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Lorea Lastiri

15 Best Alternatives to Spreadsheet Strategy Management


Managing, cascading, and tracking corporate strategy with paper or spreadsheets is complicated, laborious, and unscalable.

For small-scale project management, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Google Sheets may suffice. However, they do not have essential features and capabilities to meet your needs as your team grows.

You’ll have to contend with duplications, errors, delayed inputs, and poor version control (the ability to track who made specific changes).

These deficiencies make collaboration and data analysis difficult and sometimes impossible.

In cases where you can run some analysis, you’ll most likely end up with inaccurate reports and insights.

Over time, the spreadsheet will become unusable, and you’ll have to create new ones every few months.

Corporate strategic planning software is a better alternative to using spreadsheets for strategy management or any serious database implementation.

These tools offer multiple use cases, seamless dashboards, and reporting functions, integration with other tools, zero-coding, ability to incorporate structured governance alongside essential spreadsheet functionality.

In this article, we’ll examine the 15 best Excel alternatives for strategy management, providing their main features and pricing.


1. Kippy

Kippy is a well-thought-out cloud-based software for many use cases, including strategy execution or management; KPIs, OKRs & project management; and HR appraisals.

When choosing any strategy or project management software, two primary factors to consider are the speed you can get started and how easy it is to set up.

Kippy ticks these two boxes well. It’s extremely easy to set up and use and requires little to zero coding for most use cases.

One key feature that sets Kippy apart from its competitors is its AI-driven KPI suggestions. You can set up strategies and KPIs to track them in minutes.

Monitor progress with intuitive dashboards and report templates on Kippy and gain valuable insights on performance towards macro and micro goals.

Another quality of Kippy is its ability to grow with you. Whether you’re a team of 5 or 5,000 and above, its output and performance remain the same.

More importantly, Kippy is cost-effective, which makes it suitable for all kinds of organizations looking to keep strategy at the heart of everything they do.

Key features

  • Task management

  • Strategy management

  • Team collaboration

  • AI strategy consultant for AI-driven KPI suggestions

  • Objective setting

  • KPI tracking

  • OKRs

  • Multiple languages

  • Voice control

  • Automated alerts

  • Role-based access control

  • Auditing and governance

  • Built-in chat

  • Bulk import

  • APIs and adapters to connect with other apps

  • Real-time updates

  • Live dashboards

  • Task management

  • HR performance management

  • Risk management

Pricing

  • It has a free version

  • Free Trial

  • Starts at $4.00 monthly per user

2. Cascade Strategy

Cascade Strategy is a SaaS-integrated strategy execution platform. Its use cases include strategic planning, OKRs, portfolio management, and transformation strategy.

You can quickly get started with Cascade using its numerous templates that you can customize to your needs.

Key features

  • Connect to other platforms with over 1,000+ integrations

  • Gauge performance with dashboards and report

  • Track and align dependencies

  • Delegate goals

  • Goal deck

  • KPIs and OKRs

  • Cascade maps

  • Projects

  • Metrics library

  • Permissions and user roles

Pricing

  • Has a free tier for up to four users

  • Premium starts at $24 per month per user for up to 25 users. There’s a free trial to test-run the premium features

  • Larger teams will need to contact the sales team for a price quote

3. ClearPoint Strategy

ClearPoint Strategy is an encompassing solution for strategic planning and organizational alignment. It also has critical project management features to assist you in linking your company projects to strategy.

It’s easy to create reports and live dashboards. However, there’s limited customization, especially for graph creation and reporting.

One of the strongest attributes of ClearPoint is the resources available to you to transition from a measured initial use to other possibilities.

Key features

  • Collaboration

  • OKRs and KPIs

  • Dashboards

  • Ad hoc analysis

  • Report exporting

  • Integrate with numerous data sources

  • Project management

  • Advanced analytics and automated evaluations

  • Real-time notifications

  • Custom reports

  • Microsoft Teams integration

  • Reminders and on-page discussions

Pricing

  • ClearPoint Strategy has no fixed pricing like per-user or usage fees.

  • Every company’s payment structure is different, depending on the number of users and the functionality you need.

4. Lucid Software

Lucid Software is another alternative to Excel or other spreadsheet programs. Lucid provides a suite of solutions (Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale) geared towards visual collaboration.

In particular, you can use Lucidchart to improve processes, optimize organizations, visualize technical teams, and create strategy maps.

