Squadzip is a tool to set up and implement Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) within your organization.
It’s the start of the year, plans and goals have been discussed but your organization may still not have a clear idea of how to execute them. A good place to start would be by considering the implementation of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). OKRs represent the latest evolution in approaches to managing organizational goals. Its rise to fame was initially spurred by the endorsement of Google. However, since its introduction, a great number of organizations around the world have adopted OKRs including Amazon, ING Bank, Adobe, Linkedin, Spotify, Airbnb, and more. (https://blog.weekdone.com/what-companies-use-okrs/)
Source: Article: A Brief History of Goal Management: From MBO to SMART, KPI, and OKR- Dec 26, 2019 (https://blog.trginternational.com/a-brief-history-of-goal-management)
You might be thinking, we know our goals so why even bother?
Now within your organization, you may have a bunch of goals set for the year similar to the example below:
Increase Revenue
Grow sales by 50%
Conduct at least 60 Presentations each month.
Run one online sales event each month
Do 500 cold calls per week.
Submit 20 proposals each month
Organize bi-monthly sales training sessions for the sales team
OKR Methodology is a process of setting up and aligning company and team goals (objectives) and connecting each objective with a few measurable results.
So the list of goals above when structured may be presented in this manner.
Our Objective is to Increase Revenue and our Desired Outcome is to Grow Sales by 50%
Now to get to this desired outcome the other bullets form part of the initiatives or activities needed to achieve the desired outcome.
So in both theory and practice, if we align our organization towards the performance of these activities, and closely monitor, and continuously measure our performance of these activities, we increase our chances of achieving our desired outcome.
So back to our initial question, why should you care about OKRs? Why is this important?
Most organizations fail in implementing a strategy. In their book The Balanced Scorecard, David Norton and Robert Kaplan noted that 90% of businesses fail to execute their strategy. A 2015 HBR article by Sull, Homkes, and Sull, reported that only 55% of middle managers surveyed could name one of the five top priorities of their organization.
When you are managing groups of people, 10 or more, 20, maybe hundreds of individuals in an organization the need for clarity and alignment becomes even more critical. This along with establishing regular checkpoints on progress towards OKRs and course corrections as needed shall aid in achieving desired outcomes.
(For more detailed information on OKRs we recommend the book Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundation/dp/0525536221)
Given this, allow me to introduce how Squadzip can perhaps help your organization establish and easily implement OKRs in your organization.
Let’s start with the Objective of Increase Revenue and the Desired Outcome of increasing Sales by 50%.
We can set this up using Squadzip’s Pipelines:
Let’s take our revenue from last year and bump this up by 50%. Let’s keep this in mind as when we set up your Pipelines it will be important to assign targets for individuals and teams. Targets when inputted in Squadzip can be inputted per individual which will add up to each team target. The sum of targets for all teams will give your organization’s overall target.
Pipelines on Squadzip can be set up to your exact company sales process. Pipelines on Squadzip allow us to recognize deals that have delays or longer than usual incubation periods, and deals that are stagnating or not being attended to by the sales reps. On top of this, Squadzip reports a pass-through rate which allows managers to identify the weak area in the sales process.
In this example, we see the pass-through rate is low in the stage of Presentation Completed to the Proposal Sent. This sends a signal to the managers that conducting presentations is a weak area and perhaps should be examined much more closer. Because Squadzip has a “reason for loss” feature, we are able to see that the company is losing 40% of its business due to pricing terms. These are just some examples of the insight we can take from Squadzip’s dashboards and analytics.
Looking closer at the Sales Pipeline of this organization we are able to see how the following initiatives or key activities all contribute toward sales:
Do 500 cold calls per week.
Run one online sales event each month (supporting activity that will help drive leads)
Conduct at least 60 Presentations each month.
Submit 20 proposals each month
Organize bi-monthly sales training sessions for the sales team (supporting activity that will help improve pass-through rates)
Now, most companies measure this from email reports, some use manual reports, and some use multiple data sources. They then consolidate these into spreadsheets for tracking and reporting purposes.
On Squadzip we can design report templates for the sales team. These reports such as the one below can be filled up in around 2 minutes or less. Squadzip will then automatically organize the post into a private company wiki, measure the performance of the key activity and allow these activities to be visualized on our dashboards, analytics, and exportable reports.
Here are some examples of how the templates may look for the organization in our example:
These templates can be created easily by a designated Squadzip admin or a sales manager or coordinator. They can be redesigned and edited in minutes. Each organization can have as many templates as needed for all types of use cases, whether it be sales, service, operations, and more.
The blue tags on these templates are called zip tags.
They are very similar to hashtags on social media. But Squadzip took the idea one step further. Zip tags are classified and organized into your private company wiki:
Person Ziptag - Contacts which could be customer contacts, partners, competitors
Company Ziptag - Contact Organizations which could be, customer organizations, partners, or competitors)
Product Ziptags - Your products/services as well as competing products and services
Group Ziptag - A tag used for market segmentation, grouping organizations into organization groups or industry groups, grouping products into product portfolios, and more.
Deal Ziptags which are Opportunity Ziptags - For deals that are in the works and not yet contracted. Project Ziptags - These are deals that have been signed and are in the fulfillment/delivery stages.
Event Tags - Used for promotional events, promos
Regular tags - Used to classify activities, results, topics
So what is a private company wiki? Unlike traditional CRMs, Squadzip’s goal from the beginning was to take the habits we learned using social media on a daily basis. When you want to catch up with an old friend (stalk) chances are you look them up on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. You will end up on their profile page, which shows a history of their posts. On Squadzip, if you need to prepare for an important meeting with a key client a good way to start would be to search for the client's profile.
You will end up on the client’s profile page.
All posts about or related to the client will be on that profile page. All key activities, such as meetings, discussions, proposals sent and received, and the entire client history will be on that profile page. You have profile pages not just for contacts, but for organizations you are meeting with, each product/service you sell will also have a profile page. So marketing teams can follow the action on the field and see each key activity involving their product in real-time. There are profile pages for key activities and issues. As an example, all customer support tickets can be consolidated into a single profile page. Allowing the team to view all tickets, and dashboards related to customer support conveniently from wherever they are.
Each deal will also have a profile page, allowing you to easily follow key issues, details, and requests that without Squadzip may be scattered across multiple platforms (email, chat, sms, CRM).
All these profile pages make up your private company wiki and are backed with powerful dashboards and analytics that uncover insight.
Squadzip is a tool that will allow you to follow the action, monitor key activities, and drive execution from anywhere.
Citations:
Ida, M., 2021. What Companies Use Okrs? - Weekdone. [online] Weekdone. Available at: <https://blog.weekdone.com/what-companies-use-okrs/> [Accessed 17 January 2021].
Yvanovich, R., 2021. A Brief History Of Goal Management: From MBO To SMART, KPI, And OKR. [online] Blog.trginternational.com. Available at: <https://blog.trginternational.com/a-brief-history-of-goal-management> [Accessed 17 January 2021].
Kaplan, Robert S., and David Norton. "The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that Drive Performance." Harvard Business Review 70, no. 1 (January–February 1992): 71–79.
Sull, D., Homkes, R. and Sull, C., 2021. Why Strategy Execution Unravels—And What To Do About It. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2015/03/why-strategy-execution-unravelsand-what-to-do-about-it> [Accessed 17 January 2021
ARTICLE WRITTEN BY: ROMAN MERCADO
Roman Mercado is the CEO/Co-Founder of Squadzip. Squadzip is one of our portfolio startups in Plug and Play APAC.
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