Awardco vs. Microsoft Viva

Awardco has something for everyone. I have employees in a variety of age groups and some want to travel, some want a tangible item, and others feel like they don't really need/want anything so they choose a gift card so they can use it how and when they choose. Awardco allows that flexibility. Also, if the individual isn't ready to make a selection right away, they can save their points to use at a later time. If an individual would like to select an item larger than their award amount, they are not able to add dollars to their personal account, which may cause some frustration to an individual.

Incentivized

Well suited for

• Companies that have experience of using the OKR methodology and have a clear understanding of what it is
• Companies that are planning to expand/scale the OKR program
• Companies that are looking to reduce the effort involved in running the OKR program

Ill-suited for:

• Companies that are using OKRs for the first time and do not have a clear understanding of the methodology

Incentivized

• Every employee has an account.
• There are multiple ways to use your points.
• All points are stored in one place & easy to find.

Incentivized

• The default state of transparency. This helps in reinforcing the superpower of OKRs. In Ally.io, the default mode of any objective created is public (unless stated otherwise). This helps people across the organization to understand where and how the organization is progressing.
• The above feature of transparency is also reinforced by the feature of creating dependencies. This allows for people to understand the parties involved in achieving a particular goal and creates accountability. It is clearly understood which party has not contributed enough and RCA can be done on the same.
• It allows for integrating with a host of other tools such that the check-in process can be automated. This allows for reducing the effort of managers in terms of updating multiple tools.
• The dashboarding feature has helped us in reducing effort spent in creating presentations for retros, planning, and demos
• Ally.io's customer success team is among the best that I have worked it. Always ready to help, proactive, and up for the next challenge. They take the success of their customers extremely seriously. Kudos to the team for this attitude.

Incentivized

• I would like the system to be able to send email notifications to more than the employee and the HR Manager. It would be great if we could include the manager and the GM as well. Now I just forward the message to the others.

Incentivized

• Accelerate integrations and add more integrations.
• Ally.io has room for improvement in providing benchmark in-depth analysis across industries, same-size companies, etc.
• Ally.io can still improve upon some of its product features and communicating the releases. Videos have been extremely helpful.

Incentivized

I am giving a "middle of the road" rating of 5 because I don't have experience with Awardco support. I have never had to reach out to the support team for anything, so I don't have any substantial feedback in this particular area. The program is so easy to use, so I've never needed to contact the support team.

Incentivized

I have only used a few other award programs and selections have been extremely limited. There is nothing worse than receiving a catalog with 10-15 items to choose from and you don't really want any of the items. It is even worse when the company spends two to three times the cost on a gift that can be purchased elsewhere for much, much less. The employee has an idea how much something costs and as a result feels like the company didn't appreciate them by giving an inexpensive gift. Awardco gifts are dollar for dollar.

Incentivized

Again, Ally ranks very high and this is because they continuously work towards improving their software, platform and solutions. I believe that they have been very innovative and are adding important layers to help keep an OKR program culture relevant and beneficial to its customers. Ally is an opinion leader in this category and not a me-too tool.

Incentivized

• We are a company that thrives on competition & rewards. Awardco has helped us simplify that rewards process, and it's much easier for us as we create competition prizes.
• Our employees are much more engaged in the competitions because they know they will win points that can be used on just about anything.
• Since we've started using Awardco we have hit record numbers in sales in a month.

Incentivized

• Ally.io has had a positive impact so far in reducing the effort involved in managing the entire OKR program.
• It also has brought with itself the opportunities to avail training and Q&A sessions with experts
• Increased the overall engagement of the company with its objectives

Incentivized