Every business must invest time, effort, and money in OKR and strategic planning. After all, it is one of the best ways companies can progress and advance with positive results. In the early days, people usually used spreadsheets to note the objectives or goals, key results, and metrics or factors to measure the success rate of each OKR.

However, due to the need for greater scalability and flexibility, businesses have shifted away from manual spreadsheets and toward OKR strategic tools. So, the question is, why has the shift become imperative for businesses from all sectors?

In the below section, we have explained how OKR performance management software can outsmart the use of the spreadsheet.

Spreadsheets require to be managed manually

First and foremost, employees work on spreadsheets manually. Whether listing down all the objectives for the business on one work page or the key result metrics on another page, the process could be smoother. This manual handling can result in extra effort with errors and become unmanageable.

In addition, employees can quickly get confused, which is why the use of spreadsheets has become minimal. Instead, businesses now invest in OKR Strategic tools, Task automation tools to implement OKRs.

Difficulties in tracking OKR categories

Suppose you have set 50 OKRs for your entire business. These OKRs are then subdivided into seven categories based on the company departments or processes. A spreadsheet cannot help employees succeed in OKR and task management. It does not allow for data security because data is dispersed across departments.

Besides, employees from different departments need help collaborating and tracking OKRs properly. Data and business silos will exist, hindering access control overall and business growth. 

In addition, it also leads to a hugely baffled mindset, disrupting employee performance and OKR success. Using the best OKR tracking software sounds like the best idea. It will automatically show all the OKRs on a centralised platform and update the key results meter.

Scalability is impossible due to data constraints.

Businesses need to work on data analysis for OKR scaling. In other words, they need to integrate with different data sources and collect data to analyse the performance and progress of all the OKRs. Given the several data sources, data collection, and data analysis, it is impossible to manage them and keep track of the performance and progress of OKRs.

It also becomes very cumbersome and unmanageable to look at the historical data and analyse the trend of the OKR performance. 

Moreover, data constraints like analytical formula, filtration, classification, and so on disrupt the OKR management process. Using effective performance management software for OKR is the best idea. VizualPro Suite can quickly scale the OKRs and introduce changes based on the analytical results and deductions.

Increased chances of errors

One of the significant areas where OKR management using spreadsheets has failed is errors. Identifying mistakes will be difficult when you need to manage the objectives and key results in an Excel file. The data could also get overwritten by other users.

Plus, the manual task increases the chances of including different types of errors and modifying or monitoring the OKRs. Coupling the best task management software with the best OKR management will dramatically improve the organisation’s productivity and efficiency. 

Difficulties in measurement and tracking performance

Lastly, spreadsheets cannot provide flexibility in measuring and tracking OKR performance. In other words, the outcome could be more accurate and satisfactory with OKR management software.
Another big challenge with excel is that people start maintaining multiple versions and share them by email, leading to duplication and data sync issues.

People often duplicate data, which becomes difficult to track, resulting in poor sync and discrepancies.

Therefore, making a well-informed decision is possible with OKR management software. So, businesses now use OKR management software with effective performance management capabilities to track and measure OKR performance periodically.

Conclusion

Now, you must know why spreadsheets aren’t suitable for OKR management. However, if you want to scale the OKRs and measure their performance, the best OKR software for startups, like VizualPro Suite, sounds excellent. VizualPro Suite helps you eliminate the hassles of manual OKR management and increase efficiency and productivity. We will help your business to grow and boost organisational productivity and efficiency. Please write to us for more details through the Vizual Platform website.