There’s a lot of performance management software out there. Some of it is built for the Fortune 500. Some of it is built for startups who’d rather use Google Sheets. Some platforms promise to be a “one size fits all” solution, but the reality is often an overwhelming collection of expensive, half-baked modules you’ll never actually use.
Small Improvements is built for a specific moment: when your team has outgrown spreadsheets but doesn’t have a need for an enterprise-level platform like Lattice or HiBob. When you want lean reviews, honest feedback, and a place to track 1:1s that doesn’t require a six-week implementation.
If that’s you, we’d love to help. If it isn’t, we’d rather tell you now than waste your time on a demo call.
Here’s how to figure out which side of the line you’re on.
You’re probably a good fit if…
Five signals we look for. If three or more describe you, you’re probably in the right place.
- You’re between 30 and 750 people, and growing. Smaller than 30 — you might honestly be fine with a shared doc and a recurring calendar invite. Bigger than 1000 — you’ll start needing the deep HRIS integration, compliance tooling, and admin scale that enterprise suites are built for.
- You’re moving from annual reviews to quarterly check-ins. Continuous feedback is at the heart of what we built. If you’re committed to a once-a-year ratings exercise, you can do it in Small Improvements, but you’ll be using maybe 10% of the product.
- Your HR team is small, and adoption is the bottleneck. If the person rolling this out is also doing recruiting, ops, and culture, complexity will kill you. We optimize for “can you set it up in an afternoon” over “does it have every feature.” That’s a real trade-off, and it’s the right one for most teams under 750.
- You use Slack, and you want feedback to live where work already happens. Praise, 1:1 reminders, and Pulse Surveys all flow through Slack natively. If your team lives in Microsoft Teams instead, this matters less. We still work, but a piece of the magic is missing.
- You want the analytics, but you don’t want to staff for them. Our admin screens are built so one person can prep for a board meeting without exporting to Excel. They are intuitive and designed to give you insights without the headache. If you have a dedicated HR analyst and want unlimited dashboarding, you might want more.
You’re probably not a good fit if…
Four signals that mean you should look elsewhere. We’d rather tell you now than three weeks into a trial.
- You need a skills or competency matrix that changes per role and career level. While our AI Coach can discuss role based expectations, we don’t do dynamic, competency Review templates. If you’ve built a competency framework where “leadership” means something different at Level 2 than at Level 5, and you want the tool to enforce that, look at Lattice Grow or 15five. They’re built for it.
- You need performance + comp planning + engagement + learning in one tool.We excel at Reviews and Feedback, complemented by top-notch Pulse and Engagement features. We don’t do compensation planning, learning paths, or deep engagement science. If you want one platform for all of it, Lattice’s full suite or Culture Amp are closer to that.
- You’re enterprise-scale (1000+ employees) with audit and compliance requirements that go beyond DPA and SOC At that size, you’ll want Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, or BambooHR Enterprise. We can sit alongside them, but we’re not built to replace them.
- You’re an OKR-first organization where goals are the gravitational center. Our Objectives feature is solid — Cascading Objectives, weighting, key results. But OKRs aren’t the main story of the product. If your CEO is asking for company-wide OKR dashboards as the primary tool, look at Mooncamp, Gtmhub, or Workboard.
Why we wrote this
Most software vendors don’t tell you when they’re the wrong fit. We do, because our Customer Success team has had 47-minute demo calls that ended with both sides realizing they should have caught the mismatch on minute three. That’s nobody’s idea of a good Tuesday.
So: be honest with yourself on the questions above. If you’re in our zone, we’ll be a good partner. If you’re not, we’ll tell you who is. We want to partner with you long-term. We do not want to oversell and overpromise, and we know you will get more value from our platform if we meet your needs from day one.
What to do next
- Download the one-page checklist (Link). Score yourself in five minutes. Take it to your leadership team for a quick gut check.
- Book an honest conversation (Book a Demo). Bring your messiest questions and ask them first. We’ll tell you when we’re not the right fit.
- Or just try it. The 30-day trial is free, no credit card.
