Ally Reviews

Pros

Ally is by far the best OKR software I have used or tried out. It's intuitive and easy to use.

Cons

It was too expensive. We could only use it for the company and department level OKRs with senior management and department head. It was too expensive to use for every single employee in the company.

Pros

%age tracking on task level and overall picture on where we are, is what I like the most.

Cons

The pricing is on a higher side, it could have been lowered, as at this price, we might not be able to get it adopted for whole org.

Pros

I like having a tool to manage the OKR process. I like the check-ins, teams, sub-teams, individual and team OKRs

Cons

Weird UI, I am constantly struggling with it. It needs to be significantly easier to setup and manage OKRs, users and team branches in the tool

Pros

I supported the HR department in my institution to deploy Ally and configure it. KPI monitoring was a main objective on the list and we were amazed by how simplistic and facilitated Ally supports in this. We surely had to set the performance indicators and the formulas for assessing each. All the rest was done autonomously by Ally in terms of identifying the statistical events affecting those key performance indicators and calculating their values dynamically as things change from one semi-quarter to the other.
Ally was very convenient in calculating the actual and expected progress and to display it graphically in association to each individual task. This was a major relief to the owner of the OKR. Moreover the actual progress can by dynamically updated due to events such as a check-in to the OKR or by adding Key Results to an objective.
The main support that Ally can help in here is identifying measurable and actionable tasks and subtasks of goals and align it with the 5-year or 10-year vision of the corporation. This wasn't easy to do manually as most of the times the thinking phase surpasses the action phase which renders the strategic planning ineffective.
Goal management is basically the main strength in Ally which unifies the management irrespective of the type of business of clients. Generalizing the Goal concept is what we really like in this software.

Cons

Customization of the different components seem a bit tricky and complicated but to be fair it get much easier to do with some getting used to after getting acquainted with the different naming schemes and semantics.

Pros

Flexibility in aligning objectives company wide

Cons

Goals target to be made more visible to the end user to encourage goals target setting

Pros

Provides great visibility into the work that matters. Before, we were using Google sheets to plan and track our strategic priorities, which made it difficult for the organization to know where we stood at any point in time. Now it is easy to see in real time how we are doing.

Super easy to learn and use. If you can navigate a web site, you can easily use this product. That is important when we are inviting in additional users. We don't have a large support function within our company, so any users questions come to me. Fortunately, given the simplicity of the UI, that has been very manageable so far.

Seamless integration with all of the systems we already use like Salesforce, Slack, Asana, Google Sheets, Hub Spot and many others. Connecting these systems to Ally requires no IT support and takes less than a minute. This means users can continue to do their work wherever they are most comfortable. Ally just brings it all together so there is one place where we can see how we are doing.

Tremendous customer support. Every time an issue does come up, the company has been extremely quick to respond. I wish all my vendors were this easy to work with.

Cons

We have been using the product for about 2 months so far and don't have any major complaints. The product does not have every feature we would like, but the company seeks our input and is working aggressively to implement the ones that make sense, which is all you can ask for. They have already addressed two features we asked for, both of which were rolled out in less than two weeks from the time we asked for them.

Pros

Seamless integrations and more are constantly becoming available.

Cons

Reports and dashboards are good. The mobile app is excellent.

Pros

Easy and safe to use. It’s always updating its software, making it safe to use

Cons

I don’t have any problems with Ally. They have great customer service

Pros

I like the check-ins and the Slack integration. It makes it easier to do your record keeping.

Cons

Users have to rely on Administrators to set up the projects. I would prefer to create a project for my overall work to be aligned to, rather than individually listed. It doesn't connect the individual's OKRs with the team if the Admin doesn't set it up to do so.

Pros

Easy of updating my OKRs and Metrics. Navigating the software isn't very hard at all.

Cons

The Chat features that keeps popping up when working with Ally. Let it just be in the background and not give updates every time I log in.

I should be able to update my teams OKRs for them and from what I can tell I can't do that.

Pros

We like the ease of use and the fact that the team is receptive to our input and constantly improving the product.

Cons

We would like them to build in an employee performance component based on the difficulty of the OKRs, and they are evaluating that idea.

