Wrk
Automation Done Right!

There is little doubt that automation has seen a surge in popularity in recent years as business leaders look for winning solutions to unprecedented problems. Oftentimes, however, this has resulted in enterprises deploying automation as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for any roadblocks in their workflows despite not fully understanding what automation can and can’t do! Unfortunately, this means they often end up investing heavily on capabilities that do not serve their purpose and, instead, are thrown into a state of confusion caused by a catchy buzzword that they don’t fully understand. That is where Wrk comes in.

Founded in 2019, Wrk combines the power of advanced automation with a 24/7 skilled and remote workforce (conveniently called the Wrkforce) to fulfill tasks at the scale their clients want. The company’s self-serve software was expertly engineered to handle any type of work- from simple data entry and research tasks to complex internal processes like generating custom reports and or configuring entire websites. But unlike other automation providers that choose to focus on how automation works, Wrk prefers to answer the question of what automation can do for your business to make it more productive.

“Everyone is trying to solve for - how to automate a process. We decided to take a different approach and ask the question - how can we help organizations deliver their work at scale, using automation,” says Mohannad ElBarachi, CEO of Wrk. “This focus on work delivery through automation has been the driving force behind Wrk.”

The genesis of Wrk emerged from an entrepreneurial backdrop. Having been a tech entrepreneur since the age of 26, El-Barachi had always been savvy about building technology solutions, delving deep into the gut of a problem. This passion got him involved with a number of different technology companies as a consultant & executive, aligning business and technology strategies all over the world before co-founding a fully integrated location-based marketing platform called SweetIQ Analytics in 2010. The scaling problems he faced at SweetIQ before and after its acquisition by the media giant Gannett in 2017 opened his eyes to the market pain points regarding automation processes. The gap in the market demanded automation software that delivers at scale, accurately, and fast. This pain-point provided El-Barachi with the inspiration for Wrk—giving birth to the robust delivery and integration platform we see today.

Wrk Actions: “Makes Automation Insanely Simple”

At its core, Wrk combines RPA, APIs, proprietary bots, and a real human workforce into a single platform.

Proven to reduce cost per process by an average of 20 percent and reduce delivery time by 65 percent, Wrk can be called upon to fill gaps, create efficiencies, and alleviate strain for teams of all sizes regardless of their department or industry. “Our approach brings together all the benefits of each type of solution while minimizing the complexity of their configuration and deployment,” says El-Barachi.

Going with the tagline that their platform “makes automation insanely simple,” Wrk has hit a home run with its library of bots called Wrk Actions; that essentially, gets things done. These Wrk Actions are the stepping stones that, when linked together, make up a fully-fledged workflow that can revolutionize how you work.

Reflecting a single step in one of your real world workflow processes, each Wrk Action is completed by a ready-to-run bot, which uses a wide variety of technology (from RPA to APIs) or a skilled human worker—this fluidity allows Wrk to digitize even the most complex process. For instance, a typical Sales workflow from Wrk might include the following steps. First, there would be a Wrk Action to open an Excel spreadsheet and extract specific information and another one to take each specific piece of information and check for its validity. The next step may involve pushing the validated information into Salesforce or Hubspot, which is later assigned to a sales rep, and so on. Through these distinct steps, the company has created a sophisticated ecosystem that designs and executes a step-by-step digital version of any workflow as well as having an in-built mechanism that automatically delegates each step of the process to humans, machines, third-party APIs, or their own bots depending on which is best served to fulfill the specific task. The cherry on top is that this innovative solution-set is available to organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

Standing Out from the Crowd

When it comes to standing out from the competitive automation crowd, speed and accuracy is definitely an asset that Wrk has in abundance. “In the majority of cases, while onboarding a new workflow, we are able to deliver results immediately—usually within 48 hours to a week,” says a proud El-Barachi on driving successful outcomes to their clients at break-neck speed.

Like most assured organizations, perhaps the truest unique value proposition of Wrk’s capabilities is reflected best through their client success stories. In recent months, a large tech company in the EdTech space was struggling to onboard the large volume of new students that were registering with them. Due to the jurisdictional regulations, the files of every candidate that came in had to be standardized according to the specified format and presented to the government for preparation. Wrk helped the EdTech giant to automate the whole process, creating a massive uptick in their onboarding in less than six months. Transferring the volume of repetitive tasks to the Wrk platform ensured a smooth workflow was built—allowing the client to accept more students without their operations team getting stuck in unnecessary bottlenecks.

Envisioning an Automation-Driven Future

As a venture-backed company, Wrk is scaling very rapidly. The company has gone from zero to 50 employees in little more than 18 months. Wrk aims to build its platform into an infrastructure of technology that is synonymous with delivering work at scale.

El-Barachi believes there is a huge opportunity to leverage the changing dynamics of this quickly evolving ecosystem, especially in a post-COVID world, that allows for a mobile first workforce to thrive. In this new working environment that permits developers, third parties, and organizations to have more streamlined access to automation and monetize an unlimited repertoire of work, opportunities abound. “We owe the world as technologists with the skillsets, to build something that can impact the world. Our passion to have a great vision and plan comes from this sense of responsibility and duty,” says El-Barachi.

We look forward to seeing where Wrk goes from here.