Engagement & Retention project | Sprinto

Compliance Leads

1–2× per week

Monitor dashboard, assign tasks, review status & risk

≥2 tasks/actions/week

Dev/Ops Engineers

2–4× per month

Resolve control failures, integrate tools, respond to alerts

Resolved issue within 30 days

Auditors

On-demand (audit lifecycle)

Review evidence, comment, approve controls

Reviewed at least once during audit

Name

Early-stage SaaS startup

Growing SaaS scale-up

Mature scaling SaaS

Mid-market SaaS

Large enterprise SaaS

Company Size

1–50

50–100

100–500

500–2000

2000+

Nature of their product and architecture

Basic, one product with simple functionality. Tech architecture is basic and not scalable.

Majorly one product with simple functionality in few areas and more complex functionalities in customer critical areas. Parts of the tech architecture are getting more scalable but most of it to quickly unblock customer or deals. Pricing plans are very basic or officially doesn't exist

Generally One or more products. Dedicated product teams to focus on most areas of the product. Product starts to become more customisable to accomodate variety of customers. Major transformation in tech architecture is required or in-progress to handle larger customers.

Multiple products, major product has reached maturity and now is highly customisable. Other products are showing that promise. Tech architecture in major products are now mature to support scale. Company focussing on other product lines.

All of the products are highly scalable and with stable tech architecture. Growth has slowed down. Product is extensively vast and requires proper expertise on customer's end to implement.

As the company now has more surplus money, starts focussing on cutting-edge technology to find out next breakthrough to increase revenue.

Engagement Driver

Quick SOC 2 reports for sales deals (solves immediate pain).

Alerts for control failures (proves ongoing value).

Multi-framework dashboards (saves time for compliance teams).

Vendor risk modules (critical for global audits).

Custom reports for execs (aligns with governance goals).

Churn Risk

Manual work post-audit → "Why keep Sprinto if compliance is done?". Increase in cost of AWS, Azure due to compliance

Too many false alerts → seen as "noisy tool."

Complex setups → "Not worth the effort" if ROI isn’t clear. Lesser number of integrations

Siloed teams → "Only security uses it, others ignore.".

Less number of integrations, lesser depth of integrations. Customisation not supported as they scaled

Budget cuts → "Compliance tools are first to go."

Less number of integrations, lesser depth of integrations. Customisation not supported as they scaled

Retention Tactic

Auto-enroll in "Continuous Monitoring" post-audit, highlight new integrations.

Quarterly health checks + customize alert thresholds.

ROI calculator + dedicated TAM for onboarding.

1. Cross-team training (finance, legal) + Slack/Teams integrations.
2. 48 hours guaranteed issue resolution

1. Tie Sprinto to ESG/GRC goals + annual executive briefings.
2. On-demand hours support and 24 hours issue resolution.

User Segmentation

1. Founder or CTO
Key Feature Used:
- Guided framework setup (SOC 2/ISO templates, policy library)
- Integrations for evidence collection (AWS, GitHub, etc.)
- Compliance status dashboard and checklists
- Sprinto’s audit readiness guidance (expert support

2. Development and devops team
- Integrations setup (cloud platforms, CI/CD pipelines)
- Continuous monitoring alerts for misconfigurations
- Task management (remediating issues Sprinto flags, e.g. enabling MFA, fixing cloud config)
- Slack/Jira notifications (if configured) for compliance tasks

1. VP of Engineering or Infra Operations person
   
   - Continuous compliance monitoring (ensuring no control drift between audits)
   - Multi-framework support (e.g. adding ISO 27001 after SOC 2)
   - Policy management and employee training modules (to roll out security policies at scale)
   - Vendor risk management (starting to evaluate third-party risks as the company grows)
   
   2. Devops Team
   Alerts and anomaly detection: Monitoring Sprinto’s notifications about infrastructure changes or issuesaws.amazon.com
   - Remediation workflow integration: Using Sprinto’s tickets or API to resolve issues (e.g. update configurations, rotate keys)
   - Access reviews and asset management: Involvement in quarterly user access reviews or asset inventories if Sprinto facilitates these
   - Onboarding new systems: Connecting any new cloud service or tool to Sprinto as the stack expands
   
   3. CTO
   Executive reports: Uses Sprinto to get high-level reports on compliance posture (e.g. monthly summary of risk & compliance status)
   - Risk acceptance workflow
   
