Evaluation criteria for OKR & Strategy Execution software

Why this guide exists

Choosing OKR software is harder than it should be. Most evaluations end up driven by gut feel ("this UI seems cleaner"), demo polish ("the slide deck was great"), or a flashy features that may or may not matter for your rollout. None of those are good signals for a tool you'll use to run your strategy execution for the next 3-5 years.

This guide gives you 9 evaluation dimensions, with specific questions under each, that we believe should drive this software decision. We use it internally with our own prospects and customers. We're sharing it because we'd rather you make a well-informed decision (even if you choose another tool) than end up with the wrong platform.

A note on bias: We built Perdoo, so we obviously think Perdoo performs well against these criteria. But the criteria themselves come from years of watching companies succeed and fail, not from reverse-engineering our own feature list. The questions below would expose real weaknesses in our product if they existed.

How to use it during your selection process

• Print or copy this checklist before you start your trial of any tool.
• As you evaluate each vendor (us included), score yes/no or rate 1-5 against each criterion.
• Weight the dimensions by what actually matters for your rollout. If you're a 50-person startup, security certifications matter less than ease of use. If you're a 500-person mid-market, both matter.
• Bring your filled-in version to the final vendor conversation. You'll get sharper answers from every vendor when you ask specific, structured questions.

The 9 dimensions

Scope. Does the tool cover Strategy, KPIs, OKRs, and Initiatives as first-class objects?

This is the most underrated criterion, and the most expensive to get wrong. A tool that handles only OKRs leaves you stitching together a separate system for strategy, dozens of analytics tools or spreadsheets for KPIs, and various project management tools for Initiatives. Within a year, the OKR program drifts because none of those pieces connect.

A real strategy execution platform should give you a home for all 5 components of a complete Strategy Map: Ultimate Goal, Strategic Pillars, OKRs, KPIs, and Initiatives. Each should be a native object, not a workaround (like you see in many tools).

If the answer to any of these is "kind of" or "you can do that in a custom field," it's a no.

Usability. Will the entire company be able to  use it, not just the exec team?

OKR programs fail when only the executive team and a few diligent managers actually log in. The rest of the company experiences OKRs as something that happens to them in quarterly reviews, not something they touch weekly.

A tool that's powerful but confusing optimizes for the wrong user. The tool needs to be so easy to use that everyone in the organization, from the CEO to a junior employee, can find their way around.

Cross-check this dimension against G2 reviews for each vendor.

Goal-tracking depth. Are the mechanics for defining, aligning, visualizing, and operating goals sophisticated enough for real-world complexity?

This dimension is the one that's hardest to evaluate. Especially when new to OKR or strategy execution: as your organization gains experience, you'll quickly see demand for more advanced goal tracking functionality.

Think of goal-tracking depth in three layers: how flexibly you can define a goal (different Key Result types, different target shapes, different timeframes per OKR rather than a forced quarterly bucket); how richly you can align and visualize goals (explicit parent-child links between any two goals, alignment with KPIs and Strategic Pillars, automatic roll-up, sharing an OKR across multiple teams, a real alignment view that accurately displays your Strategy Map); and how meaningfully you can operate goals over time (structured check-in workflows, end-of-cycle closing rituals, learning capture, retrospectives, automatic flagging of at-risk goals, full audit trail).

Visualization is worth flagging specifically because it's where the limits of a tool's alignment model become visible. A tool that doesn't support real goal-to-goal alignment can't render a real alignment view, no matter what the marketing page says — you'll get a flat list of OKRs grouped by team, not a tree that shows how the work actually connects.

Goal attainment. Does the tool actively help employees turn goals into results?

There's a difference between a tool that tracks goals and a tool that drives goal attainment. The first is a database. The second is a system.

A real strategy execution tool builds the cadence into the product: regular check-ins, automated reminders, embedded 1:1s, end-of-cycle scoring with retrospective capture. It makes the wrong behaviors hard (forgetting to check in, leaving an OKR closed but with no learnings captured) and the right behaviors easy (logging quick weekly updates, surfacing at-risk goals to leadership).

AI capabilities. Is the tool actively deploying AI in a useful way?

