Today we’d like to introduce to you another Superhero of the Weekdone community: Exxact Corporation. Exxact Corporation has been using Weekdone for a few months now and we talked to them about weekly planning, OKRs and how implementing Weekdone went for them. They are using both the PPP based weekly reporting as well as Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for their quarterly goals.
We talked with their Marketing Manager Michael Hwang and Director of Engineering Andrew Nelson.
Setting employee goals is definitely an art form on its own. You can read more about it here.
Exxact Corporation
Michael said that “Exxact develops and manufactures innovative computing platforms and solutions that include workstation, server, cluster, and storage products developed for Life Sciences, HPC, Big Data, Cloud, Visualization, Video Wall, and AV applications.
We offer a full range of engineering and logistics services, including consultancy, initial solution validation, manufacturing, implementation, and support, that enables our customers to solve their complex computing challenges, improve resource utilization, and meet product development deadlines. “
They have about 40 people, more than half of whom use Weekdone. They use in in their marketing, sales and engineering teams.
“We have integrated Weekdone as a daily tool for our engineering, marketing, sales, and operations teams to use. Only our accounting team has yet to fully utilize Weekdone for recording their tasks and objectives.”
Read this case study to learn how Exxact Corporation grows with OKRs after using Weekdone for years.
Before using Weekdone
Andrew explained that they used to rely heavily on written reports that employees forwarded to their supervisors. “It was basically Excel or Word document, “Andrew told us: “people did their reports and sent it to their supervisors who would either read it or not read it.
That’s why I rolled out Weekdone, because weekly templates themselves weren’t helping out people a lot of the times: they filled it out because they felt they had to fill it out, it wasn’t transparent and I felt that a lot of people who had to read them, didn’t.”
For them automated reporting made life easier.
“I think Weekdone helps with a lot of that,” he said and added that it’s easier and more convenient than Word documents because in Exxact most people don’t even use Word or Excel nowadays.
“It’s easier for the person recording them, it’s easier for everyone to see what you’re doing, it’s easier for people to make decisions on what to record.”
It also answers the question “is it relevant or important.”
Measuring job performance
When talking about how much Weekdone helps with measuring performance, they are optimistic.
“A lot of this we’re still implementing because we haven’t used Weekdone for that long but we’ve had one quarterly upper management meeting where we review the Weekdone metrics.”
They review both weekly progress and quarterly OKRs as well as statistics like happiness, plans added and so on. They also have team level meetings that make sure everyone is on track.
“The questions help us periodically review metrics like happiness and how many plans are made.”
Weekdone encourages people to link their weekly plans with quarterly Objectives and Key Results as that way you see how all your small tasks contribute to your and company’s long term plans.
How has Weekdone helped you?
“The main thing is that it’s a platform that offers a better way to input data,” Andrew said. “You can do it from your phone or an iPad and keep it open as a tab.
“It provides transparency for other people which, I hope, provides some level of competitiveness to others.
The OKRs definitely help to foster the idea of continuous improvement and pushing longer goals rather than just getting through the workweek.”
Read this case study to learn how Exxact Corporation grows with OKRs after using Weekdone for years.
Best part of the experience
Andrew pointed out the ability to link tasks to quarterly objectives just to see how weekly plans directly affect long term goals. “A lot of what I was looking for in Weekdone was helping employees get their reports done faster and with more efficiency.”
Michael also added OKRs as a goal setting methodology as his favorite part of it.
And this is actually a very popular opinion. According to a study Weekdone did most managers like both weekly reporting and long term goals when they are used combined.
Value of automatization
In conclusion they agree that they’d recommend Weekdone to others.
“Seeing what people are doing and having an automated report is a value in itself,” Andrew concluded: “One of my biggest things is that a lot of management report systems have people work for a week and then fill up the stupid report form and that is a waste of people’s time. With Weekdone, you come in in the morning and start planning your day and week out in real time. That helps to structure your whole week.”
If you would like to see more Case Studies, click here.