Key features

  • Business process maps

  • Map data flows

  • Plan and organize scrum teams

  • User flows

  • Data import

  • Integrations and two-way sync

  • Real-time or asynchronous collaboration

  • Voting on ideas

Pricing

  • Pricing for all the products in the suite is not available on the Lucid website. You’ll have to contact sales to get a quote.

  • Pricing for Lucidchart starts at $119.40 per year for the Individual tier, $108 per person per year for Teams, and $219 per person per year for the Enterprise tier.

5. Wrike

Wrike is primarily a comprehensive project and resource management tool and, secondarily, a collaborative work management tool.

It is a versatile tool with many application areas like marketing, information technology & engineering, operations, professional services, and more.

Key features

  • 400+ integrations

  • Automated workflows

  • Dashboards

  • Proofing

  • Project resource planning

  • Custom item types

  • Gantt charts

  • Cross-tagging across multiple streams

  • Kanban boards

  • Mobile and desktop apps

  • File attachment and storage

  • Personal task and project history

  • Data visualization tools

  • Real-time reports

Pricing

  • Has a free plan for a single user

  • Premium starts at $9.80 per user per month for the Team tier and $24.80 for the Business tier. Max of 25 users under the Team tier and no more than 200 users on the Business plan.

  • You’ll need the Enterprise or Pinnacle plan for above 200 users.

6. Hive

Hive is a strategic planning and project management tool with multiple use cases and workflows. Other popular workflows on Hive include company goal tracking, resource management, time tracking, client engagement, cross-company collaboration, and project planning.

While Hive also has an AI tool, HiveMind, you can primarily use it for brainstorming ideas, jumpstarting creative ideas, editing content, and translations.

Key features

  • Tasks and sub-task management

  • Project templates

  • Custom dashboards & analytics

  • Project summary and Kanban views

  • Automatic and manual time tracking

  • Task priorities

  • Collaborative and private notes

  • Hive Calendar

  • Team news board

Pricing

  • Has a free tier for up to 20 users

  • $12 per user per month for the Team plan

  • Enterprise plan with flexible add-ons

7. AchieveIt

AchieveIt is a tool that helps you automate project planning and execution. You can build plans, manage progress, assess project performance, focus attention on important tasks and goals, and achieve more.

You can easily connect all your plans to ensure there’s synergy across the organization. Additionally, you can automate emails to ensure you don’t miss a beat.

Key features

  • Unlimited plans

  • Automated updates and report compilation

  • Automated dashboard creation

  • Access controls and permissions

  • Data connectors

  • Benchmarking

  • Business plan templates

Pricing

  • No free plan, but you can book a free demo or ask for proof of concept

  • Has three premium plans: Core, Plus, and Pro. All plans include a 20-user minimum

8. MPOWR Envision

MPOWR Envision is a cloud-based strategy execution software developed by MPOWR, a provider of multiple solutions. In addition to the strategy execution platform, MPOWR also offers a coworking center, strategy consultation, and the MPOWR Community® tool.

MPOWR Envision is strategy methodology-agnostic, which makes it suitable for organizations of all sizes.

Key features

  • Automated health algorithms for enhanced project tracking functions

  • Notifications and reminders via email

  • Progress notes

  • Individual and global KPIs

  • 3,000+ integrations

  • Multiple plans

  • Critical Success Factors (CSF) tracking

  • Real-time updates

Pricing

  • There are no per-user fees

  • Premium pricing starts at $500 per month when billed annually

9. ClickUp

ClickUp presents itself as a one-stop shop for your project management needs. You can manage tasks, whiteboards, documents, dashboards, and goals with ClickUp.

You can leverage ClickUpAI to write, summarize, and edit documents and for other currently unreleased features. The downside is that you’ll have to pay for this feature separately.

Key features

  • Customizable tasks

  • Nested subtasks and checklists

  • ClickApps

  • Automated routines

  • Templates for different use cases

  • 1,000+ integrations

  • Real-time reporting

Pricing

  • Free plan best for personal use

  • Unlimited plan at $7 monthly per user

  • Business plan at $12 monthly per member

  • Business Plus plan at $19 monthly per user

  • Enterprise plan; contact sales for tailor-made prices

10. Anaplan

Anaplan offers multiple solutions and software, mostly related to solving complex planning challenges. Its strategic planning software helps connect your company’s plans to people and data, making the strategic decision-making processes quick and easy.

