The numbers tell a story most HR leaders already know in their bones: traditional performance management is broken.
When Intuit faced the challenge of maintaining alignment, transparency and fairness across its global workforce while transforming into an AI-driven platform company, it needed a new approach. The organization adopted Betterworks to enable agile goal-setting, continuous feedback, and equitable evaluation — building a transparent, flexible, and technology-enabled goal framework that aligned employees around shared company objectives. The results included near-universal goal-setting adoption, improved collaboration through visibility into others’ goals, and stronger manager-employee relationships that drove engagement, accountability, and business growth.
Having recently spent time with Chief Marketing Officer John Schneider and Cheryl Johnson, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Betterworks, I gained deeper insights into how this performance management software company is carving out a distinct position in an increasingly crowded market. Under CEO Doug Dennerline, a longtime executive who also served as president of SAP SuccessFactors, the company has transformed from an OKR-focused tool into a comprehensive performance enablement platform that’s winning major enterprise deals against both legacy HCM suites and modern point solutions.
What makes their story compelling is a deliberate focus on driving measurable business outcomes through performance management — something that resonates strongly with the organizations Brandon Hall Group™ supports through our Institute enterprise membership program, where HR leaders consistently identify performance management transformation as a top priority.
The Market: Beyond the Annual Review Trap
The performance management software market has become a battlefield of competing philosophies. On one side, you have the HCM giants promising integrated compliance and control. On the other, nimble startups chase the SMB market with consumer-grade interfaces and quick implementations. In the middle sit enterprise organizations striving to modernize performance practices across thousands of employees without losing strategic alignment.
Through our research and advisory services, we’ve observed how organizations struggle with this decision. Many of the companies competing for our HCM Excellence Awards share similar challenges: outdated review processes, disconnected goals, and managers unprepared for continuous coaching. Here’s how key players competing with Betterworks stack up:
- Workday Performance Management: Integrated within the broader HCM Suite, it features goal management tied to compensation planning, succession planning tools with talent matrices. It is built primarily for structured annual processes rather than continuous feedback models.
- SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals: The solution has enterprise-grade cascading goal management and configurable review workflows with audit trails, but is less adaptable to fast-changing organizational needs.
- Lattice: A user-friendly interface optimized for employee engagement, strong 360-degree feedback and recognition features. It has limited scalability for organizations above 5,000 employees.
- Culture Amp: Strong employee engagement surveying and analytics, performance reviews integrated with culture insights and comprehensive reporting on organizational health metrics. The solution is less focused on ongoing performance enablement.
- 15Five is a lightweight tool with a strong focus on manager coaching for the mid-market, though less robust for complex organizational structures.
- Cornerstone Performance: Part of a broader talent management suite, with strong learning integration and competency-based performance assessments. It is less focused than other solutions on continuous feedback.
The Betterworks Differentiators
- Weekly Active Usage at Scale — While most performance platforms see users log in twice a year, Betterworks maintains weekly active usage across its 750,000-user install base.
At one leading electric vehicle manufacturer, rapid growth meant 80% of managers were new to leadership. By using Betterworks to structure ongoing coaching conversations and feedback loops, the organization helped first-time managers develop faster, sustain its culture, and maintain alignment through explosive growth.
Organizations report significant improvements in on-time review completion and goal achievement when engagement moves from biannual to weekly. This underscores the value of performance enablement as a daily practice rather than a quarterly chore.
- AI-Powered Performance Intelligence — Betterworks hosts its own large language models purpose-built for HR use cases, helping organizations avoid the privacy concerns common with third-party AI services.
The platform automatically suggests professional development goals based on an employee’s role, past performance and organizational priorities while summarizing feedback from multiple sources to uncover recurring themes.
AI-driven feedback summaries improve the quality and speed of performance reviews by consolidating input from recognition, conversations, and peer feedback into a single, unbiased view. At one enterprise customer, review completion time dropped by up to 75%, freeing managers to focus on meaningful coaching and development rather than administrative tasks.
- Next-Generation Platform Architecture — Betterworks has incorporated more than a decade of enterprise learning and feedback into a re-architected platform purpose-built for scalability and agility.
Enterprises such as Intuit have leveraged this flexibility to align goals and development across global teams, ensuring transparency and fairness through continuous calibration and shared visibility.
The modular architecture allows organizations to phase their implementation, building adoption gradually rather than forcing wholesale change.
Who Needs Performance Management That Actually Drives Performance?
