Local Government Procurement (LGP) is a procurement organisation of around 60 staff serving NSW councils. It has run OKRs for three years on a sound three-tier model that links individual, team and organisational goals. Setting the goals was never the problem. Reporting on them was, and with People & Culture and the executive team both relying on that visibility for performance conversations, the gap mattered.

"Creating the OKRs at the beginning was great. But it's the ongoing reporting, I think, was where we struggled."

That's an LGP director describing the last two years. The OKRs lived in a multi-tab Excel spreadsheet. No automation, no live view of progress. Directors updated the same goal separately at three levels, and cross-functional cascading left one executive with 37 OKRs where they had expected about 10.

LGP had already bought and abandoned two off-the-shelf SaaS tools for the job. Both lost to adoption friction. Then Microsoft retired Viva Goals in December 2025, and the last option inside the Microsoft product line went with it.

TechRam built an OKR tracker inside LGP's existing Microsoft 365 tenant. The backend is entirely SharePoint lists. Power Automate runs the reminder cycles and Microsoft Entra handles access, so anyone who joins LGP gets the tracker automatically. No new licences, no subscription. Total running cost is about $5 a month on Azure.

The design follows how LGP actually works rather than how OKR software assumes people work. Progress rolls up through objectives only. Status is self-reported (on track, at risk, off track) rather than derived from metrics. Managers nudge overdue check-ins with a button, not a bot, because every one-on-one happens at a different time.

• Three-tier structure (organisation / team / individual) with lifecycle statuses for multi-year and rolling objectives
• Check-in engine: configurable frequency anchored to start dates, stale flags, self-reported RAG status
• Real-time roll-ups: key result progress aggregates to objectives automatically
• Dashboards: My OKRs, My Team, and an executive view filterable by department and RAG status
• Automated weekly reminders plus a manual manager nudge, full change-log audit trail, and lock-down of approved OKRs
• Entra-synced access and a user guide embedded in the app itself

Prototype approval to organisation-wide soft launch took under a month. Hypercare closed with no unresolved issues. The CEO self-onboarded from the embedded guide without asking a question. Reporting now sits with LGP's data lead, who works in Power BI directly against the SharePoint lists. One build cost, not a per-seat subscription.

This is the kind of internal tool we build as part of our Workflow Automation work: a fit-for-purpose app on the Microsoft licences you already pay for.