12 customisable OKR examples for Finance Department
What are Finance Department 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.
Crafting effective OKRs can be challenging, particularly for beginners. Emphasizing outcomes rather than projects should be the core of your planning.
We've tailored a list of OKRs examples for Finance Department to help you. You can look at any of the templates below to get some inspiration for your own goals.
If you want to learn more about the framework, you can read our OKR guide online.
Building your own Finance Department 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.
Our customisable Finance Department OKRs examples
You will find in the next section many different Finance Department 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 enhance leadership skills in the finance department
Enhance leadership skills in the finance department
Achieve a 20% increase in leadership competency scores in finance team evaluations
Implement regular feedback sessions to identify improvements- Arrange weekly leadership development workshops for the finance team
- Incorporate mentorship programs with experienced leaders
- Implement a weekly finance-focused leadership workshop for potential leaders
- Schedule a consistent time for the weekly meetings
- Invite potential leaders to participate in workshops
- Identify relevant finance topics for weekly workshops
- Identify and mentor 3 high-potential employees for leadership roles
- Begin one-on-one mentoring sessions regularly
- Identify three employees showing leadership potential
- Develop personalized mentorship plans for each
2. OKRs to enhance finance department's risk management initiatives
- Enhance finance department's risk management initiatives
- Implement a comprehensive risk monitoring system by end of quarter
- Select appropriate risk monitoring software
- Train staff on system usage and reporting
- Identify key risk factors for ongoing review
- Achieve a 20% increase in risk management staff competency through targeted training programs
- Develop targeted training programs addressing identified skill gaps
- Implement training programs and assess staff competency improvements
- Identify specific areas requiring competency improvement in risk management staff
- Reduce operational errors by 25% through improved controls and processes
- Evaluate and upgrade existing tools and systems
- Implement stricter quality control measures
- Conduct regular staff training on operational procedures
3. OKRs to enhance risk management in the finance department
- Enhance risk management in the finance department
- Decrease risk-related financial losses by 15%
- Strengthen internal audit procedures
- Provide staff training on risk management
- Implement regular financial risk assessment strategies
- Develop and train staff on 3 new risk mitigation strategies
- Identify and outline 3 new risk mitigation strategies
- Prepare a comprehensive training program around these strategies
- Schedule and conduct training sessions for staff
- Implement risk assessment tools to identify 20% more financial risks
- Choose appropriate risk assessment tools
- Train staff on proper tool usage
- Monitor and measure effectiveness regularly
4. OKRs to reinforce innovation within the finance department operations
- Reinforce innovation within the finance department operations
- Implement 2 process improvement technologies enhancing efficiency by 25%
- Research the best technologies for enhancing processes
- Identify areas that need improvement for better efficiency
- Implement selected technologies and monitor results
- Achieve a 15% increase in departmental productivity from continuous improvement initiatives
- Launch team-building exercises for improved collaboration
- Implement workflow software to optimize daily operations
- Conduct regular employee training sessions
- Conduct 5 innovative idea sharing workshops leading to 10 actionable strategies
- Identify topics and structure for 5 idea sharing workshops
- Plan and conduct each workshop targeting innovative idea generation
- Select and finalized 10 actionable strategies from generated ideas
5. OKRs to optimize IT costs by reducing expenses by 20%
- Reduce IT expenses by 20%
- Analyze previous quarter expenses and identify areas for cost reduction
- Determine cost-saving opportunities
- Identify spending patterns
- Review expenses
- Implement cost reduction measures
- Educate employees on cost-saving practices and enforce IT policies
- Regularly remind staff of cost-cutting policies
- Contain training sessions for IT policy adoption
- Monitor employee compliance with IT policies and address non-compliance
- Hold information sessions about cost-saving practices
- Negotiate with vendors for better pricing
- Research vendor's competitors and their rates
- Highlight your previous purchasing history with them
- Offer to sign a long-term contract for a discount
- Ask for a volume discount based on the forecasted quantity
- Implement solutions and track savings
- Identify opportunities for cost reduction
- Implement cost-saving solutions
- Track and report realized savings
- Prioritize solutions based on potential savings
6. OKRs to ensure compliance and adaptability of Finance department for long-term success
- Ensure compliance and adaptability of Finance department for long-term success
- Identify and prioritize areas for automation and digitization within the Finance department
- Implement updated financial policies and procedures to meet regulatory requirements
- Revise and update financial policies and procedures to align with regulatory standards
- Conduct a comprehensive review of existing financial policies and procedures
- Identify gaps between existing policies and regulatory requirements
- Communicate and train employees on the updated financial policies and procedures
- Train all Finance department staff on new compliance protocols and best practices
- Schedule a training session for all Finance department staff
- Conduct role-playing exercises to practice implementing the best practices
- Assess the knowledge and understanding of staff through a post-training evaluation
- Develop training materials and resources for the new compliance protocols
- Develop a roadmap for integrating emerging technologies to future-proof Finance operations
