PAYG Platform  |  Annual OKR Cascade

Company → Product → Team  ·  3-Level Cascade with Quarterly Breakdown

FY 2022–2024
Status: Complete
Owner: Tristan Fowler
Level 1 — Company OKRs
Level 2 — Product OKRs
Level 3 — Team / Squad OKRs
Objective / Key Result Baseline Target Owner
O1 Launch & grow a market leading PAYG Product
KR1 — Grow an active PAYG customer base
Baseline
0
Target
5M
Owner
CPO
KR2 — Grow a new platform ARR stream
Baseline
0
Target
£5M
Owner
CPO
KR3 — Upsell PAYG solution to new B2B clients
Baseline
—
Target
+2
Owner
CDO
KR4 — Maintain lowest platform cost to serve in market
Baseline
1:10k
Target
1:12k
Owner
CPO
O2 Achieve operational excellence for all existing clients
KR1 — Improve platform uptime across clients
Baseline
94%
Target
99%+
Owner
CTO
KR2 — Reduce time to market for new features
Baseline
3 wk
Target
-30%
Owner
CTO
KR3 — Maintain low critical incidents per month
Baseline
1
Target
0
Owner
CTO
O3 Build a high performance, product-led organisation
KR1 — Internal NPS / employee engagement score
Baseline
—
Target
8+
Owner
CPO
KR2 — Quarterly OKR completion rate
Baseline
—
Target
85%+
Owner
CPO/CTO
KR3 — Improve CSAT / customer NPS
Baseline
40%
Target
80%
Owner
CPO
Objective / Key Result Baseline Target Maps to
P1 Build the highest performing & most reliable token management system in the market
KR1 — Failed or stuck top-up transactions
Baseline
3%
Target
<0.5%
Maps to
O1
KR2 — Average transaction processing time
Baseline
4 min
Target
<1 min
Maps to
O1
KR3 — Peak throughput capacity
Baseline
—
Target
200k/hr
Maps to
O2
P2 Drive customer loyalty through a best-in-class prepayment app experience
KR1 — Successful self-service app top-up rate
Baseline
—
Target
95%+
Maps to
O1
KR2 — Customer / user CSAT NPS score
Baseline
4
Target
8
Maps to
O3
KR3 — Reduce support contacts for PAYG customers
Baseline
100/mo
Target
<10/mo
Maps to
O1
P3 Establish world-class observability suite & continuous improvement culture
KR1 — E2E realtime monitoring coverage
Baseline
—
Target
100%
Maps to
O2
KR2 — Mean time to detect critical incidents
Baseline
20 min
Target
<5 min
Maps to
O2
KR3 — % defects detected before support contact
Baseline
30 min
Target
<5 min
Maps to
O2
Objective / Key Result Baseline Target Maps to
T1 Deliver a zero-defect token management pipeline across all payment vendors
KR1 — Token failure rate in production
Baseline
1.2%
Target
<0.2%
Maps to
P1
KR2 — Multi-vendor integration auto-test coverage
Baseline
85%
Target
95%
Maps to
P1
KR3 — HSM cryptographic signing latency
Baseline
85%
Target
95%
Maps to
P1
T2 Ship a customer-facing top-up app experience that earns advocacy & virality
KR1 — App Store rating
Baseline
—
Target
4.5+
Maps to
P2
KR2 — App top-up completion rate
Baseline
—
Target
95%
Maps to
P2
KR3 — Viral coefficient
Baseline
0.4
Target
1.0
Maps to
P2
T3 Build observability & continuous improvement into every sprint
KR1 — Realtime dashboards live for all critical flows
Baseline
—
Target
Q2
Maps to
P2, P3
KR2 — Quarterly A/B test cadence
Baseline
1/qtr
Target
3/qtr
Maps to
P3
KR3 — P1 defect-to-fixed time
Baseline
3 hrs
Target
<15 min
Maps to
P2, P3
KR4 — Average cycle time for new features
Baseline
2 wks
Target
2 days
Maps to
P3
Quarterly Breakdown
Q1 Foundation
HSM integration complete & live in production
Single vendor token support in production
Functional baseline & app completed
Baseline NPS measurements established
OKR tracking cadence live across all squads
200k MVP customers on platform (1 client)
Q2 Scale
Multi-vendor token support live in production
Peak load testing passed at 200k/hr
Mobile top-up V2 shipped to 50% of users
Full E2E observability dashboard live
2 million customers on platform (1 client)
Q3 Optimise
Customer NPS 4 - 8, path to 8 clear
App Store rating 4.5 achieved
Token failure rate down to <0.8%, path to <0.2% clear
E2E transaction time down to 2 min, sub-1 min in sight
4 million customers on platform (2 clients)
Q4 Close Out
5M+ customers on platform (3 clients)
NPS score of 8 achieved or explained
Token failure rate of <0.2% achieved
E2E transaction time sub-1 min achieved
Year-end OKR scorecard reviewed with leadership
Draft next-year OKRs informed by this year's learnings

Annotation Log

— decisions made, what was deprioritised, mid-year pivots, and lessons for next year
- Built token management in-house rather than outsourcing - more control over E2E process, less third-party risk, greater opportunity to optimise performance. Better long-term positioning. - Online payment merchant integration first, physical merchants later - simpler, shorter GTM, allowed growth to start sooner. - No-debt, clean-account customer segment first - expedited GTM and unlocked early value, then iterate to more complex segments. - Gen-2 meter devices first - proven at 99% to specification and interoperable; allowed a reliable baseline in production. - Strategic investment in Physical Asset & Automation QA - needed to scale cryptography testing on real devices and ensure merchant integration robustness.
- Complex back-off and retry routines - A/B testing needed to identify best approach; shipped basic 3x retry first and deferred intricate choreography. - Gen-1 meter device support - inconsistent behaviour would have muddied performance baselines; significantly lower market penetration. - Real-time observability (initially) - assumed near-real-time (within 1hr) was sufficient. This proved to be a mistake (see pivots).
- Real-time observability pivot (post-200k users) - having deprioritised initially, it became critical for prompt incident resolution once volume grew. Near-real-time proved insufficient. - Brought forward Basic Debt customer journeys - organic growth past 1M customers was unfeasible without it. Became a significant and unplanned growth unblocker.
- Billing reconciliation needs to be reworked and refactored - not in scope here, but growth on PAYG has exacerbated issues in adjacent products. Needs to be addressed. - Vulnerable customer identifier opportunity - use an LLM to recognise financial stress patterns so targeted support can be offered. Warrants a full SWOT analysis for next year's planning cycle.