   

1. Compliance Lead
   -Multi-framework management: Running several compliance programs in one platform (e.g. SOC 2 + ISO 27001 + GDPR)
   - Continuous control monitoring: Always-on control tests with real-time alerts for issues (feeds from DevOps integrations)
   
2. Devops Team
   - Broader integration landscape: Many integrations configured (cloud platforms, identity providers, endpoint management, etc.) so Sprinto covers the expanded tech stack
   - Alert response and remediation: Frequent involvement in investigating Sprinto’s alerts about anomalies or control failures, and validating fixes
   
   
3. HR Ops or HR head: Ensuring people related compliance tasks like policy acknowledgment, hiring evaluation, Background verification trainings, device reporting are done
4. CTO-High-level risk & compliance metrics. Involvement in major exceptions:
   

1. Compliance Lead:
   -Full-suite GRC features: Utilizing risk management (quantitative risk scores, risk register), compliance automation, vendor risk management, incident tracking if available
   - Common control framework: Mapping controls across many standards
   - Analytics and reporting:
   
   2. Risk Management Team: focusses on defining various types of risks, mitigating controls and risk scores
   
   3. HR Ops or HR head: Ensuring people related compliance tasks like policy acknowledgment, hiring evaluation, Background verification trainings, device reporting are done . This is done along with Managers
   
   4. Devops Team: Expanded continuous monitoring: Dozens of integrations with cloud accounts and on-prem systems
   
   - User access and device compliance
   
   -Change management tracking
   
   5. CTO-Portfolio view of compliance and risk
   Strategy and budgeting

1. Compliance Lead:
   -Full-suite GRC features: Utilizing risk management (quantitative risk scores, risk register), compliance automation, vendor risk management, incident tracking if available
   - Common control framework: Mapping controls across many standards
   - Analytics and reporting:
   
   2. Risk Management Team: focusses on defining various types of risks, mitigating controls and risk scores
   
   3. HR Ops or HR head: Ensuring people related compliance tasks like policy acknowledgment, hiring evaluation, Background verification trainings, device reporting are done . This is done along with Managers
   
   4. Devops Team: Expanded continuous monitoring: Dozens of integrations with cloud accounts and on-prem systems
   
   - User access and device compliance
   
   -Change management tracking
   
   5. CTO-Portfolio view of compliance and risk
   Strategy and budgeting

Location

Major tech hubs (US, UK, India, Germany)

Major tech hubs (US, UK, India, Germany)

Major tech hubs (US, UK, India, Germany, Other EU countries)

US/EU, global presence

Global (distributed)

Funding Raised

Seed to Series A (up to $10M)

Series B (~$10-50M)

Series C/D (~$50M-200M)

Series D+ (~$200M+)

Public or Large private

Industry Domain

SaaS, fintech, productivity, EdTech, High-tech research firm

SaaS, FinTech, HRTech, HealthTech

SaaS, HealthTech, Finance, AI, Ecommerce

SaaS, Enterprise Software, regulated industries

Enterprise software, tech conglomerates

Stage of the company

Finding Product-Market Fit

Early scaling, aggressive growth

Scaling operations rapidly

Expanding globally, mature

Established, large scale operations

Organization Structure

Flat, founders-led, no dedicated compliance team

Founder, CTO, CFO

Small dedicated security team

Dedicated compliance/security teams

Large dedicated compliance/security divisions

Influencer

Founder, CTO

CTO, VP of Engineering

VP Security, Head of Compliance, CTO

CISO, CIO, Chief Risk Officer

Chief Compliance Officer, CISO, Chief Risk Officer

Decision Maker

Founder, CTO

CTO, Security lead

CISO, VP Security

CISO, Compliance Officer

CIO, Compliance head

Decision Blocker

Other founder, Investor

CFO, Investor

CFO, some senior members in engineering team(engineer team too occupied)

Internal bureaucracy
Main blockers are
Finance teams, risk teams

Multiple stakeholders, extensive approvals

Main blockers could be
Finance team, Risk teams, security teams

Frequency of use case

Getting compliance (e.g., SOC2) for the first time to unblock first set of prospect/deals

Initial compliance to scale fast or unblock few large deals

Continuous compliance operations: Experimenting with how the overall compliance framework could work and what will not work.