Pros

I honestly like how simple and easy it is to use and function! I have only used one other program for OKRs and it was complex but Ally makes their website simple and functional. It it easy to check-in and put if you are on track or behind and even add notes. I enjoy that you can add notes! I try to add a small goal that I will accomplish during the week and then in my next note say I accomplished this and this week I am working on finishing this project. I believe Ally keeps you motivated to stay on-top of your work because you have your weekly check-ins.

Cons

I don't like how what I thought was an objective Ally says that it is not aligned to any objectives but I thought it was an objective on its own and that I was allowed to have another objective on its own.

Pros

The aesthetics are nice and makes it more fun to use. I'm a big fan of the progress bars, which are motivational and easy to understand. I like that changing the targets are so easy, too. Big fan of the ease of navigating between company vs personal OKRs.

Cons

The small "open full view" button isn't intuitive and can be confusing. I'd like to be able to simply click the whole objective to open in "full view."

Pros

Ally is fantastic for managing sales teams. It helps people focus relentlessly on what matters. It’s the basis for all my team 121s and learning plans.

Cons

The synchronisation loses connection with google sheets when cells change. Fixing the connections to prevent this would be great.

Pros

The product is very simple to understand, setup, and implement. The website keeps the interface simple without the confusion that a lot of platforms bring. It also allows for users to easily create a "ladder-up" structure of OKRs so that people can create their own goals under larger team or organizational goals. It's very easy to update, view, and filter my OKRs or my team's OKRs.

Cons

The software can be quite slow sometimes, especially when multiple people are adding, editing, or updating OKRs at the same time. I wish there was also a faster way to bulk upload our team's quarterly OKRs as adding them one-by-one can be tedious and slow.

Pros

Ally gives the team an opportunity to asynchronously work on objectives and key performances, get updates, and readily provide reports and performance.

Cons

There are some things that do not show in team OKRs but are in individual OKRs. Could be a one off. Or something not configured properly.

Pros

Ally has brought our entire company together allowing us to be focused on and transparent about our goals and the progress we are making toward them.

Cons

More flexibility on the way you can view company/ team/ and individual goals is needed for our company.

Pros

User-friendly and intuitive interface, alignment of objectives.

Cons

Reporting - It can be improved to better aid presenters when they're discussing the progress of their OKRs.

Pros

The interface of the tool is pretty simple and it is easy to get used to it. Adding tasks below the objectives and addressing those tasks to anyone you want and changing them easily impressed me a lot. Also there is one option that cant be find in any other tools - which is auto update of okr goals through excel documents. Schematic view, feedback system are pretty impressive. I highly recommend this tool to those who focus on OKR goal systems. The technical team is very responsive and friendly

Cons

everything is very professional with this tool

Pros

Getting rolling quick was the first thing we liked about this software. Intuitive infrastructure. Easy to add users, teams.

Cons

Reporting. Having a consolidated view of status on all company OKRs would be incredible! Some stakeholders don't want to have to log in and poke into each OKR to see details.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Ally

Pros

I love the visibility. We have it structured so you can see the OKRs of anyone in the company. You can see where people are focused and find ideas for bettering your own OKRs.

Cons

I wish it did... more. It seems like you could combine an OKR software with other task tracking softwares pretty easily.

Pros

The ease of use and setup of Ally has been great. Being able to connect to both Salesforce and Tableau has been one of the biggest benefits along with checking in through Slack. The customer service team is very responsive and helpful with questions and have been a pleasure to work with so far.

Cons

The software we were using had a better dashboard display to easily show the top company Objectives. This was beneficial for company meetings. Our CEO struggles with this part of Ally but it is really the only issue we have had.

Pros

The UI is easy to grasp and intuitive for someone with some technical savvy.

Cons

Teaching everyone else in the company the nuances of the UI and the OKR workflow took some time.

Pros

A best tool that I know to define your objectives and track progress

Cons

Probably it can help optimise the organisation hierarchy and help us notify and provide recommendation when OKRs are created. That way it's easy to collaborate and create our own OKRs based on the organisation hierarchy levels

Pros

The tool's UX is very friendly and easy to navigate. Has enough 'robustness' to get the job done across multiple users, but isn't too detailed to get lost in it.

Cons

Overall, great tool. Some of the User vs. Team roles and assignments are a bit tricky, but rather minor point.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Ally