Workpuls is a time tracking and employee productivity monitoring software that help businesses manage their employees more efficiently. It is also the brainchild of Ivan Petrović. We interviewed him to find out more about his entrepreneurship journey.
Tell us more about yourself before starting Workpuls.
You can say that I have always been interested in technology in one way or another. I started coding at the age of 12, and shortly after that I started playing around with technology and discovering its potential. This also included hacking the public billboards in the city, but that’s another story. I went on to study software engineering, but from the early days I imagined myself as a creator of something big and genius. So, I guess entrepreneurship was something I always wanted to do. And here I am today.
Tell us more about your startup and why did you start this company?
Before starting my own company, I worked for other companies. As a software engineer, I noticed that many time managers had no idea what was going on in the company, how busy (or slacking) their employees actually were and so on. At the same time, the developers and teams always thought that all other teams were less busy than their own, so they delegated things from team to team without knowing anything about the workload of other teams. This lead to guesswork and conflict, and I thought that it would be a lot easier for both the managers and employees if we had some way to objectively measure how busy and productive everyone was. This is how WorkPuls was created, as a time tracking solution which will provide automatic reports about Time and Attendance, the amount of productive, unproductive and neutral time spent at work, and productivity insights about employees and teams.
That was several years ago, and of course, new use cases have emerged in the meantime. Many companies around the world manage remote teams and remote employees, so the reports that WorkPuls automatically generates for the managers serve as an objective basis for decision making, but also as a proof of work from the employee’s side.
Any significant setbacks your company has faced? How was it resolved.
Competition in this area is very big, and it is always a challenge to find the fastest way to reach your prospects. So, there are always many failures that you make trying to discover this, but it is a learning process that startups factor in their projections.
An example would be a great focus on outbound sales as most of the deals came in through inbound traffic online. It is important to stop and evaluate and see where you should focus.
How do you stay motivated daily?
I do not have a lot of trouble staying motivated. I chose to do this because this is what I want to do and I love it. But my team often says I should rest a bit more.
How do you motivate your employees?
Constant communication is the key. It is essential that the team stays motivated because in the beginning you make mistakes all the time and there is a lot of pressure. It is important that everyone understands that success is not instant, and that the mistakes and failures are the part of finding out what works best for the business. Everyone needs to be focused on daily tasks, but with the big picture in perspective, so that everyone is on the same page and everyone knows where we want to be in the next month, five months, and so on.
What is your company’s culture like? Why is this culture important?
We maintain a casual atmosphere. It is a very result oriented culture, but the focus is on the results, and not on very strict procedures. After all, you have to allow people to be creative and find different approaches to tasks they work on and the goals that they have to achieve. I think culture affects the way people see their work, and it is partially the culture that determines whether they are looking forward to the next workday, or they cannot wait to leave. So, you have to let people do their work, but maintain constant communication and ensure that feedback flows between employees.
Does the culture aid in retaining and attracting employees?
It is essential. Not only for us, but for all businesses. It is true that companies in different business fields might need to have a culture tailored to that line of work (i.e procedures might be more or less strict, focus on security might be bigger in some areas, working hours might differ), but I would say that culture has to be considered by management of any business that wants to reach success. Many of the companies we work with especially raise this point when they are considering buying our software – they always think about how its use will reflect on the morale of the employees.
What have Workpuls achieved / managed to accomplished so far?
I think the key think is that we are getting more and more feedback from our customers, which allows us to constantly improve our product and promote it in a smarter way. We are a growing company, and one of the foundations of this growth is the feedback we get from our customers.
We are proud to say that our product has been improved many times over and over based on this feedback, and that today, WorkPuls as a business software solution is a complete but a constantly improving solution that is favored by many successfully businesses around the world.
What are some future plans for Workpuls?
WorkPuls wants to become a human behavior data company, and help humanity avoid some mistakes that are common, but not always obvious.
If you could turn back time, what would you have done differently?
As first-time entrepreneur, it is hard to say what I would do differently, it’s almost everything. I believe that first timers always need to go thru this process alone and learn their own weak spots.
A single piece of advice for the aspiring entrepreneurs?
As I said you need to go through this process on your own and if you are the chosen one you will find your way out of this chaotic state. Just be ready to go all-in!
More about Workpuls:
Website: www.workpuls.com
Twitter: @WorkPuls
Facebook: @WorkPuls
Featured Image Credit: WorkPuls
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