The advantage of this tool is the ability to estimate the financial impacts of your strategic objectives. As such, the tool’s target audience is finance teams and users.

Key features

  • Real-time modeling

  • Predictive analytics

  • Central repository for team collaboration

  • Planning models

  • KPIs

  • Data integration from multiple sources

  • Create and test scenarios

Pricing

  • Contact Anaplan directly for pricing information

11. Airtable

The solutions offered by Airtable include creating custom workflows for marketing, building roadmaps for products, linking data and processes for all business operations, and more.

Its operations solutions enable you to track initiatives and quickly spot gaps and timeline conflicts.

Key features

  • OKRs and SLAs

  • Linked records

  • Timeline views

  • Calendar views

  • Automated workflows and alerts

  • Performance data audits

  • Multiple integrations

  • Real-time customizable dashboards

Pricing

  • Has a free plan for 1,200 records/base

  • Plus plan starts from $12 per user/month or $10 per month when billed annually for 5,000 records/base.

  • Pro plan starts at $24 per user/month or $20 when billed annually for 50,000 records/base.

  • Contact sales for additional power and scale

12. Any. do

Any. do is a simple tool to manage tasks, projects, work by a team, lists, reminders, and calendars all in one place. It’s more of a project management tool than a strategy management software.

You can use it to create boards and workflows to track and manage projects and collaborate with team members.

Key features

  • 5,000+ integrations

  • Project management templates

  • 1-click import

  • Notes

  • Due dates and sub-tasks

Pricing

  • Free for personal accounts

  • The Premium plan starts at $3 monthly per user, while the Teams plan starts at $5 monthly per user.

  • You can start a free trial without a credit card.

13. Jedox

Jedox touts itself as the “world’s most adaptable planning and performance management platform.” You can use the cloud-based app for integrated business planning, financial planning and analysis, sales performance management, and more.

Integrated planning ensures all teams are united toward the company’s strategic goals.

Key features

  • Data integration from multiple internal and external sources

  • Jedox AIssisted Planning™ for predictive forecasting and planning

  • High-level summaries

  • Detailed analytics

  • Automated standard reports

  • Self-service reporting

  • KPIs and ROIs

  • Automated notifications

  • Comment functionality

Pricing

  • No free plan

  • No free trial

  • Four premium plans: Essential, Business, Professional, and Performance. You’ll need to contact the sales team to get a quote for your peculiar needs.

14. Workday Adaptive Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning by Workday is a strategic planning software for faster innovation.

The key capabilities of this software include capacity planning, portfolio planning, and budgeting, spend modeling, and self-service reporting.

Key features

  • AI and machine-driven insights for informed strategic decisions

  • Project dependencies and constraints

  • Connect with data from multiple sources (ERP, HR, CRM, and PSA)

  • Flexible driver-based models

  • Built-in rules engine

  • Custom capacity plans

  • Monitor projects in real time

  • Unlimited what-if scenario analysis

  • No-code modeling

Pricing

  • Free trial available for 30 days

  • Price not available on the website.

15. Betterworks

Betterworks is a performance management software tailored primarily for increasing employee engagement and manager efficiency.

Its Goal & OKR component helps you foster strategic alignment across the organization so employees can focus on important goals.

Key features

  • Easy self-service implementation

  • Multiple integrations with external tools like Gmail and Slack

  • HR and manager insights

  • Feedback and recognition

  • APIs

  • Localization

  • 1:1 Meetings

  • Real-time employee feedback

Pricing

  • Betterworks Go, for small businesses with 5-1000 employees, is priced at $7 monthly per user (when billed annually).

  • Mid-market plan for businesses with 1000-5000 employees. Price is unavailable

  • Enterprise plan for businesses with 5,000+ employees. Contact Betterworks for price information suitable to your business.

Takeaway: Ditch the spreadsheets for more efficient strategy management

Strategy management with a spreadsheet program may suffice in the short term, but they’ll fail you when your team and business needs grow.

Strategy management tools like Kippy offer superior features and capabilities to encourage collaboration and drive company-wide alignment.

These tools also have powerful data analytics and reporting functions to make tracking goals seamless.

Of the 15 tools we reviewed, Kippy stands head and shoulders above the rest thanks to its superior usability, integration capabilities, collaboration features, reporting capabilities, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and customer support.

Book a free demo today to get started.

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