Microsoft Viva Goals (discontinued) vs. PlanSource

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

Less appropriate for small groups with one very simple health plan. More appropriate for 20+ EE groups with multiple plans and supplementary benefits.

Incentivized

• Visualizing the hierarchy and relationship between objectives and key results. The nesting and double alignment functionality are especially helpful, as they can't easily be expressed on, say, a simple worksheet or Confluence page.
• Reminding the team to make regular check-ins. What gets measured gets done. This prevents the common pitfall of setting goals and not revisiting them until the end of a project (when it is too late).
• Integration with external sources for automated check-ins. Why do this manually when it can happen behind the scenes?

Incentivized

• Puts all of your healthcare selections in one place making changes, drops, and additions are taken care of in one place instead of having to contact every vendor individually.
• Keeps an accurate record of real time enrollment which helps when you are in an account manager role and handling client questions concerning their health plans.
• Provides tools to keep the client and yourself organized. Several Open Enrollment messaging tools and places to add any educational documents for the different health plans.

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

• The more advanced options, such as HCM, could have a slightly more user-friendly dashboard for users who are not daily computer users.
• Needs to be easier to customize the homepage. Clients are always interested in adding in their own pictures, colors, welcome message position, etc.
• Needs to have a function where the employer can send a document for the employee to sign, open and capture the employee's signature, send back to the employer and save in the employee file.

Incentivized

Microsoft Viva comes with Teams. The Monday board is helpful too, but I just like Microsoft Viva better

Incentivized

I have looked at GoCo, Kronos and Zenefits. I selected PlanSource because I felt it was the most customizable for a variety of clients across the board. The interface seemed functional but slightly professional looking than it competitors. PlanSource also seemed well established and that it was capable of handling my client needs.

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

• Positive - Reduces time spent contacting vendors of enrollment changes. When you are dealing with several hundred employees and their dependents across several vendors that time starts to add up.
• Positive - Point of value when trying to gain or up sell a client.
• Negative - You do need to meet the minimum number of people on the platform as per your contact to avoid having to pay a fee to PlanSource. If one of your larger clients leaves that could be a potential issue.

Incentivized