Microsoft has acquired Ally.io, a start-up that produces software to help companies track their progress in terms of objectives and key goals or results. Ally.io’s dashboards and customisable tools will now become part of Microsoft’s Viva software, which had been made available by Microsoft via its Teams app. Viva, the employee experience platform, offers employees learning materials, information from corporate documents, as well as productivity tips.
Referred to as an OKR company, short for objective and key results, Ally.io. helps organisations identify goals and evaluate their progress using certain measurements. By including its tools in Viva, Microsoft will be able to enhance its employee experience platform. With the integration of Ally.io with Viva and other Microsoft 365 apps and services, there will be better alignment between people and teams, with better outcomes.
Ally.io was founded about four years ago, by a former employee of Microsoft, Vetri Vellore. With a 275-strong workforce, Ally.io has its headquarters in Washington. It already has big names — including Slack (from Salesforce) and Dropbox — as its customers from various sectors, such as healthcare, financial services, high-tech and manufacturing, across more than 80 countries.
Objectives and key results or OKR is an emerging space, which is witnessing rapid growth. Over the past few years, it has been embraced by more than 1,000 businesses.
The goal-management framework, OKR, helps organisations in strategy implementation and execution. As a result, companies are able to focus better on the significant results, improve transparency, and ensure better alignment. Through OKR, employees can be better organised so that their work revolves around the achievement of common objectives.