7. OKRs to bolster Finance Department's role in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) drives
- Bolster Finance Department's role in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) drives
- Implement a department-led CSR training program for 90% staff participation
- Schedule and execute department-wide training sessions
- Develop engaging, comprehensive training materials
- Identify department leaders to oversee the CSR training program
- Reduce paper usage in the finance department by 30% through digitization
- Implement a digital document management system
- Train staff on digital record-keeping methods
- Replace paper invoices with e-billing systems
- Allocate 15% of department fund towards supporting local charity organizations
- Distribute calculated amount among local charities
- Determine total amount of department fund
- Calculate 15% of the total fund
8. OKRs to establish robust financial structure for sustainability and growth
- Establish robust financial structure for sustainability and growth
- Increase organizational revenue by 20% through new client acquisition
- Implement effective marketing strategies to attract potential clients
- Train sales team on techniques for successful client acquisition
- Enhance product or service offerings to broaden appeal
- Implement a new budgeting system accounting for all departments
- Create a standardized budgeting template
- Identify necessary expenses for each department
- Distribute and train departments on the new system
- Reduce operational cost by 15% through streamlining processes
- Implement lean strategies to optimize efficiency
- Automate routine procedures to save manpower
- Identify redundant tasks and merge them effectively
9. OKRs to enhance financial operations for continuous improvement
- Enhance financial operations for continuous improvement
- Minimize financial waste by identifying and reducing unnecessary expenses by 5%
- Implement strategies to cut identified expenses by 5%
- Identify non-essential expenses across all categories
- Analyze all financial statements for last one year
- Implement at least two efficiency-improving process changes in the finance department
- Research industry standards for efficient practices
- Introduce technology to automate financial processes
- Identify inefficiencies in current financial operations
- Increase quarterly profits by at least 10%
- Implement cost-saving measures throughout all departments
- Develop and execute an aggressive sales strategy
- Expand product or service offerings to generate revenue
10. OKRs to develop and implement an impactful spending proposal
- Develop and implement an impactful spending proposal
- Obtain approval for the final spending proposal from all necessary department heads
- Collect approval signatures from every department head
- Arrange a meeting to present and discuss the proposal
- Draft final spending proposal for department heads' review
- Research and benchmark 3 successful spending proposals from like companies
- Obtain and analyze these companies' spending proposals
- Identify three similar companies with successful spending proposals
- Record findings and draw parallels to inform our proposal
- Assemble a comprehensive draft proposal with at least 30 operational line items
- Create a list of minimum 30 operational line items
- Include those operational line items in the draft
- Write a comprehensive draft proposal
11. OKRs to boost customer loyalty and satisfaction in finance department
- Boost customer loyalty and satisfaction in finance department
- Improve retention of high-value customers by 10%
- Develop loyalty programs offering exclusive benefits to high-value customers
- Provide regular personalized communication and top-tier customer service
- Implement feedback sessions to understand and address their specific needs
- Increase our customer satisfaction survey results by 20%
- Enhance customer service training for better client interaction
- Introduce loyalty programs or customer rewards
- Implement customer feedback for improved product/service quality
- Decrease customer complaint cases by 15%
- Implement improved product/service quality checks
- Introduce more effective communication systems for customers
- Develop customer complaint response training for staff
12. OKRs to successfully finish financial statement within the required timeline
- Successfully finish financial statement within the required timeline
- Finalize and review financial statement for completion by the fifth working day
- Compile all necessary financial data
- Draft the financial statement
- Review and finalize the financial statement
- Accumulate all necessary financial data within the first 2 working days
- Gather data from online financial systems and reports
- Compile and organize all collected data
- Identify required financial data and relevant sources
- Draft preliminary financial statement by the third working day
- Review and finalize the draft by the third working day
- Begin creating a draft of the financial statement
- Gather all necessary financial documents and data
Finance Department 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 Finance Department OKRs in a strategy map
The rules of OKRs are simple. Quarterly OKRs should be tracked weekly, and yearly OKRs should be tracked monthly. 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
We recommend using a spreadsheet for your first OKRs cycle. You'll need to get familiar with the scoring and tracking first. Then, you can scale your OKRs process by using a proper OKR-tracking tool for it.
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 Finance Department OKR templates
We have more templates to help you draft your team goals and OKRs.
- OKRs to enhance customer experience by understanding our clients' valuation
- OKRs to enhance security operation centre's monitoring tools
- OKRs to improve incident management priority classification
- OKRs to master cloud services architecture: argocd, kubernates, istio, terraform
- OKRs to enhance maturity and adoption of lean/scaled Agile delivery practices
- OKRs to achieve full adherence to all regulatory compliance standards
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
What's next? Try Tability's goal-setting AI
You can create an iterate on your OKRs using Tability's unique goal-setting AI.
Watch the demo below, then hop on the platform for a free trial.