Vercel cuts plan update time in half with the Comp Builder Agent

At a glance

• Teams on CaptivateIQ: Account Executives, BDRs, Solutions Architects, 
and Sales leadership
• Commissions ownership: Sales Operations. Brent builds and administers plans 
in CaptivateIQ.

Before Comp Builder Agent

• New incentive requirements were translated into new logic by hand
• Plan logic that hadn't been touched for months needed to be relearned before changes could be made
• Complex logic needed to be rebuilt plan-by-plan across every affected team

After Comp Builder Agent

• Solutions Architect update finished in half the expected time, saving 16 hours of manual plan work
• Brent owns plan changes in CaptivateIQ end to end, with no wait on outside support
• Accurate on the first pass, with a better version of the logic in some cases
• The agent explains existing plan logic on request, so a diagnosis starts from the formula
• Multiple projects can be addressed in parallel as the agent works in the background

The challenge:

Turning incentive changes into working logic 
without slowing compensation

Compensation at Vercel is a recurring, highly sensitive workflow with strict compliance requirements. Incentives change from one cycle to the next, unexpected updates 
often arise, and issues need to be diagnosed in the context of live calculations and dependencies. Every one of those changes lands on Brent, who has to understand, update, and troubleshoot the underlying logic himself.

[QUOTE
| quote: Updating comp plans takes time. You have to translate incentive requirements into new columns and logic, then figure out how those changes work with everything else in the plan.
| name: Brent Poulsen
| title: Sales Operations Manager, Vercel
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/6ae7d57a9b0bc99c071a3adb_Brent%20Poulsen.png
|]

For the second half of FY27, Brent was rolling out a significant update to Solutions Architect compensation plans. The work required new revenue components across seven teams and was due by the end of the week, while separate, urgent issues in Vercel's other sales compensation plans required his attention at the same time.

To keep everything moving, Brent had to:

• Translate incentive requirements into working plan logic
• Confirm how existing logic worked before changing it
• Create and adapt complex formulas across affected plans
• Diagnose issues in parallel while validating new changes
• Complete the work under a compressed deadline

The solution:

Brent describes the change, the agent builds it

Brent was an early tester of the Comp Builder Agent and quickly saw the value. The Solutions Architect (SA) plan update was the first project he ran through end to end.

The update meant adding new revenue components to seven SA plans. For each one, Brent described the intended change in plain language, and the agent translated it into a plan-specific update using the compensation logic and data already in CaptivateIQ.

Judgment and approval stayed with Brent throughout. Before any change was applied, the agent created a preview of the proposed update alongside the plan logic it would affect. Brent reviewed each one against the surrounding logic, confirmed it matched the intended calculation, and approved it. The agent built each change, Brent reviewed it, and only then did it reach a live plan.

[QUOTE
| quote: I just put standard language into the builder and it built exactly what I needed. It doesn't need to be technical. The output was sometimes an even better version of what I wanted.
| name: Brent Poulsen
| title: Sales Operations Manager, Vercel
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/6ae7d57a9b0bc99c071a3adb_Brent%20Poulsen.png
|]

Then the week got harder. Midway through the SA project, urgent issues surfaced in Vercel's AE plans. He used the agent there too, asking it to explain the existing logic and pinpoint the calculation problem. What would've taken hours troubleshooting by hand took minutes, and Brent fixed it himself rather than filing a ticket and waiting.

By the end of the week, the SA update was done in roughly half the expected time, saving an estimated 16 hours of manual effort. Even with the unexpected AE issues, Brent finished on schedule.

The agent built each change, Brent reviewed it, and only then did it reach a live plan. All of it happened inside CaptivateIQ, the same governed, compliant system that already holds Vercel's compensation logic.

[QUOTE
| quote: It’s built within CaptivateIQ, so it already knows how the platform works. It understands our compensation logic and makes changes right where that logic lives, so we can move faster inside a governed, compliant system.
| name: Brent Poulsen
| title: Sales Operations Manager, Vercel
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/6ae7d57a9b0bc99c071a3adb_Brent%20Poulsen.png
|]

What Vercel built with the Comp Builder Agent

• New revenue components across seven Solutions Architect plans from plain- language requests
• Plan-specific updates built on Vercel's existing compensation logic and data, so nothing broke downstream
• Diagnosed calculation issues in AE plans while the main update was in progress
• Explanations of existing logic on request, used to pinpoint the AE calculation issue

The impact:

Less time building, more time improving

The Solutions Architect update changed how Brent spends his time. He spends less of it building plans and debugging logic, and more of it moving compensation work forward on his own.

• Kept two workstreams on schedule: Brent was able to tackle multiple high-priority projects simultaneously by working with the agent as a partner.
• Met deadlines without outside help: Brent diagnosed and fixed the AE issues himself, with no professional services hours or support tickets.
• Diagnosed problems faster in existing plans: When an issue surfaces, the agent explains the current logic and points to the calculation involved, so Brent skips the manual reread before making the fix.
• More time on the work that improves comp: The hours Brent used to spend building and debugging plan logic now go to the rep experience, cross-team collaboration, and incentive design.

Advice to other teams

Vercel has the expertise to build its own tools, and Brent uses Claude as a primary AI tool. A capable model can draft plan logic. What it can't do on its own is meet the requirements compensation carries. Payouts have to run through SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliant workflows with audit-ready controls, because external auditors review 
comp expense and can only rely on a system that meets that standard.

The Comp Builder Agent works inside that system, so a business request in plain language becomes a plan change teams can preview against the surrounding 
logic, review, and apply in one place. That plan-aware preview makes it easier to see what will happen, review the change in context, and apply it with confidence.

Because that work happens inside the governed, compliant system that already 
houses Vercel's compensation logic and audit controls, Brent moves faster and more independently without changing where compensation work gets done.

[QUOTE
| quote: Comp Builder Agent lets me own the change from request to working plan. It understands the compensation logic already there, shows me what will change, and lets me review and apply the update without relying on outside support. That’s exactly what I'm looking for.
| name: Brent Poulsen
| title: Sales Operations Manager, Vercel
| image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/6ae7d57a9b0bc99c071a3adb_Brent%20Poulsen.png
|]