‘Create cultures based on meritocracy rather than cronyism,’ beqom CEO says

Taking the helm of beqom was not necessarily an untested waters for Lars Pedersen – in fact, this is his sixth time as CEO of a private equity-owned company.

During his 30-year career, Pedersen has worked with both hardware and software companies, but beqom poses a slightly different path.

“This is a new industry for me – that’s been exciting,” he shares exclusively with UNLEASH.

“It was exactly the same situation in my previous five roles, where I also came from outside of the respective industry.

“When you do that, you tend to focus on leadership, strategy, and operational improvements using a lot of models – strategy models and leadership models, for example. 

“It’s a more generic approach, and then the specifics come from the industry itself. I find that this leaves more room for the rest of the employee base to step up and shine.”

Now, three months into his position, UNLEASH was curious to discover more about this “shine,” as well as how he is planning to drive the company’s continued success.

beqom’s current position and future plans

For Pedersen, there are three key areas to focus on when considering where beqom sits on the competitive landscape. 

The first is compensation management, which involves very difficult decisions – who to raise salaries for and by how much, as well as hiring decisions, such as what level to compensate new hires. Similarly, this applies to promotions and determining appropriate salary adjustments. 

Lars Pedersen, beqom’s CEO

The second is pay accuracy, pay equity, and pay transparency. Companies use beqom’s solutions to ensure they compensate based on merit rather than any unnecessary or inappropriate bias.

The third is performance assessments. Quite often, the two most difficult conversations to have between an employee and an employee revolve around pay and performance.

So for Pedersen, these are crucial discussions that companies have to get right to maintain an equilibrium. 

“The goal is to create cultures based on meritocracy rather than cronyism, favoritism, or other unfair practices,” he explains.

“I find it very exciting that we sit right at that important intersection between pay and performance.”

To stay at the forefront of this intersection, Pedersen will be splitting his focus between investing in new technology, while also branching into new market areas. 

“We have activity in most major regions of the world, and we will intensify our focus on partnerships, including sales partnerships,” he shares. “Through these partnerships, we may open up new geographical markets.”

However, more than half of what beqom spends its money on is technology. 

We are a software company operating in a very fast-paced space with constant changes,” he highlights. “When you’re in such an industry, you need to invest heavily in technology to stay ahead of those changes – and, in many cases, to help drive them.

“As I see it, our main driver of growth is probably going to be technology, but closely followed by new markets.”

The road ahead for beqom

With Pedersen at the helm, beqom has a number of exciting plans ahead.

One aspect that he’s particularly excited about is the company’s pay transparency solution. 

This serves two purposes: To help customers comply with upcoming regulations, while also addressing key issues, such as removing bias from performance assessments and ensuring employees understand their pay. 

“The combination of not understanding or feeling uneasy about pay, and similarly not understanding or feeling good about performance assessments, leads to frustration,” Pedersen explains.

When people are frustrated, they’re not at their best, and companies don’t get the best out of them. By addressing these critical questions, I think we can help companies elevate their performance in a balanced way.

“But I also want to focus more on learning and development for our own people. It’s not that the company hasn’t done this already, but I feel we need to do it a bit more.”

Six months ago, beqom bought the pay equity software PayAnalytics. Since the deal, Pedersen shares that a number of improvements have been made – including “sharpening our language around why we exist.” 

Yet Pedersen is keen to take the company in a slightly different direction, which he expresses is “more or less along the same path – just with a slight twist.” 

This is because, since the acquisition, beqom has signed a lot of new customers, meaning the flow of new customer sign-ups has increased dramatically.

“Of course, it’s great to have software that helps companies, but if you’re not really selling it, you’re not making a difference,” he says. 

“The combination of these two companies has expanded its reach, allowing us to have a bigger impact by signing up many more customers.”

Additionally, another focal area will be to increase the business’s merit-based approach. 

beqom’s overarching goal is to enable its customers to make pay decisions, hiring decisions, promotion decisions, and performance assessments in a merit-based way – removing unnecessary bias from these critical decisions.

The company is already doing this in its PayAnalytics solution, but Pedersen is set on extending it further into performance assessments. 

“Taking a step back, at a high level, you could describe what we do as helping companies become true meritocracies – ensuring that everyone gets a fair shot at success based on merit while eliminating biases from these key decisions,” he surmises.