 50% reduction in rep inquiries and restoring trust across a 500+ payee organization.

What stood out most to the team:

Flexible data model and integrations

CaptivateIQ gave Ramp an underlying foundation that could actually keep up with their growth and high-volume transaction data. The team highlighted several advantages:

Handles Ramp’s scale without breaking — millions of card-transaction rows flow into the system reliably, something spreadsheets and legacy tools struggled to support.
Admin-owned data operations — the comp team can manage connectors and data pipelines themselves, reducing reliance on engineering.
Fast troubleshooting + validation — transparent data flows make it easy to identify issues, reconcile discrepancies, and verify crediting logic.

Supports frequent plan changes — flexible modeling and data structures allow Ramp to iterate on compensation plans in sync with their fast-growing GTM org.

[QUOTE
| quote: (With CaptivateIQ) Getting our data in from different data connectors is something our team can handle ourselves. That makes triaging issues and verifying data a lot easier.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

Structured payee experience

Statements in CaptivateIQ now show every relevant detail in one place, including:

Credited accounts and deals
The value of those credits
Applicable rates
Quota and attainment roll ups

Single system for inquiries and documentation

Instead of scattered tools, reps now:

View statements and underlying data in CaptivateIQ
Submit inquiries in-app
Receive plan documents and contracts through the same system

Vendor partnership and responsiveness

[QUOTE
| quote: My favorite thing about CaptivateIQ is how receptive they are to feedback.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

[QUOTE
| quote: There was a payout workflow issue I mentioned to our CSM, and it was fixed within what felt like a week. Even small nitpicks get addressed, and bigger items make it onto t he roadmap.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

Implementation: a true partnership

Skyler joined Ramp just as the team was beginning implementation, and CaptivateIQ’s onboarding approach mattered.

[QUOTE
| quote: I was new to ICM, new to the tool, and my first task was helping implement CaptivateIQ. Our implementation lead acted as a partner.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

Ramp and CaptivateIQ:

Set up a shared Slack channel for real-time collaboration
Built plans together live and iterated jointly
Combined Ramp’s understanding of plan requirements with CaptivateIQ best practices

From Skyler’s first implementation work to live plans in the system took roughly two to three months. This included:

Inbound and outbound SDR and AE plans
OTE-based structures
Several unique single person plans with custom logic

[QUOTE
| quote: For someone brand new to ICM, it felt very smooth. I was learning compensation design and CaptivateIQ at the same time, and our implementation partner guided me through both. CaptivateIQ is extremely user-friendly. It behaves very similarly to Excel, so the formula building felt intuitive. Even as a first-time ICM admin, I could pick it up fast.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

The solution: a single, trusted source of truth

With CaptivateIQ in place, Ramp rebuilt its commissions engine around three core pillars: visibility, scalability, and self-service.

Dashboards leaders can trust without ad-hoc reporting

Ramp’s dashboards now give leaders and cross-functional teams real-time clarity into attainment, OTE payout progress, and channel-specific views that used to require manual reporting.

[QUOTE
| quote: Dashboards are a huge gain. Teams can self-serve updates instead of pinging us for numbers.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

A payee experience reps can actually understand

Sellers no longer hunt through spreadsheets to understand their compensation. They can clearly see their credited accounts, deal values, rates, and how everything rolls into quota and attainment.

[QUOTE
| quote: People have a much better understanding of what makes up their numbers. And if they still have questions, they submit an inquiry right in CaptivateIQ.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

Plan changes without chaos

Ramp evolves its compensation plans frequently to match the pace of the business. CaptivateIQ allows the team to build and test new logic, schedule changes in advance, and update plans without disrupting existing statements or requiring engineering help.

[QUOTE
| quote: We change our plans a lot because we are always trying to get better. CaptivateIQ makes that manageable. Without CaptivateIQ, at our scale, it would be almost impossible.
| name: Shane C.
| title: Sales Compensation Leader, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/694685e63c57125b139c31e0_Shane%20C..png
|]

The impact: less chaos, more control

Reduced operational drag

Ramp eliminated the operational drag that once came with managing commissions. The team no longer spends hours reconciling spreadsheets against Salesforce or running manual verification cycles. And because CaptivateIQ is built to handle millions of transaction rows, the entire process now runs reliably at Ramp’s scale.

Better payee confidence and fewer fire drills

Reps understand how their payouts are calculated
Questions flow through a structured inquiry workflow
Plan documentation complements the in-product view

[QUOTE
| quote: I’d definitely say payees have more confidence now. They understand credits, quotas, and attainment a lot better.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

A product that keeps getting better

Ramp’s ongoing feedback has helped shape CaptivateIQ product improvements, from small workflow enhancements to upcoming initiatives.

Shane adds:

[QUOTE
| quote: We have been pushing for in-app document management for over a year. We have talked to product and leadership. Seeing that feedback reflected on the roadmap is huge.
| name: Shane C.
| title: Sales Compensation Leader, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/694685e63c57125b139c31e0_Shane%20C..png
|]

Advice to other teams

Asked what he would tell a company considering CaptivateIQ, Skyler focuses on flexibility and ownership:

[QUOTE
| quote: CaptivateIQ makes it easier for our team to manage data connectors, triage issues, and verify data. It is all in one place for us and for reps.
| name: Skyler L.
| title: Sales Operations Associate, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/69468480fa49c1c2768d7fb7_Skyler%20L..png
|]

Shane is more direct:

[QUOTE
| quote: If you are in Google Sheets, just do it. You will save yourself a lot of time and heartache. If you are choosing between ICM systems, weigh what matters more for you, scale or flexibility. But if you are not in an ICM at all, you absolutely need to get into one.
| name: Shane C.
| title: Sales Compensation Leader, Ramp
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/694685e63c57125b139c31e0_Shane%20C..png
|]

Looking ahead

Ramp continues to scale its GTM organization and evolve its compensation structure. CaptivateIQ remains the backbone that ensures data consistency, transparency, and alignment between strategy and execution.

With improvements to the payee experience and in-app document workflows on the roadmap, Ramp sees even more opportunity to automate routine admin work and focus on what is next.