Multi-framework ongoing audits, some of the processes like vendor management and access reviews are mature while policy reviews, training, risk management is getting optimised

Continuous multi-framework audits across the globe. All of the process from risk management, vendor management, access reviews, policy reviews etc are spread across multiple teams who manage them.

Products used in workplace

Google Workspace, Slack, AWS, GitHub

AWS/Azure/GCP, Notion, Height, Slack, GitHub, HRIS, vulnerability scanners, Hubspot

AWS/Azure/GCP/Oracle, Okta or similar tools, GitLab/Github, Jira/Asana, HRMS tools, background verification tools, vulnerability scanners, incident management tools

Azure/AWS/GCP, ServiceNow/Jira, Salesforce, Workday

Enterprise stack (Azure, AWS, Oracle), SIEM tools

How technically sophisticated are the decision makers?

High (engineer-led)

High (dedicated DevOps)- CTO and one of the founder are generally from tech background

Medium - Compliance team is just starting to form. Company is not in position to hire people with huge experience. While CTO is technically sound, compliance team is not that much.

Medium-high (established teams) but compliance team are just not that mature. Role of CTO/VP of engineering in decision making starts to reduce.

High (large tech/security teams). Compliance and security team has huge experience and are technically sound

Organizational Goals, current scenario and how compliance works(without Sprinto)

1. Get first few set of customers who are impressed by the product
2. Talk to potential prospects and customers to identify major product gaps to reach PMF
3. SO2 or compliance audit is just way to quickly get first few set of customers(depending on the industry). Some prospects are vary to use the product without that. They have no clue about how this works.
4. Not much familiar with security practices, most of the tasks is manually done as soon as possible as per prospects needs.

1. Having just reach PMF, they know want to scale quickly and get more and more customers.
2. They want to experiment the marketing channel which will work for them.
3. Compliance came up as blocker in few larger deals, was not a concern in smaller deals. They have basic idea about compliance but nothing in depth
4. They have basic security practices in change management or access. Rest of the practices are need driven.

1. They have average security practices in major areas like change management, access, vendor management, employee training etc.
2. They have figured out few marketing channels that are working well for them, want to focus on growing those channels more. Feature development is still heavily customer/prospect driven with bit of long-term strategy
3. They get first touch of reaching global markets. Customer base is still heavily in 1-2 countries but it starts to get global.
4. Compliance and security is not a deal-blocker at all, it is continuous part of orgs existence. They are audited for 2-3 frameworks, want to scale to more frameworks those to get global. Most of the process are spread across few tools which help the team but still manual.

1. They have good security practices in most areas and are exploring more advanced practices.
2. They are close to exhausting the existing ways that worked in major marketing channels identified during fast-scaling. They now need to identify new channels and rigorously experiment new channels. Major feature development is good mix of strategy and customer/prospect demand driven.
3. The customer base has started to look global now. Yet to tap in all the markets though.
4. They are certified with most popular major frameworks across the world. But due to complexity of operations and multiple teams, it becomes difficult for them to manage the operations. Each team has their own way of operations which leads to delay.

1. They have advanced security practices across the board
2. They have now reached almost all the major markets. They are focussing on completely new product lines or acquisition to drive growth. Bringing in new features doesn't add huge impact to revenue until very large change.
3. Customer base is global with few major markets, but customers across the globe.
4. They are certified not only with major global frameworks but regional ones too. The operations depend on team to team and product to product. They are looking for way to centralise and simplify this.

Driven by innovation or reducing risk?

Innovation-driven (need compliance as deal enabler)

Innovation-focused, compliance to facilitate growth

Balanced (innovation + risk management)

Risk management (compliance as reputation builder)

Risk aversion (compliance critical)

Preferred Outreach Channels

Email, Slack communities, founder referrals

LinkedIn, Email, webinars, Slack, founder referrals

LinkedIn, email, security conferences

Industry conferences, analyst reports, direct email

Enterprise sales teams, direct outreach, Gartner

Conversion Time

Short (2-4 weeks)

Moderate (1-2 months)

Moderate (1-3 months)

Long (3-6 months)

Very long (6-12 months)

GMV

<$1M

$1M-$10M

$10M-$50M

$50M-$200M

>$200M

Growth of company

High (50%+ YoY)

Very High (75-100% YoY)

High (40-75% YoY)

Moderate to High (20-50% YoY)

Steady (10-20% YoY)

Motivation

Quickly achieve compliance to close deals

Minimize manual compliance tasks, rapid growth

Automate, scale compliance efficiently

Robust compliance, audit readiness

Risk reduction, corporate governance

Where they spend time?

Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Product Hunt

LinkedIn, Twitter, Webinars, Slack Communities

LinkedIn, webinars, industry events

Industry forums, analyst reports, LinkedIn

Gartner, analyst conferences, industry forums

Where they spend money?

Engineering, Product dev tools

Marketing, Product scaling, Dev tools

Security tools, DevOps, compliance automation

Compliance/security tools, integrations

Enterprise software, compliance & risk tools

Power Users

Regularly use multiple modules/features; integrate Sprinto deeply into workflows. Typically Compliance leads at mid-market or larger firms.

Multiple frameworks (SOC2, ISO, HIPAA), Trust Center, Continuous monitoring, Detailed risk dashboards

Daily to Weekly

Automation, efficiency gains, central hub for all compliance needs

Complexity of integrations, cost vs. perceived value

Core Users

Regular but focused use; use a few features actively, mainly compliance managers at growing startups and scale-ups.

Single framework or limited multi-framework, Compliance dashboards, Evidence uploads, Audit preparation tools

Weekly to Monthly

Simplified compliance workflows, clear audit readiness visibility

Lack of feature depth, alternative solutions emerging

Casual Users

Occasional users; typically DevOps engineers, auditors, or startup founders who engage only when explicitly needed (audit cycle).

Integration setup, alert response, evidence submission/review

Monthly or Audit-Cycle only

Audit cycle pressure, specific task completion (alerts, evidence upload)

Infrequent usage reducing perceived ongoing value

Daily Users

Compliance leads in larger firms actively managing continuous compliance tasks (controls, alerts, reports).

Dashboard checks, alerts management, continuous monitoring

Daily

Deepen engagement by highlighting advanced analytics, automate routine compliance tasks further.

High alert volume leading to fatigue, cost-value misalignment

Weekly Users

Compliance managers at mid-sized or scale-up companies managing ongoing compliance tasks and audit readiness.

Compliance dashboards, evidence uploads, integration checks

Weekly

Encourage expansion to multi-framework usage, feature upselling (Trust Center, Security Questionnaires).

If weekly tasks become cumbersome or manual, users seek alternative tools

Monthly Users

Smaller companies or specialized roles (DevOps engineers) interacting primarily to resolve occasional compliance tasks or integration maintenance.

Remediation of integration issues, periodic system checks

Monthly

Increase frequency by integrating compliance tasks into their existing workflows (Jira, Slack integrations).

Alternative solutions emerge, Sprinto seen as peripheral

Audit-cycle Users

Auditors or early-stage startups engaging Sprinto explicitly during audits or compliance certifications.

Auditor dashboards, evidence review, SOC2/ISO templates

Yearly or Audit-cycle based (periodic intense use)

Move toward regular ongoing use by promoting continuous compliance benefits, reducing audit prep effort over time.

Post-audit churn if the value of continuous compliance isn't clear

Initial Onboarding

0–3 months

High engagement during implementation and integration setup.

Active Compliance

3–12 months

Consistent usage as teams complete compliance tasks and collect evidence.

First Certification

~3–15 months (varies)

Achieving a certification is a critical retention milestone and often leads to upsells.

Continuous Compliance

12+ months

Retention stabilizes as users transition into ongoing compliance and multi-framework use.

Initial Commitment

0–1 month

~100%

Deal signed; customer access provisioned. Some users disengage early post-payment.

Onboarding & Setup

1–3 months

~90–95%

Key drop-off period; risk from poor stakeholder involvement or delayed onboarding.

Implementation in Progress

3–9 months

~85–90%

Users actively uploading evidence, managing controls. Drop-off risk if certifications stall or get delayed.

First Certification Milestone

9–15 months

~80–85%

Major milestone; customers reaching this phase often stay longer and explore expansions. Drop-offs can happen due to budget constraints or change in customer priority or if they somehow wanted to do one certification and move to different tool due to bad experience.

Continuous Compliance Usage

15–24+ months

~75%+ (Stabilized)

Usage stabilizes; customers adopt multiple frameworks or adjacent modules (e.g., Trust Center).