Andrew joined Covaler over 4 years ago and heads up the People and Culture Team. He has combined his technical and analytical background with his passion for people and interest in customer-focused, service excellence. 

Covaler is an information technology company which currently has 50 employees. While a fairly new brand in the data and technology sector, Covaler grew from the merger of two established Australian data companies, Narratiive and Acceleon, which joined forces at the beginning of 2019. Acceleon enables businesses in the Australian financial market to provide data quality and identity services via a cloud-based platform. While Narratiive provides internet audience measurement to digital publishing industries in global markets; it is appointed as the IAB South Africa (Internet Advertising Bureau) measurement currency. Both Acceleon and Narratiive were founded in 2009, with the merger leveraging the capabilities and IP of both companies to create a new offering that combines online and offline data assets and technology in a way that benefits businesses and consumers.

“We saw team members get excited by having a better understanding, and being better connected to, the company vision and goals.”

Problem

OKRs were introduced to Covaler in Q1 of 2020 to help align teams in the direction of company objectives. After the initial introduction of the company objectives, teams set up their own goals.  The process involved dozens of separate spreadsheets and it quickly became hard to track results across spreadsheets.  Momentum was quickly lost.

Andrew says, “we found that teams soon lost motivation to update their results in spreadsheets. The logistical challenge of reviewing so many spreadsheets also meant that leaders reviewed results infrequently, missing the opportunity to catch key results that were slipping off track”. 

The introduction of OKRs wasn’t initially successful.  An engagement survey conducted at the time suggested that team members were still missing the link between their daily work and the company's goals. It was a priority for Covaler to implement OKRs successfully but they knew spreadsheets were not the answer.  They needed to find a tool that would help them with this frustration around templating, alignment, and tracking.

Andrew did some research and found Tability, “not only was the product sound but the thinking behind it was very well considered compared to some of the competitors.  It was also very affordable, so the return of investment was almost guaranteed. Beyond the software itself, the Tability team also produced really helpful content pieces which helped the leadership team to communicate a simple approach to adopting OKRs.”

He goes on to say, “there are two ways to create a piece of software. The first is reactive - slapping features together in an attempt to make customers happy. The second is to create a product having taken time to understand a problem, with each feature being well-considered and working in concert to solve customers' needs. Our team saw Tability as the latter.”

Solution

Tability was introduced in Q4 of 2020, with a quick rundown of Tability and the current company goals.  Managers then manually onboarded their teams.

Andrew describes the transition, “there was a definite shift in engagement which was at first anecdotal but later backed by strong results in a company-wide engagement survey. We saw team members get excited by having a better understanding, and being better connected to, the company vision and goals.”

Within Covaler different teams use Tability in diverse ways. Some people are more process-driven so provide updates frequently with the aim of catching problems early and supporting people whose key results might be going off track. Other teams need a little more push with monthly reminders, “Tability is great that way, it allows for those differences.”

Wrap up

Andrew describes the Top 3 benefits when using Tability: 

1. The drafting page (or edit plan page) is where we develop our goals and brainstorm as a collaborative team. The design is really considered and friendly, it’s a great page to develop high-quality, measurable goals.
2. The home page is where you can see all the activities that people are working on. It creates a sense of momentum and helps the whole company see what is being achieved and what needs work.  It’s a really motivating place to scroll through.
3. With visual elements like the graph, or burndown chart, you are able to get a visual representation of how you and your team are tracking towards that goal.

We thank Andrew and the team for their experience and support. Give your team engagement push with Tability, like Covaler.