The challenge
An Indian services company runs a quarterly objectives cycle for its people. Employees set objectives at the start of each quarter, managers approve them, and the same managers rate them as percentages at the end. The company needed performance appraisal software that held the whole cycle in one place.
When a cycle like this runs on email and files, steps slip. An objective can sit unapproved because a message was missed. A rating can run late because nobody saw it was due. A senior manager who wants a view of the whole team has to gather it by hand.
A quarterly rhythm raises the stakes. The cycle comes round four times a year, so every bit of manual chasing is repeated four times too.
The company wanted reminders that push each step along and a summary view for second-line managers.
What we built
We built a web system around the quarterly cycle, with three roles and one record per employee per quarter:
Objectives and criteria. Employees enter their objectives for the quarter and the criteria that will show success.
Manager approval. The first-line manager approves or rejects each submitted objective.
Percentage ratings. At quarter end, the same manager rates each objective as a percentage.
Team summary. Second-line managers see the objectives and ratings of everyone below them.
Alerts. Email and in-system alerts tell each person when it is their turn to act.
The pieces connect through that record. An objective moves from submitted to approved to rated, and each change sends an alert to whoever acts next.
How it works day to day
Take an employee at the start of a quarter. They open the system, write their objectives and, for each one, the criteria that will show it was achieved. Then they submit the set to their first-line manager.
The manager gets an alert, reviews each objective and approves or rejects it. A rejection tells the employee which objective needs another look, so both sides agree the quarter's targets before the work starts.
At the end of the quarter, the first-line manager rates each objective as a percentage. The second-line manager then opens the team summary and sees every objective and rating for the people below them, without asking anyone for a spreadsheet.
The result
Each employee's objectives, approvals and ratings sit in one record per quarter. Second-line managers see their team's summary without collecting it by hand.
Alerts show whose turn it is, so the cycle can keep moving without someone chasing every step. Each employee and manager also has a shared history of what was agreed and how it was rated.
We are not publishing completion rates or user numbers for this system.
What the research says
Coordination crowds out the work. Project management vendor Asana's Anatomy of Work research found that 60% of a person's time at work goes on "work about work", coordinating tasks rather than doing skilled work (Asana, vendor research). Email and in-system alerts tell each person when it is their turn, so nobody has to chase the cycle by hand.
Finding answers takes a quarter of the week. Software vendor Atlassian's State of Teams 2025, a survey of 12,000 knowledge workers and 200 executives, found leaders and teams waste 25% of their time just searching for answers (Atlassian, 2025). One record per employee per quarter puts objectives, approvals and ratings in one place.
Spreadsheets carry hidden errors. A 2024 review led by Pak-Lok Poon in Frontiers of Computer Science found that 94% of spreadsheets used in business decisions contain errors (Phys.org, 2024). Second-line managers get their team's summary from the system instead of compiling ratings into a sheet.
Where AI fits next
None of the following is in the current system. A model could help employees turn a rough goal into a clear objective with measurable criteria. It could also draft a short summary of each team's quarter for the second-line manager to edit, and flag unusual rating patterns before ratings are final.
Planning performance appraisal software?
Four questions to answer before you build:
How many review levels does each objective pass through, and who can approve, reject or rate?
Is the cycle quarterly, half-yearly or annual, and might that change later?
What scale do ratings use: percentages, grades or something else?
Who should see team summaries, and how far up the reporting line should they reach?
Our workflow automation and web application pages explain how we build approval cycles like this one. Weigh custom software against off-the-shelf tools, or browse more of our projects.
See how we approach software for operations and logistics teams.
