OKR stands for Objective and Key Results. As a goal setting framework, it is now not just how fast-growth tech companies set goals, it is gathering mainstream popularity. OKR software is a relatively new category, with OKR software companies seeing their growth being driven by the massive increase in popularity of the OKR framework.
The benefits of OKRs can be summarised as follows:
1. Increased Focus: Unlock improvements in productivity by prioritizing the most important goals
2. Better Alignment: Remove goal conflict by getting everyone focussed on the right goals
3. More Ambition: Unlock great performance by setting stretch goals
4. Extra Engagement: Engage and retain employees by empowering them with real business goals
Your choice of OKR software will depend on your size of company and whether you’re an OKR newbie or a mature OKR organization. The three categories of business we are going to look at are the SMB, Enterprise and Start-up.
ZOKRI – Best OKR Software for SMBs
When we’re defining an SMB think of a company of 20 – 500 people that is either wanting to grow or managing growth. For this type of company OKRs make a lot of sense as they will help to focus and align employee efforts whilst keeping teams agile and focused on the most important challenges being faced.
ZOKRI has welcomed over 4,000 SMBs to its OKR software platform. They come to the software with varying levels of OKR experience and what makes ZOKRI a leader in this category is its ability to be hyper-configurable. In the first quarter of OKRs you often want a simple and lightweight tool with advanced features like KPI and OKR meeting management hidden. As you mature most want to turn this on. This makes ZOKRI a perfect choice for maturing and growing SMBs.
ZOKRI also offers OKR coaching for SMBs that are new to OKRs. This coaching gets straight in to hands-on, pragmatic training with minimal theory and get teams started by working on their own business.
Betterworks – OKR Software for Enterprise
If you’re an Enterprise organization with over 3,000 people then consider Betterworks. It has been around since 2013, and early OKR pioneer John Doerr, is a Betterworks investor and board member. He is also the author of the popular OKR book ‘measure what matters’.
The platform has the security features large organizations insist on like SOC2 and the ability to also extend into HR related areas like Performance Management. With HR being a stakeholder in employee goal setting, this might be a requirement as well.
Like with ZOKRI, Betterworks offers OKR coaching to ensure the software in not the recipient of sub-optimal OKR practices, of which there are a few.
Google Sheet – OKR Software for Start-ups
You’ve got two choices as a start-up with less than 20 people, use a spreadsheet or an SMB solution like ZOKRI. For small teams, due to the size, alignment, communications, check-in management and reporting are not usually challenges that need to be solved with software. So it might be easier to start with a Google Sheet and make that the focus of a weekly company meeting.
You can use sheet tabs to set OKRs for the company and specific teams with a top-tip also being to use task or calendar reminders to ensure people update their OKRs at the right cadence, which for most is weekly.
As soon as you get traction and scale-up, software can then be embedded as it will make the management of OKRs much easier in the long-term.
