55 Degrees AB, a Sweden-based SaaS company, provides agile analytics solutions for the Atlassian ecosystem and beyond, giving organizations secure visibility into how projects move across teams and portfolios. By helping teams understand what’s likely to finish, where risks are emerging, and how shifting priorities will impact outcomes, these solutions enable better decisions before deadlines or budgets are affected.

Serving enterprise customers across Europe and the United States, 55 Degrees is relied on by global organizations to handle sensitive workflow and project data. As adoption grew, the team knew that security and compliance couldn’t be an afterthought. It had to be a core part of how they earned and scaled that trust.

“We wanted our customers to think that we were the safest choice of anyone that could offer similar products,” said Julia Wester, co-founder of 55 Degrees. “We wanted to make it easy to choose us over anyone else — so we decided to differentiate from our competitors through data security.”

The company’s European roots made ISO 27001 a natural starting point — it required no lengthy observation period and aligned well with GDPR obligations. But as their US and international customer base grew, so did demand for SOC 2. Rather than treating these as competing frameworks, 55 Degrees approached compliance holistically: build one integrated program that satisfies both, without duplicating effort.

Beyond customer-facing trust signals, there was a very practical internal goal: reduce the burden of security questionnaires. As a 17-person team, every hour spent answering repetitive procurement questions was an hour not spent building a product.

55 Degrees began their SOC 2 journey with Advantage Partners in 2023, building on the ISO 27001 foundation they had already established. The engagement was structured to complement — not duplicate — their existing program, mapping controls across frameworks and integrating everything into a unified set of policies and procedures.

For Julia, who manages the compliance program internally, the experience stood in stark contrast to prior audit engagements.

“The whole audit process for SOC 2 was very straight-forward,” she said. “The auditing was largely done asynchronously, which I much preferred. But what made me feel most supported was the proactive communication — I didn’t have to chase anyone. Advantage Partners would contact me about where we were in the timeline before I had to ask.”

A key part of that confidence came from Advantage Partners’ annual audit readiness checklist — a concise, practical document outlining exactly what evidence is required going into the audit window. For a lean team using Vanta to maintain continuous compliance, this gave 55 Degrees a clear line of sight into audit readiness without surprises.

“When I could check off everything on that list, I was really confident the audit wasn’t going to be problematic,” said Julia. “It’s the least stressful audit I have — every year.”

When Advantage Partners expanded its own capabilities to support ISO 27001 auditing, 55 Degrees made the switch without hesitation — timing their transition to coincide with the start of a new three-year ISO certification cycle. The decision was straightforward: the SOC 2 experience with Advantage Partners had already earned their trust.

The investment in a rigorous, dual-framework compliance program has paid off in multiple concrete ways for 55 Degrees.

• Streamlined enterprise procurement: A major enterprise customer in the UK internally flagged 55 Degrees as a model vendor — “everything is sorted, they’re great” — after reviewing their security posture. In another instance, a large enterprise customer in the US cancelled an entire three-hour security review meeting explaining they already had everything they needed from 55 Degrees’ SOC 2 report and trust center.
• Measurable trust signal engagement: SOC 2 & ISO 27001 report downloads account for 38% of all resource activity on their trust center, indicating that stakeholders are actively seeking this documentation as part of vendor evaluations.
• Reduced questionnaire burden: Security questionnaire volume has dropped significantly — and when questionnaires do arrive, 55 Degrees confidently completes them faster and with higher quality answers.
• Internal maturity gains: The compliance process restructured how the engineering team handles production access and development activities — making 55 Degrees a more disciplined, enterprise-ready organization from the inside out.

“The audit is a proof of trust,” said Daniel Wester, co-founder of 55 Degrees. “It’s not just us saying we’re compliant — someone else is saying they checked and we’re doing it right. We’re protecting revenue, not losing it. And that matters more and more every year.”

Daniel’s advice to other companies embarking on this journey: don’t treat compliance as a one-time checkbox. Scope it broadly, maintain it continuously, and choose your auditor carefully.

“If every audit was super stressful and very awkward and difficult to communicate, that would completely change our experience and our perception of the whole compliance process. We found a true fit with Advantage Partners. Just go with them.”