Based on customer success stories and market positioning, Betterworks excels with specific organizational profiles:
High-Growth Technology Companies
- Industry examples: Electric vehicle manufacturers, streaming services, food technology companies.
- Specific need: Managing rapid scaling while maintaining culture and performance standards.
- Key benefits: Real-time goal alignment prevents mission drift. Continuous feedback supports fast-moving teams. Manager coaching tools help technical experts become effective leaders.
Healthcare Systems and Large Hospitals
- Industry examples: Teaching hospitals, multi-site healthcare networks, specialized medical centers.
- Specific need: Managing diverse workforces with extreme manager-to-employee ratios.
- Key benefits: Lightweight processes that don’t burden clinical staff. Mobile access for shift workers. Customizable workflows for different employee populations.
Financial Services Organizations Implementing Pay-for-Performance
- Industry examples: Regional banks, insurance companies, investment firms.
- Specific need: Connecting individual performance to compensation decisions with clear audit trails.
- Key benefits: Detailed performance data supports fair compensation decisions. Cascading goals ensure alignment from the C-suite to individual contributors. Compliance features satisfy regulatory requirements.
Transformation-Driven Enterprises
- Industry examples: Traditional retailers adapting to digital, entertainment companies pivoting business models.
- Specific need: Driving cultural change and new behaviors across established workforces.
- Key benefits: Transparency features create urgency around transformation goals. Frequent check-ins surface resistance early. Recognition tools reinforce desired behaviors.
Multi-National Corporations Seeking Agility
- Industry examples: Global manufacturing, international hospitality chains, worldwide logistics companies.
- Specific need: Standardizing performance practices while allowing regional flexibility.
- Key benefits: Multi-language AI support, configurable review cycles by region, and centralized reporting with local customization options.
The Analyst Perspective: Bridging the Talent-Performance Divide
Betterworks occupies an interesting position in the evolving performance management market. Its transformation from OKR specialist to comprehensive performance platform mirrors a broader market shift: Organizations no longer want disconnected point solutions for every HR process, but they also resist the rigidity of traditional HCM suites.
Enterprise customer examples — including Colgate-Palmolive, University of Phoenix, and LivePerson — highlight Betterworks’ strength in complex environments where simple solutions fail. These organizations can’t afford to experiment with unproven technology; they need platforms that scale reliably while remaining flexible enough to support diverse workforce needs.
Three strategic observations stand out:
- Betterworks’ focus on measurable business outcomes rather than HR process efficiency positions it well as budgets tighten. When CMO John Schneider described how they help HR leaders build business cases for change, he addressed a challenge we see repeatedly in our advisory work: HR technology must demonstrate value beyond administrative savings. For organizations seeking to build these business cases, our Smartchoice® Preferred Provider Program connects them with validated solutions that have proven ROI.
- The AI infrastructure investment gives Betterworks an advantage over competitors reliant on third-party models. As organizations mature in AI governance — a topic we’re covering extensively in our AI research — having control over model training and data handling becomes a critical differentiator.
- Betterworks’ deliberate move toward the enterprise market positions them in less crowded territory. While Lattice and Culture Amp battle for the mid-market, Betterworks can focus on organizations where their enterprise capabilities provide clear differentiation.
Looking forward, Betterworks faces both opportunities and challenges. Their upcoming release, focusing on succession planning and skills development, addresses critical enterprise needs.
The key question is whether Betterworks can effectively communicate value in business terms that resonate with both HR leaders and the C-suite. As one executive noted during our conversation, the industry remains “too jargony,” with everyone saying similar things in slightly different ways. This communication challenge is something we help both solution providers and enterprises navigate through our strategic marketing services and certification programs.
Organizations evaluating performance management platforms should consider Betterworks when their needs extend beyond basic reviews and feedback. The platform particularly shines when performance management must drive specific business outcomes — whether that’s reducing nursing turnover, enabling rapid scaling or supporting fundamental business transformation. While implementation requires commitment to change management, the potential returns in engagement, retention and performance make it a compelling option for enterprises ready to move beyond the annual review paradigm.
As the performance management market continues to evolve, Betterworks has positioned itself at the intersection of enterprise scale and modern engagement. Their opportunity lies in helping organizations realize that performance management is a business strategy. When executed well, it delivers measurable results every single week, not just once a year.
For more insights on performance management technology and to see how your organization’s practices compare to industry benchmarks, explore our Enterprise Membership options or contact us about participating in our Excellence Awards programs.
