Strategy software compared: which features mid-sized companies actually need

What does strategy software do that a spreadsheet doesn't?

Most strategies in mid-sized companies live in a presentation and a spreadsheet. The presentation is built for the offsite, the spreadsheet for controlling. Both are accurate the day they're created and an approximation by week three.

The difference isn't the format. A spreadsheet can show everything a strategy tool shows: goals, owners, deadlines, progress. What it can't do is hold the connections together. When a goal changes, one cell in the spreadsheet changes and nothing else. Nobody notices that three initiatives depended on it, that two of them are now pointless, and that the investment approved in the fall has lost its rationale.

That's exactly where strategy tools come in. They connect decisions to what follows from them and make it visible when that connection breaks. That's the entire benefit, and it's bigger than it sounds.

Which three features does a mid-sized company actually need?

Vendor lists name thirty features. Three of them decide whether the tool is still in use six months later.

What's missing from the list and rarely needed: scenario models with dozens of variables, benchmark databases, and reports designed for a controlling function with its own department. They sell well because they impress in the demo. They get used where someone is assigned to them full time, and below roughly a thousand employees, that's rarely the case.

OKR tool, strategy software, portfolio tool: what's the difference?

Three categories compete under the same search term and solve different problems. Get the category wrong and you buy a good tool for the wrong question.

Confusing the first two is harmless, both operate below the level of strategy. The third one gets expensive: a company introduces an OKR tool to get clarity on direction and instead gets a neatly maintained goal hierarchy sitting on top of an unresolved question. After two quarters, the method looks like the culprit, when what was missing was the decision that should have come first.

What does strategy software cost, and what drives the price?

Almost no vendor in this field publishes reliable list prices, because the offerings differ less in features than in how much support comes with them. Three models are common.

• Price per user per month. Common for OKR and portfolio tools. Works out fine as long as only the leadership team uses it, and gets uncomfortable as soon as the second level joins.
• Annual company license. Common for strategy tools, because user numbers come in waves: many people work on it during the development phase, few afterward.
• License plus support. Software on its own, with nobody to run the process, is the most common reason a rollout goes quiet after one quarter.

The more reliable calculation is a different one anyway. Compare the price to what the alternative costs, not to the benefit: a classic strategic analysis by a consulting firm runs well into six figures, and afterward you own a slide deck but not the thinking behind it.

Why do rollouts fail in practice?

The patterns repeat, and none of them have anything to do with the software.

• There is no decided strategy. The tool is bought to create clarity and instead makes it visible that clarity is missing. That's a useful finding and an expensive way to get there.
• Management doesn't use it themselves. If maintenance gets delegated, the tool becomes a reporting system within two quarters. Reporting gets read once a month. Strategy needs you weekly.
• It runs alongside the spreadsheet. As long as the old file stays alive, it wins, because everyone knows it. A rollout without a shut-off date for the old way isn't a rollout.
• Too much at once. If you start with the goal system, the portfolio, the initiatives and the metrics all at the same time, you'll spend the first quarter maintaining data. One target picture and five initiatives are enough to begin with.

When is no software the right answer?

There are three cases where the honest answer is: not yet.

• Below roughly a hundred employees. If management can get every decision-maker into the same room, the coordination problem that software solves isn't a problem. A shared document and a fixed meeting every six weeks will carry you further.
• When the strategy is only just taking shape. A tool reflects decisions, it doesn't make them. Before the first version, you need a process, not an interface.
• When nobody wants to own it. Software needs someone who champions it in the leadership team. If that person doesn't exist, the rollout is only a matter of time until it stalls.

That applies to us too. We build a strategy tool ourselves, and in these three cases it's the wrong purchase. A company with sixty employees that is organizing its strategy for the first time is better served by two well-prepared workshops than by a license.