3 customisable OKR examples for Cost Savings
What are Cost Savings OKRs?
The Objective and Key Results (OKR) framework is a simple goal-setting methodology that was introduced at Intel by Andy Grove in the 70s. It became popular after John Doerr introduced it to Google in the 90s, and it's now used by teams of all sizes to set and track ambitious goals at scale.
Writing good OKRs can be hard, especially if it's your first time doing it. You'll need to center the focus of your plans around outcomes instead of projects.
We have curated a selection of OKR examples specifically for Cost Savings to assist you. Feel free to explore the templates below for inspiration in setting your own goals.
If you want to learn more about the framework, you can read our OKR guide online.
Building your own Cost Savings OKRs with AI
While we have some examples available, it's likely that you'll have specific scenarios that aren't covered here. You can use our free AI generator below or our more complete goal-setting system to generate your own OKRs.
Feel free to explore our tools:
- Use our free OKR generator
- Use Tability, a complete platform to set and track OKRs and initiatives, including a GPT-4 powered goal generator
Our customisable Cost Savings OKRs examples
You will find in the next section many different Cost Savings Objectives and Key Results. We've included strategic initiatives in our templates to give you a better idea of the different between the key results (how we measure progress), and the initiatives (what we do to achieve the results).
Hope you'll find this helpful!
1. OKRs to implement cost savings/automation initiative
Implement cost savings/automation initiative
Develop detailed implementation plan for chosen initiative by week 8
Identify objectives and deliverables of the chosen initiative- Assign roles and responsibilities related to the plan
- Develop comprehensive timeline for each task by week 8
- Identify 3 potential areas for cost savings/automation by week 4
- Review current expenditures to identify key cost areas
- Analyse processes for potential automation
- Identify inefficiencies within procedures
- Achieve 10% cost reduction or time savings via the implemented initiative by week 12
- Set clear goals for the initiative focusing on cost reduction
- Adapt and improve strategies according to progress
- Regularly track and evaluate the initiative's performance
2. OKRs to streamline vendor management for efficient cost savings and digitalized P2P process
- Streamline vendor management for efficient cost savings and digitalized P2P process
- Reduce vendor costs by 15% through negotiation and strategic sourcing
- Develop and implement strategic sourcing strategies with chosen vendors
- Identify all current vendor contracts and review cost details
- Prioritize vendors for renegotiation based on potential cost savings
- Improve P2P process turnaround time by 30%, leveraging digital tools and automation
- Train staff on efficient use of new automation tools
- Optimize P2P process workflow with AI-powered tooling
- Implement digital systems to automate invoice generation and payment
- Achieve 90% digitalization of P2P processes to enhance operational efficiency
- Implement digital software platforms for P2P interactions
- Monitor and evaluate digitalization progress regularly
- Train staff on digital P2P process management
3. OKRs to successfully migrate on-premises infrastructure to cloud service
- Successfully migrate on-premises infrastructure to cloud service
- Train all team members on how to use the new cloud service effectively
- Schedule training sessions for all team members
- Identify suitable training course for new cloud service
- Monitor and assess team's proficiency post-training
- Complete migration of all essential data and applications using cloud service
- Begin transferring prioritized data to the cloud service
- Assess and categorize all data and applications for migration
- Conduct thorough post-migration testing and verification
- Achieve cost savings of at least 20% compared to current on-premises setup
- Establish and implement a company-wide energy saving program
- Evaluate and implement more efficient, cost-effective technologies
- Initiate negotiations with current vendors for price reductions
Cost Savings OKR best practices to boost success
Generally speaking, your objectives should be ambitious yet achievable, and your key results should be measurable and time-bound (using the SMART framework can be helpful). It is also recommended to list strategic initiatives under your key results, as it'll help you avoid the common mistake of listing projects in your KRs.
Here are a couple of best practices extracted from our OKR implementation guide 👇
Tip #1: Limit the number of key results
The #1 role of OKRs is to help you and your team focus on what really matters. Business-as-usual activities will still be happening, but you do not need to track your entire roadmap in the OKRs.
We recommend having 3-4 objectives, and 3-4 key results per objective. A platform like Tability can run audits on your data to help you identify the plans that have too many goals.
Tability's audit dashboard will highlight opportunities to improve OKRsTip #2: Commit to weekly OKR check-ins
Don't fall into the set-and-forget trap. It is important to adopt a weekly check-in process to get the full value of your OKRs and make your strategy agile – otherwise this is nothing more than a reporting exercise.
Being able to see trends for your key results will also keep yourself honest.
Tability's check-ins will save you hours and increase transparencyTip #3: No more than 2 yellow statuses in a row
Yes, this is another tip for goal-tracking instead of goal-setting (but you'll get plenty of OKR examples above). But, once you have your goals defined, it will be your ability to keep the right sense of urgency that will make the difference.
As a rule of thumb, it's best to avoid having more than 2 yellow/at risk statuses in a row.
Make a call on the 3rd update. You should be either back on track, or off track. This sounds harsh but it's the best way to signal risks early enough to fix things.
How to turn your Cost Savings OKRs in a strategy map
OKRs without regular progress updates are just KPIs. You'll need to update progress on your OKRs every week to get the full benefits from the framework. Reviewing progress periodically has several advantages:
- It brings the goals back to the top of the mind
- It will highlight poorly set OKRs
- It will surface execution risks
- It improves transparency and accountability
Spreadsheets are enough to get started. Then, once you need to scale you can use a proper OKR platform to make things easier.
Tability's Strategy Map makes it easy to see all your org's OKRsIf you're not yet set on a tool, you can check out the 5 best OKR tracking templates guide to find the best way to monitor progress during the quarter.
More Cost Savings OKR templates
We have more templates to help you draft your team goals and OKRs.
- OKRs to successfully launch the e-commerce web app
- OKRs to enhance the ticket creation process using the right record producer
- OKRs to drastically improve onboarding and activation
- OKRs to enhance processes to support accurate and timely compliance reporting
- OKRs to enhance individual skill set through learning and development
- OKRs to optimize ManageEngine for efficient patching and software deployment
OKRs resources
Here are a list of resources to help you adopt the Objectives and Key Results framework.
- To learn: What is the meaning of OKRs
- Blog posts: ODT Blog
- Success metrics: KPIs examples
Create more examples in our app
You can use Tability to create OKRs with AI – and keep yourself accountable 👀
Tability is a unique goal-tracking platform built to save hours at work and help teams stay on top of their goals.
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