What is an OKR Software & why do we need one?
OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results, are a popular goal setting framework for measuring progress and success in organizations. While OKRs are effective in driving execution by aligning a company’s vision, mission and strategy, many companies and teams continue to use spreadsheets for creating and tracking OKRs. However, there is an increased adoption of OKR software by companies to enhance their employee experience in aligning individual, team and company goals, setting day-to-day expectations for hybrid teams and building an overall growth-oriented culture.
What are the advantages of the OKR framework?
Here are six benefits of the OKR framework in your organization.
- Improves team alignment
OKRs help connect employees to their company’s mission. They help push everyone towards achieving goals that benefit your whole enterprise rather than just one person or group trying individually without any idea of what others might be doing elsewhere. It means OKR has something helpful at its core. There is a collaborative process among workers with individual tasks set out by managers. They all work together towards completing pieces necessary for reaching overall organizational objectives. - Allows better focus on priorities
One of the best ways to increase productivity is by focusing on what matters. Each team should have between two to four objectives prioritized. It will help employees avoid distractions with other tasks. Employees would also experience much better productivity as they can remain immersed and complete tasks efficiently without getting caught up in distractions that might pull their attention. - Improves flexibility
Strategic OKRs are a revolutionary way of managing goals that shortens the goal cycle. It enables making adjustments and adapting easier. Annual and quarterly OKR cycles allow teams to choose which type best suits their needs. Whether it is personal, team-oriented, quarterly OKRs, or annual OKRs, teams can decide what fits best. - Adds accountability
The bottom-up goal-setting framework enables businesses to improve their operations through some of their best resources. It becomes possible by giving each employee an opportunity for success based on their circumstances at achieving that particular objective. Most times, OKRs aren’t set by managers but by those who work directly with customers, such as sales and customer service reps. - Improves communication
The OKR framework is a great way to ensure your company’s goals and accomplishments become crystal clear. With everyone able to see what others are working on, there will be more collaboration between co-workers and easy access for all levels within the organization.
It promotes transparency and fosters communication. Managers can use empathy when interacting with employees as they know how much each individual cares about achieving success. - Helps people go beyond the norm
One of the most effective tools for aligning everyone on a common goal is an OKR framework. The structure provides indicators to help teams think outside of their comfort zones and propose creative solutions. However, it does so with conditions you need to meet first, like being experienced enough or a mature company with tolerance for failures. In other words, it will not get upset if things do not go perfectly right away.
Parameters to check while choosing the best OKR software?
There are a few key parameters that you should check while choosing the best OKR software for your organization. Here they are:
1. Ease of use: The software should be easy to use, both for administrators and users. It should have a simple, intuitive interface that makes it easy to set up and track objectives and key results.
2. Flexibility: The software should be flexible enough to accommodate the specific needs of your organization. It should allow you to customize objective and key result hierarchies, set up different permission levels, and track progress in the way that makes the most sense for you.
3. Scalability: The software should be able to scale along with your organization. As you add more users and objectives, the software should be able to handle the increased load without any problems.
4. Integration: The software should integrate with the other tools and systems you use, such as your collaboration tools, project management software & other productivity tools. This will make it easier to track progress and automate the flow of data.
5. Reporting: The software should provide powerful reporting features that give you visibility into progress and help you identify areas of improvement.
6. Support: The vendor should offer excellent customer support in case you have any questions or run into any problems.
7. Pricing: The software should be affordable, especially given the value it can provide.
Choosing the right OKR software can be a challenge, but it’s well worth the effort. By taking the time to find the right tool for your organization, you can set yourself up for success in achieving your objectives.
We have put together a list of top 11 best OKR software ranked on the basis of above parameters. Here they are:
- Huminos
- Profitco
- Clickup
- Gtmhub
- Microsoft Viva (Ally)
- Lattice
- 15Five
- Leapsome
- Betterworks
- Culture Amp
- Workboard
#1.
Huminos is a comprehensive OKR software that encourages your people to aspire for impactful outcomes and align themselves, even if they are working remotely. Additionally, Huminos enables coaching people through conversations and feedback and engages them through campaigns, pulse surveys, celebrations and more so that you can build an inspiring growth-oriented performance culture.
The Huminos OKR solution is a quintessential daily use software where your teams can track OKRs, check-in for daily standups, schedule 1:1 or team meetings, manage tasks, link progress on tasks with the progress on Key Results and more. Additionally, it has a great dashboarding feature. Furthermore, managers can provide real-time appreciative and developmental feedback with coaching and 1:1 conversations.
Huminos has fantastic UI/UX and integrates seamlessly with your favorite collaboration and productivity platforms such as Slack, Jira, Microsoft teams, Workday, Asana, etc to make it easier for your team members to track progress in the flow of their work.
Pricing: Outcome based pricing starting with $1 per objective & $3 per achieved objective
#2.
