MATOMO

OKR

Tell us your story: What got you started with Matomo?

It started in 2007 as an open-source web analytics project committed to data privacy and ownership. What started as an idea has since transformed into what Matomo is today. Our strong vision to empower users with full control of their data is reflected in company the name itself. Matomo means “honesty” in Japanese. It reflects the essence of our web analytics platform that empowers individuals and businesses to take control of their data and make informed decisions. We wanted to offer a privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics, and we have since become a trusted analytics partner for thousands of organizations worldwide. Our goal is to help our clients create better digital experiences for their users, and to support a more ethical, transparent internet.

What made you decide to explore OKR?

As we continued to grow and expand our offerings, we realized that we needed a better way to align our team and track progress towards our goals. We found our teams had too many competing priorities and were distracted by day-to-day tasks that weren't contributing to our overall strategic goals. We wanted to establish a framework that would help us stay focused, prioritize effectively, and measure the impact of our work. After researching various options, we decided to explore the OKR framework.

What was your experience like with our OKR Quickstart?

Our experience with OKR Quickstart was phenomenal! The team at OKR Quickstart helped us understand the fundamentals of OKR and how to create an OKR framework that suits our business needs. We worked closely together to define our company-wide objectives and key results, and the OKR Quickstart team helped us create team-specific OKRs that aligned with our overall strategy. They provided us with the necessary tools and training to ensure a successful implementation, and were always available to answer any questions or provide additional support along the way.

Our product is core to our business, and our teams are key to our success. Right from the beginning, team empowerment was a core focused of the implementation. This was incredible for some really high performing teams, but for some teams, it highlighted a gap. This was great as it showed us where we needed to invest further in our people and bring in new strategic hires. This has helped us really extend the ownership our teams have over the OKRs. They feed heavily into the OKR setting of the business, and own their OKR setting. We're still not perfect, but the difference is night and day. 

Since the initial OKR launch, OKR Quickstart has been helping us scale and take the business to all new heights. The progress we have made since working with OKR Quickstart would not have been possible otherwise. It’s been a great experience and you’ll love working with them too! We weren't sure about embedding OKR at first or how to do it, but the OKR Quickstart team made it an enjoyable and seamless experience. However it didn’t stop here.

What’s important for me is a partner who has seen it all before and knows the right tool for the job. OKR is great, but it won’t solve everything. Having worked with a lot of other SAAS companies, it was clear that the team knew exactly what our focus should be. They brought in the right product skills and knowledge to increase our product and delivery capability. This really helped our execution and got us to a point where we could bring in new key strategic roles, like our Head of Product.

It’s hard to find strategic partners that bring the right culture and capability, but somehow OKR Quickstart does it. They’re a bit quirky, but in all the right ways.

What advice would you give to founders looking to embed OKR?

I think everyone should be willing to explore an outcome-based goal-setting framework like OKR. We weren’t sure where to begin but have found that the easiest way is just to get started with a small pilot. 

For executives and founders looking at OKR, my advice would be to start with a clear understanding of your business goals. Don’t worry about spending a ton of time overanalysing it, but just be clear on what success looks like. It's important to define your company's vision and mission (if you haven’t already), and then work backwards to OKRs, that will help you get there.The OKR Quickstart team was great helping us with this. 

The most challenging part of embedding OKR for us was uncovering the metrics which were core to our growth. We had to experiment and be agile with our approach to work through this challenge. We relied heavily on finding and reporting on the right metrics. One thing that made our lives a lot easier was having incredible web analytics. Luckily, at Matomo we have  the best open-source web analytics platform which is designed to give you and your team insights quickly, which is great both OKR setting and tracking. It helps us track measurable outcomes (Key Results) and gives us useful KPI’s. 

What a lot of companies seem to get wrong is they don’t have measurable Key Results (it’s something that Tim talks about a lot). Thankfully, with Matomo Analytics it was really easy for us to get the numbers that tell us how we’re doing. This is all done via Goals in Matomo which then give us all the data points we need, and makes it securely accessible by the team. This is also really important when it comes to OKR, make sure your team has easy access to the data in your business.

We’ve had a lot of fun with OKR along the way learning about what our customers love. By using Matomo’s heat maps to identify opportunities for improvement, we run A/B experiments to see what improvements make the most impact and track the results throughout the quarter. 

One final thought. Before you start with OKR, you need the buy-in from your teams and make sure to communicate the OKR framework clearly and consistently. 

Be clear on why OKR, why now and how each team member will benefit. This is essential and will ensure that everyone understands the company's objectives, their role in achieving them, and how their work contributes to the overall success of the business. With OKR Quickstart, this process became much more straightforward, and we were able to see the benefits of increased alignment and focus for our team in a very short period.

Matthieu Aubrey
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (CEO) OF MATOMO

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