AI is reshaping OKR software faster than any other capability in the past decade. The tools investing seriously in AI today (in-product AI coaching, automated check-in summaries, AI-assisted goal drafting, AI agents that can update goals on the user's behalf) will be meaningfully ahead in 12-24 months. The ones that aren't will struggle to catch up.

For most prospects, this isn't about which AI feature is shipping today. It's about whether the vendor has an AI strategy that's clearly going to compound. A vendor with no AI roadmap is locking you into a tool that will feel dated in a few months.

A vendor that has thoughtful answers to the last two questions, not just the feature questions, is a vendor taking AI seriously.

Integrations & ecosystem fit. Does the tool live inside the workflows your company already has?

This dimension is where a lot of well-rated OKR tools quietly fail. The tool looks great in a demo. Then your team rolls it out, and employees are expected to leave Slack, leave Jira, leave their daily workflow, and go to a separate destination to update check-ins. Within a few cycles, they stop. The tool becomes another browser tab nobody visits.

A tool that meets employees where they already work has a structurally higher chance of being used. Check-ins inside Slack or Teams. Initiatives that sync with Jira or Asana. KPIs that auto-update from Salesforce or HubSpot. SSO so logging in isn't a friction point. These are not nice-to-haves; they are the difference between adoption and abandonment.

Support and education. Does the vendor know OKRs and strategy execution  well enough to support you in your rollout?

This is the criterion most prospects underweight, and it's the one that has the biggest impact on whether your rollout succeeds or stalls. OKR software is easy to ship. OKR practice is hard to do well. The vendor's role in your success isn't just to provide the tool; it's to coach you through the inevitable rough patches in your first 2-4 cycles.

That means the quality of the vendor's content, the seniority of their coaching, and their responsiveness when you hit problems all matter as much as the product itself.

Security & compliance. Can your CISO sign off, and will the vendor still be here in 3 years?

For mid-market and enterprise buyers, security is a gating criterion. A tool that lacks SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification will fail your security review, regardless of how good the product is. For smaller companies, it's still worth asking about, because as you grow your security expectations will rise.

Vendor stability matters for the same reason: you're making a 3-5 year strategy execution decision. A vendor that gets acquired, shuts down, or stops shipping after year 1 will force a painful migration. It's worth a few questions to understand who you're actually buying from.

Pricing and total cost of ownership. Is the all-in cost transparent and viable for a company-wide rollout?

The sticker price per user is rarely the actual cost. Real total cost of ownership includes implementation fees, platform fees, training costs, and the ongoing administrative cost of running the program.

A tool that costs $9/user/month with $0 implementation will, for a 200-person company, run you about $22K/year. A tool that costs $25/user/month with a $5,000 platform fee and extra implementation fees will run you north of $65K/year for the same headcount. The difference is meaningful, especially if you're rolling out company-wide.

Putting it all together

Once you've worked through this checklist for 2-3 vendors, your decision should become much sharper. The pattern that usually emerges:

• OKR-only tools score well on simplicity and price but fail on Dimension 1 because they don't cover KPIs, Strategic Pillars, or Initiatives.
• Enterprise platforms score well on features but lose on Dimension 2 (over-engineered for the average user) and Dimension 9 (expensive enough to make company-wide rollout a budget fight).
• HR platforms with bolt-on OKRs score well on performance review integration but fail on Dimensions 1, 3, and 4 because OKRs aren't the product's center of gravity.
• Project management tools with goal features work only if your entire company is using the same project management tool, and even then the goal-tracking layer is usually too thin and the cost too high.

A purpose-built strategy execution platform should score well across all 9 dimensions. That's the bar to look for, regardless of which vendor you choose.

What you should expect from us

We obviously hope you choose Perdoo at the end of your evaluation. But more than that, we want you to make a well-informed, defensible decision.

If you have questions while working through this framework, or if you want our honest read on how we compare against a specific competitor, just ask — we'll give you a straight answer.

1-page evaluation scorecard

A scoring form for comparing vendors across all 9 dimensions. Add up to 3 vendors to score them side by side. Question numbers (1.1, 1.2, etc.) correspond to the full framework above.

Scoring guide: 1 = poor, 2 = below average, 3 = adequate, 4 = strong, 5 = excellent.