Streamlining operations, improving communication, and boosting profits are essential for any business – large or small. That’s why Profit.co offers a full suite of OKR tools to help businesses of all sizes execute their strategies with ease.
Goal setting, performance tracking, and reporting are all crucial components of an effective results management system, and Profit.co has them covered.. Further, it comes with a free trial so you can try it out before committing to a plan. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, Profit.co has a plan that’s right for you.
Pricing: Starts at $7 per user per month
#3.
ClickUp is a cloud-based collaboration and project management tool that is suitable for small teams across industries. Clickup’s main features are communication and collaboration, task assignments and status tracking, alerts, and a task toolbar. It also has a goal management feature that can double up as an OKR tool. .
ClickUp’s goal management or OKR software makes it easy to set up and track OKRs, making it an easily available tool for businesses that want to improve their goal- setting and progress-tracking processes.
Pricing: Starts at $9 per user/month
#4.
The Gtmhub software helps businesses align their strategy with execution by using a process that begins with leadership alignment. Its intuitive design, whiteboarding and session based system allows leaders to quickly come up against tangible results for any brainstormed ideas in just one day–usually faster than it would take you if working on your own!
This particular tool is majorly suited towards enterprise grade organizations though can be used by medium sized companies as well. It’s a great tool for larger organizations.
Pricing: Starts at $7 per user/month
#5.
Microsoft Viva is a wonderful platform that empowers employees and teams to be their best from anywhere. Viva goals as part of Microsoft Viva is a great tool to align goals across organizations and ensure people are working towards the common goal.
With Microsoft Viva, leaders can use data to identify which of their employees are at risk for low performance and create interventions that will help them improve. Leaders can customize various dashboards for reporting purposes.
Pricing: Starts at $9 per user/month
#6.
Lattice is a people and success management platform and OKR is one of its solutions. Again one of those tools whose forte is not entirely OKRs but they do have it as a feature. Despite not being an OKR only focused solution, Lattice is a great tool to create and manage goals.
Lattice allows easy collaboration and keeps managers or leaders aware of the company’s overall progress in terms of performance. Besides, Lattice has one of the best user experiences and design. It offers multiple integrations for easy flow of data and improves efficiency.
Pricing: Starts at $11 per user/month
#7.
15five is a performance management solution that includes the OKR and goal tracking solution. It works on the principles of engaging, performing, focusing, and transforming.
Its employee conversation system has been applauded by the users. The solution focuses not only on OKRs but also on how employees can transform their career with their career vision feature. Training and coaching manager is another added feature that helps companies develop the skills of their talent pool.
Pricing: Starts at $11 per user/month
#8.
Leapsome is an all-in-one performance and goal-tracking software solution. It allows companies to create, track and align their goals with ease, and integrates well with tools such as Slack, Jira, Teams, etc. It tries to loop in performance, engagement, and learning into a single product.
When it comes to customization Leapsome easily cuts through the majority of its competitors. Overall with standard user experience and agility the platform has got its name among the top OKR software solutions in the market today.
Pricing: Custom pricing.
#9.
Betterworks is a great enterprise enablement platform. It has all the necessary features that you may need for your OKR project. From creating, tracking and managing goals to performance management, betterworks has got it covered. The customer service is great and their clients have often not shied away from talking about their good customer service. It has an API that allows you to connect it with other apps with the help of your developer.
Overall a good choice for an OKR management software.
Pricing: Starts at $10 per user per month.
#10.
Culture Amp is another employee experience platform that has made it to our top OKR software list. It has a culture-first approach and a great user experience. With performance management and employee engagement features Culture Amp has everything you may need for creating and managing OKRs.
Although the framework for OKRs may not be deeply engraved within the platform the users can easily use culture amp if they have enough knowledge on OKRs.
Pricing: Custom pricing.
#11.
Workboard focuses on strategy execution and has a great reporting view. As an OKR solution, workboard offers almost everything that you will need to manage your OKRs. The OKR heatmap is a great single view for top leaders and managers to see the progress of their OKRs in a single view. It also has all the basic integrations that you may need, the user experience may not be their best forte but the process is seamless throughout.
Besides, they have great learning resources to help you get started and improve as you move along.
Pricing: Starts at $9 per user/month.
With this list of our top best OKR software we hope you find the best fit for your business. Every business has their own needs and nobody likes unpleasant surprises, so it’s wise to try the top few before finalizing on one.
OKR FAQs:
- What are OKRs?
- OKRs stand for Objectives and Key Results. They provide a framework for setting measurable goals and tracking progress. OKRs can be used by individuals, teams, or organizations. The key benefits of using OKRs are that they help to focus and align effort, improve communication, and increase transparency. When setting OKRs, it is important to set objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Key results should be quantitative and tied to the objective.
- What is the history of OKRs?
