International Shareholder Service Case Study

  • An intuitive system that doesn’t require a lot of training and is easy for managers to use themselves.
  • Flexible design and process that allows for configuration to meet specific needs and requirements.
  • Attention to customer service and system performance. Short, intense cycle requiring responsiveness.

About

Founded in 1985, Institutional Shareholder Services group of companies (ISS) empowers investors and companies to build for long-term and sustainable growth by providing high-quality data, analytics, and insight. ISS’s 3,200 employees operate worldwide across 25 global locations in 15 countries. It’s approximately 4,200 clients, including many of the world’s leading institutional investors rely on ISS’s objective and impartial offerings, as well as public companies focused on ESG and governance risk mitigation as a shareholder value-enhancing measure. Clients rely on ISS’s expertise to help them make informed investment decisions.

In this interview, Melissa Goldberg, Human Resources, HRIS Manager, shares insights on the challenges ISS faced with their compensation processes, their evaluation process to select a solution, and the impact that Decusoft’s Compose platform has had on their
process.

The Challenge

Can you describe the primary challenges ISS faced in its compensation planning process?

As ISS grew, managing our year-end compensation planning process in Excel spreadsheets quickly became unsustainable. While spreadsheets were initially sufficient, they soon proved too manual and limited to support the scale and complexity of our evolving organization. With a growing employee base and increasingly intricate compensation requirements, we needed a solution that could scale alongside us and offer greater efficiency, accuracy, and process control.

What were you looking for in a new solution?

When evaluating potential solutions, we prioritized three critical requirements:
1. Ease of use for managers — ensuring that front-line and senior managers could navigate the system intuitively, minimizing training and ramp-up time.
2. Flexibility in design and process — allowing us to customize workflows, approvals, and calculations to fit our specific compensation structure, rather than forcing us into a rigid framework.
3. Exceptional customer service and performance — particularly important for us given our short but intense year-end compensation cycle, where timely support and system responsiveness are essential to success.

The Solution

How did ISS go about selecting a new compensation planning solution?

Our relationship with Decusoft dates back to 2010, when we were part of a different organization that had implemented their solution. After ISS spun off as a standalone company in 2014, we needed to establish our own compensation planning infrastructure. Based on our previous positive experience with Decusoft, they were the first partner we considered when the time came to implement a compensation system for ISS.

What made Decusoft Compose stand out over other solutions you evaluated?

Two factors set Decusoft Compose apart. First, we already had deep trust in the Decusoft team, having worked with them successfully in the past. Their reputation for attentive service, responsiveness, and reliability gave us confidence from the start. Second, Compose offered the flexibility we required, allowing us to fully configure the compensation process to align with our unique business needs and preferences. This combination of proven partnership and adaptable technology made Decusoft the clear choice.

The Results

How did the implementation process go?

We assigned a focused internal team to work closely with Decusoft on the implementation. Leveraging our previous experience with the  product, we were able to clearly define requirements and design a system tailored to our needs. We rolled out the platform to managers during the year-end cycle, conducting dedicated user training to ensure a smooth transition. Feedback from managers has consistently been positive; they regularly highlight how seamless and straightforward the process feels when using Compose.

What key benefits has ISS seen since implementing Decusoft Compose?

Since our 2014 spin-off, ISS has grown from approximately 700 employees to over 3,000 worldwide. Without Compose, managing compensation for this volume would be unthinkable in spreadsheets. The platform has allowed us to scale efficiently, involve a larger support team in the year-end process, and significantly improve administrative oversight. One of the most impactful benefits has been the ability to generate and
distribute compensation statements directly to all employees through the system – saving time, reducing errors, and improving  communication.

Can you share an example of how Compose improved compensation planning efficiency?

While we haven’t formally tracked time savings, Compose has unquestionably increased efficiency and reduced administrative burden. Tasks that once required extensive manual effort—like managing data updates, tracking approvals, and distributing compensation statements—are now streamlined and automated. This has freed up time for our team to focus on higher-value work and ensured that we can manage our growing workforce with confidence and precision.

How would you describe your overall experience working with Decusoft?

Our experience with Decusoft has been outstanding. The Compose platform has made our year-end process vastly more manageable, and we’ve been especially impressed by the product’s continuous evolution. We’ve seen firsthand how the Decusoft team listens to client feedback and integrates it into product improvements, making the solution even stronger over time. The Decusoft team has been a pleasure to partner with — responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely committed to our success. We’re proud to be a long-time client and are eager to continue contributing to the platform’s growth through focus groups and ongoing feedback.