Workline, Making It Possible For Every Human At Work, From The Janitor To The CEO Magazine
Most Enterprise Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) are complex, conventional, and arduous! Workline, a five-year-old startup, has an enviable list of customers and offers HR managers something they have never experienced so far - a framework approach to implementing HR processes, and a curated Marketplace with related service providers, all on the same platform!
This Mumbai and Chennai based organization offers a SaaS HRMS for companies with anywhere between 100 and 100,000 employees. The HR solutions can be configured to the requirements of each firm - whether it is a startup, a legacy company looking to modernize, or an industry giant.
While other HRMS products may require customers to modify their existing processes, the Workline team takes time to understand each company's culture and requirements and structures the solution accordingly.
Its intuitive mobile-ready interface sits on an effective people management framework that integrates seamlessly with global ERPs. The Workline HRMS also offers comprehensive real-time analytics and statutory compliances.
This 120-talent strong company, with presence in New Delhi and Bengaluru, was founded in 2016. “It was a time when enterprise applications were becoming consumerized, mobile technology came into play and many apps surfaced. The consumer experience was moving towards the mobile form factor.
The challenge that motivated us was to try to put something as big as an HR ERP into a mobile form factor and make it relevant for all users,” recalls Workline Co-Founder, and Puzzler, Nishana Vijay.
The team aimed to build a mobile-first platform with a consumer-centric approach, rather than with a traditional ERP approach.
This becomes important in the context of the different kinds of industry segments they cater to. “Companies that have a large millennial workforce would want a different kind of UI/UX, a manufacturing setup would want something traditional, just for the comfort factor. We cater to all these diverse markets,” she says.
“We are puzzle solvers,” explains Nishana. The company’s logo, based on an ancient Chinese game called the Tangram, reflects this. The Tangram is a puzzle with seven individual pieces that can be rearranged into many shapes. This application of creativity, she says, with a limited number of components, is similar to an HRMS.
Most HRMS tools offer similar solutions, but few allow HR managers to rearrange and assign priority based on their company’s requirements. Workline provides effective solutions for such problems.
“We have identified some core challenges in the market. HR is not a regulated market; it is a practice. People are trying to build a product in what is usually a practice,” avers Nishana.
As a result, she adds, “nobody gets it right, or they charge an arm and a leg for it.” She explains that most enterprise applications have a product approach, with linearity in the way a process gets executed. It requires a step-by-step approach and there are interdependencies, she says.
Often, customers may not require all the features in the product. Using the analogy of a mobile phone, she says, “We buy very good phones, from the top brands, but we hardly use 5-10% of the phone's capability.
This is true of the ERP market as well. When the product takes a neutral, mid-path stand, people have to take things that they don't want, too.”
Workline, she says, “has simplified it and made it relevant to all humans at work.” The team does a thorough assessment of the unique needs of every customer. “If the customer does not want a particular process, they can knock it off and take something relevant for them.
The biggest differentiator between Workline and all other players in the market is that we make it contextual,” she says.
The Workline team tries to “gauge the appetite in the organization for the amount of policy and culture that people would want to adopt in an automated tool and gives them only that serving,” says Nishana. This contrasts with products that “offer a hundred features that claim to do miracles for you.”
“We want to create a Universe that is contextual to the end user, where they get what they want, in terms of automation. At Workline, we view it as an engagement. We understand what is at the ground level, we understand a company’s HR requirements, map their policies and procedures,” she says.
In a Talent Acquisition process, for example, the best-of-breed process includes manpower budgeting, LinkedIn posts, integration with various job boards. For the discerning customer, she says, it is imperative to find out what problems they need to solve right away.
If the problem is generating offer letters, for example, Workline would tackle that first.
“We try to break the linearity of the product approach. In a typical product company, generation of offer letters is at the tail-end of a very long process that starts from manpower planning and budgeting, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, interview, negotiation, background verification, and, in the end, you extend an offer letter. Our approach is that we show the ROI first, often in the first few months,” she says, adding that Workline’s framework model offers this flexibility.
Workline also offers HR managers a one-of-a-kind Marketplace feature.
“Any good tool aids seamless digitization. We are the only player in the market that is a framework and has a readymade Marketplace baked into the application,” Nishana points out.
Workline has integrated service providers on its platform to ensure digital seamlessness. “We curate HR service providers, add it to the platform, thereby providing a bridge between them and the HR managers. This will ensure a great experience for our customers,” she says.
For example, a BFSI customer can check credit rating scores thanks to Workline’s integration with CIBIL. HR managers could use services such as Aadhaar, or IDfy to verify candidates’ credentials, all on the same platform.
During the onboarding process, Nishana explains, the HR executive or the employee does not have to wait for files to come. “All the transactions, and back-and-forth communication takes place digitally. With the Workline tool on the cloud, we connect everybody and ensure seamless flow of documents and information,” she says.
Workline has 19 service providers in its Marketplace. “We have invested in our core, and we partner with firms that have invested to build the capability, and whose product offering is their core strength and niche,” Nishana explains.
“This is a first in the HR enterprise segment. We offer the collective best of many other players, seamlessly integrated without compromising on the security and data ownership.”
Trusted By Big Names In A Short Span Of Time
This five-year old, bootstrapped firm boasts of an enviable and diverse clientele – Bandhan Bank, L&T Financial Services, IDFC Mutual Fund, Tata Trust, Pidilite, Blue Star, TVS Credit Services, SBI Capital, Dream11, Blackbuck and Practo, among others, across more than 15 industry segments.
“We have a great set of customers who trust us. In BFSI, for example, firms face regulatory pressure, and expect high security. Banks that are transforming into fintech companies have a lot of ‘feet on the street’ people. Traditional HR enterprise applications did not have the malleability to bring the entire application into a mobile form factor,” she says.
Since Workline already had a mobile-ready interface, demonstrated scale, established security guidelines, and offered functional features, Workline has become the sought after HRMS by financial services companies.
“Due to the flexibility and services, we provide, we have managed to gain the trust of some of the biggest names in banking, finance, manufacturing and other sectors” say Nishana. She adds “The journey has just begun in making it easy for all humans at work”.
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