- The history of OKRs can be traced back to the early days of the Internet boom. In the late 1990s, a number of companies began using key results to measure and track progress towards their objectives. Google was one of the first companies to widely adopt OKRs, and they continue to use them today. While the exact origins of OKRs are unclear, they have become an essential tool for setting and measuring progress in many industries. OKRs have been used by a variety of organizations, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. In recent years, OKRs have gained popularity as a way to measure progress in fast-paced and rapidly-changing industries such as technology and software development. While OKRs have a long history, they are still evolving and being refined to meet the needs of modern organizations.
- What are the objectives?
- Objectives are the goals that an individual or organization sets out to achieve. They are usually specific and measurable, and can be short-term or long-term. Objectives can be used to track progress and determine whether or not a company or individual is on track to achieving their goals. In addition, objectives can help to identify areas in need of improvement, and can provide a framework for making strategic decisions.
- How do you set up good objectives?
- A well-crafted objective should be aligned with the overall mission of the company or individual, and should take into account any resources and constraints that may impact its achievement. When setting objectives, it is important to be realistic and achievable, as this will help to ensure that they are actually met. Well-defined objectives are an essential part of any successful business or individual goal-setting effort.
- What are Key Results?
- key results are the specific measures used to track progress towards the goal. They should be quantifiable, and each key result should have a target value. For example, if the goal is to increase sales by 10%, then a key result could be to increase the number of sales by 10%.
- How do you set up good Key Results?
- First, key results should be specific and measurable. This will help you track progress and identify whether or not you are achieving your goals. Second, key results should be aligned with your company’s overall strategy. This will ensure that your efforts are focused on the most important objectives. Finally, key results should be challenging but achievable. Setting ambitious goals will motivate you and your team to reach new heights, but if they are too unrealistic, it can lead to frustration and disappointment. Keep these things in mind as you develop your key results, and you’ll be well on your way to success.
- What are tasks?
- In business, a task is a defined piece of work that is assigned to an individual or team. Typically, tasks are assigned as part of a larger project or goal and are key to achieving the desired outcome. Tasks can be big or small, and can vary in complexity depending on the nature of the work. For example, a task might be as simple as sending out an email, or it might be more complex, such as developing a new marketing campaign. Regardless of the size or complexity of the task, it is important to have a clear understanding of what needs to be done in order to complete it successfully.
- How should you track your tasks?
- Once a task is assigned, it is typically tracked by its due date and status. This helps to ensure that tasks are completed on time and allows managers to see at a glance which tasks are still outstanding. Tasks that are behind schedule or at risk of not being completed on time can be flagged for special attention. In some cases, tasks may also be assigned a priority level, which helps to ensure that the most important tasks are completed first. Tracking tasks in this way helps to ensure that work is progressing as planned and that deadlines are met.
- What is OKR alignment?
- OKR alignment is the process of ensuring that an organization’s OKRs are consistent with its overall strategy. The process involves setting goals aligned with the company’s strategic objectives and ensuring that all team members work towards these goals. It is essential to ensure that OKRs are aligned with the company’s strategy as this will help ensure that the company can achieve its desired results. Having well-aligned OKRs will also help to improve communication and collaboration within the company.
- What are aspirational OKRs?
- Aspirational OKRs are objectives that may not be achievable in the time frame set, but challenge employees to reach for higher levels of success. They can help to create a culture of excellence and stimulate innovation. Aspirational OKRs should be aligned with the company’s vision and realistic enough to stretch employees without being impossible to achieve. When setting aspirational OKRs, it is important to involve employees in the process and get their input on what objectives would be challenging yet achievable. This will help ensure that everyone is aligned to achieving the aspirational OKRs.
- What are committed OKRs?
- A committed OKR is a goal that an individual or team has committed to achieving. Unlike aspirational OKRs, which are goals that an individual or team would like to achieve, committed OKRs represent a specific, measurable target that the individual or team is working towards. To be successful, committed OKRs must be realistic and achievable, and should be aligned with the company’s overall strategy. Additionally, committed OKRs should be reviewed regularly to ensure that they are still relevant and achievable.
- Who is an OKR champion?
- An OKR champion is someone who understands the power of setting and achieving goals. They know how to set clear and achievable objectives, and they have the motivation to see them through. They also understand that effective goal-setting is a team effort, and they are willing to work with others to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Lastly, an OKR champion is also a great communicator, as they understand that clear and open communication is essential for achieving success. By working together and staying focused on the goal, an OKR champion can help their team achieve amazing things.
- Should OKRs be linked to compensation?
- The short answer is no: compensation should not be directly linked to OKRs. While it is important to set and track progress towards specific goals, compensation should be based on a variety of factors, including job responsibilities, skills, experience, and potential. By decoupling compensation from OKRs, organizations can avoid creating an unhealthy culture of competition and instead focus on building a collaborative environment where everyone can thrive.